Spoiler Warning: There are minor spoilers ahead for the first couple of levels of Jedi: Survivor. Spoilers are also present for Jedi: Fallen Order.
I have made a mistake.
With Jedi: Survivor having been released two months ago, and with six major patches rolling out for the PC version of the game in that time, I made the ignorant assumption that the game would have been fixed by now – or at least substantially improved. Having held off on purchasing the game when it was first released given its broken, unfinished state – and even worse PC port – I had hoped that some extra development time and post-release patches would have fixed things up.
Despite trying my best to avoid spoilers for the game, I’d come across a couple of seemingly pretty big ones over the past couple of months, and I wanted to play Jedi: Survivor without encountering any more. I was also keen to fill the void while I wait for Starfield – all of which are factors that led me to purchase Jedi: Survivor.
On PC, the game is in a poor state even two months and six patches later. My PC far exceeds the game’s recommended system requirements, and should be capable of running Jedi: Survivor with detailed graphics and ray-tracing enabled without any issues. For comparison, I can run demanding titles like Red Dead Redemption II and Cyberpunk 2077 at their highest resolution, with ray-tracing enabled, and easily get a smooth 60 frames-per-second.
Jedi: Survivor runs poorly. Most of the time, walking around and exploring a level isn’t an issue. But as soon as combat begins, or even when Cal has to perform an acrobatic move like a double-jump or running along a wall, there are noticeable frame drops and stuttering issues. With some levels requiring fairly specific button-presses to navigate areas, inconvenient frame drops can mean the difference between successfully completing a section and having to replay it. This got old fast.
And this is in spite of turning down all of the in-game settings. I tried Jedi: Survivor in 4K at first, then 1440p, then finally 1080p. I tried the “high” preset, before dropping down to medium, and then again turning some settings – like shadows and the draw distance – all the way down to low. I refuse to drop the settings any further; playing the game in 720p with all settings on low would make it look no better than an Xbox 360 title, and what’s the point?
Some of these frame-drops occur during cut-scenes, which is something I haven’t encountered in a game in a long time. Although this kind of problem is annoying during gameplay, at least it’s understandable to an extent… but for cut-scenes to be similarly afflicted is actually quite shocking. It speaks to how unready Jedi: Survivor was when it was forced into a premature launch.
The frame-rate and stuttering issues are indicative of a game that is poorly-optimised. Despite Jedi: Survivor taking its sweet time to “optimise files” every time it boots, there’s no indication that this does anything at all. The game simply isn’t running well on PC. This isn’t an issue on my end, either – take a look at tech breakdowns from people far more skilled than I am and who have significantly more powerful computers. Similar issues are also impacting performance on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X – though I don’t have those consoles so I can’t speak to that for myself.
Jedi: Survivor has some visually interesting locations, but the experience of these – and the sense of immersion that I was hoping to find – has been ruined; soiled by just how janky and unfinished the game still is. When it works, these sights are definitely something to see, but the sad fact is that the game doesn’t work far too often.
I’m now considering abandoning Jedi: Survivor, despite only being a couple of hours into the game. If future patches come along that will genuinely address the performance problems that are plaguing the game on PC, it will be worth revisiting or restarting. But at the moment, I find that I’m spending almost as much time battling poor performance as I am battling enemies – and that just isn’t a lot of fun. Jedi: Survivor isn’t the only game this year to arrive in an unfinished state, especially on PC, but it’s so disappointing to see that this godawful “release now, fix later” approach has really put a downer on what should have been an exciting and fun experience.
But there’s more to say. In the time I’ve spent with the game so far, I have a couple of thoughts to share on the narrative and gameplay. This all comes with the major caveat that I’m only at the beginning of the main story, and that my thoughts may very well shift depending on how things go later on. How a story begins isn’t nearly as important as the journey it takes us on, after all!
That being said, the first couple of hours of Jedi: Survivor haven’t exactly blown me away narratively. I’ll avoid as many major spoilers as I can, but there will be some minor spoilers ahead – so if you ignored my spoiler warning at the beginning, this is your last chance to nope out!
When we’re reintroduced to Cal, he’s working with a new crew, with the friends he met in the first game having gone their separate ways. I’m not averse to that idea, as several years have passed since the events of Jedi: Fallen Order. Unfortunately, however, the members of Cal’s crew that we’re introduced to just feel incredibly one-dimensional and bland. Their dialogue was laden with clichés – something clearly designed to convey Cal’s friendliness with them all – but it all ended up falling flat. I couldn’t find a way to care about any of these people when they were in danger – because the game didn’t succeed at getting me invested in them or their fates.
