Star Wars: Jedi Survivor Hands-on Preview — Padawan No Longer

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was an absolute triumph, providing a excellent story, combined with elements from quite a few equally great games. Combining a Soulslike-lite combat system with a Metroid exploration and map system proved to be a tasty combination – something I extolled at length in my review. Respawn hit it out of the park, placing it in the top titles of 2019. I recently got a chance to spend roughly 3 hours with the sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. If you want a quick summary, here it is:

It’s better than the first game in every single way.

It’s a bold statement, but based on the time I’ve had, it’s true. Let’s get into the particulars.

Before we kick off the game there is already a choice to make. As before, your choice will affect the trio of sliders, adjusting parry timing leniency, enemy aggression, and incoming damage. The first game had four difficulty levels, Story, Jedi Knight, Jedi Master, and Jedi Grandmaster. Jedi Survivor adds one more to the list – Jedi Padawan. We’ll need more time to see how this additional level affects the game, but it’s good to see that the team wants to provide a little bit of challenge beyond story mode, allowing new players to enjoy the game as well.

Our hands-on time starts roughly one hour into the game. Cal and BD have just escaped a risky mission on Coruscant. The Mantis has been damaged, and they’ve had to crash land on a planet called Koboh. Taking place five years after the events of the first game, Cal is a more practiced Jedi Knight, and it’s immediately apparent in many ways. His movement is more smooth, he tends to throw a flourish on simple things like ascending or descending a climbing path. It’s his saber work that really impressed me most.

It would have been very easy for Respawn to simply copy and paste the saber movements from the first game, but it was immediately apparent that they did the precise opposite. Cal’s strength has grown, and while we only had two combat stances in Fallen Order, he now has a total of five to grow and discover over the course of Jedi Survivor. Rest assured, however, you won’t be knocked back to square one as Cal starts with three right out of the gate – single blade, double-bladed, and dual wield.

As before, the single blade stance is your classic Jedi all-around workhorse stance. It’s perfect for single combat, can be charged for a massive stab attack, and hits in the middle of the power curve on stamina and health damage.

Switching to double-bladed lights up the saber on both ends, turning it into the most dangerous bo-staff in the galaxy. It’s excellent for crowd control, though the time necessary to wind up the whirling attack is certainly longer than either the single or dual blade attacks. This makes it a poor choice for faster enemies, but will mop up groups of droids in an instant. At higher skill tiers you’ll be able to throw it and have it circle around the area, cutting down every foe in a wide arc.

No longer relegated to a scripted finisher, dual wield stance sees Cal engage with his saber separated into two. It immediately felt more technical, focusing on timing and counters even more so than the other two stances. From my time with the game thus far, I already saw the potential of huge risk and huge reward as my attacks were certainly faster, but left me open to taking heavier hits with the exposure that comes with two simultaneous attacks. The tradeoff is that my attack variety and angles were also doubled. This manifests through some altered timing where an attack might have you pause in the middle of a sequence before moving into the next attack as Cal moves his sabers into position. Holding Y, Cal can calm himself, automatically blocking nearly any attack at the cost of force power. It’s easy to pick up and play, but a challenge to master. You can also guard cancel or dodge at the start of an attack, rather than committing to the strike – an advantage not offered by any other weapon stance.

The last two stances, Crossguard Stance and Blaster Stance, are still a bit under wraps, though you can infer from the hilted style that it’s more of a Kylo Ren-style heavy track, emphasizing heavy hits over blocking and dodging. With every other stance, Cal will leap or otherwise move to close the distance, but with Crossguard, that distance and timing is up to you. In my mind, that makes this the most challenging, but also the most rewarding, as when you land it lands big. Blaster Stance, as the name suggests, adds a blaster into the mix. Using a single blade and a blaster on Cal’s thigh, you can mix two ranges to maximize utility. It’s not a conventional Jedi combination by any means, but it is reflective of Cal’s situation – the Empire has made him desperate, and he’s now doing whatever it takes to survive.

Before you think you will be rolling through foes flipping through all of your stances at will, Cal has to focus on just two at a time. At any mediation point you can select which two