Contrast this with Prauf, Cal’s scrapper friend from the opening act of the first game. Prauf felt like he had personality, and I genuinely felt his connection with Cal from almost the first moment he appeared on screen. When Prauf was killed, Cal’s reaction was genuinely heartbreaking because the game had successfully set up their relationship.
I’m also a little concerned that Jedi: Survivor is going to retread parts of Jedi: Fallen Order by seeing Cal seek out the same people that he met last time. Reuniting a crew that had been together the last time we saw them is a risk; it’s something that could feel underwhelming in the extreme. Though there are new characters to get to know, part of the appeal of a sequel is to catch up with all of the characters we met last time – and I’m concerned that the way Jedi: Survivor plans to handle this will feel repetitive and just less interesting as a result.
In Jedi: Fallen Order, Cal was guided to a succession of specific locations on his quest. He had to visit the tombs of Zeffo, the forested world of Kashyyyk, the scorched desert of Dathomir, and the frozen wasteland of Ilum – but he went to each of these locations with a goal in mind. The first part of Jedi: Survivor sees Cal seemingly by accident fall into a cave – and from that random cave discover a hidden Jedi artefact. It just feels a little too convenient.
Out of all the places in the galaxy that Cal could have ended up, he finds himself on just the right part of just the right planet – and not because he was guided there by Cere or by Master Cordova’s holocron, but by sheer random chance. Star Wars fans may say “that’s the Force!” and pedants will say “it’s just a story!” but to me, neither of those excuses feel especially strong. Last time, Cal had a purpose, and was guided on his quest to particular locations. This time, things feel a lot more random.
Mechanically, Jedi: Survivor has a couple of issues, too. Larger levels can be more confusing, and the in-game holo-map still isn’t particularly user-friendly. In just the first couple of stages I found myself getting lost, and partly that’s because the way to go wasn’t well-signposted. Areas that looked accessible weren’t, areas that were supposed to be reachable looked blocked off or too far away, and while I don’t want a Skyrim-style waypoint on my screen the entire time… there’s got to be a way to make some of these pathways more visible, surely.
Jedi: Survivor is leaning into more of an open-world style, at least with one of the planets Cal has visited so far… and that can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, larger and more expansive levels are a welcome change from linear paths, but on the other, some open worlds can get in the way of story progression. There are also more hiding places for items and chests… and it can be frustrating, sometimes, to explore a whole chunk of a level, climbing on every ledge and jumping into every cave only to find nothing at all.
I like the expanded customisation options for Cal – and I’ve already found a suitably silly moustache for him to plaster on his face. I wish more customisation options were unlocked at the start, though; the available cosmetics felt pretty threadbare at first. I love a game with good customisation options, though, and Jedi: Survivor appears to have a bunch of fun cosmetics to play about with.
The game is larger than Jedi: Fallen Order was – with more characters, more skills, more quests, and more cosmetic variety. All of those things are positive, and so far I don’t feel overwhelmed or like the game is too large. Some open-world games can feel like they dropped you in the middle of a mass of stories and quests with little to no direction; at least in its first couple of hours, Jedi: Survivor manages to avoid that sensation.
I want to progress further with this game. I adored Jedi: Fallen Order and I was really excited about its sequel, reuniting with Cal and the Stinger Mantis, and having another adventure in a galaxy far, far away. Although there are a couple of story complaints that I’ve found so far, by far the worst issue with Jedi: Survivor is that it just doesn’t play very well. The game probably needs at least two or three more significant patches and updates to knock it into shape – and when the most recent patch took over a month to be rolled out, that could mean Jedi: Survivor will have to go back on the shelf for a while.
Electronic Arts fucked up what should have been a guaranteed success by doing what they’ve done too many times before: forcing the release of an unfinished game too early. Had Jedi: Survivor been delayed to, say, September or October, to allow Respawn more time to actually finish working on it, we could be talking about one of the best games of the year – and one of the best Star Wars games in a long time.
Instead, Jedi: Survivor will always have an asterisk; a little caveat next to it. No matter what happens to the game in the months ahead – and I sincerely hope that more patches and fixes are coming – it will always be tainted by the poor shape it was in when it launched. That didn’t have to happen… and I wish I’d taken my own advice and waited a little longer before purchasing it.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is out now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S/X. Jedi: Survivor is the copyright of Electronic Arts, Lucasfilm Games, and Respawn Entertainment. The Star Wars franchise is the copyright of Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company. Some promo artwork and images used above courtesy of IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 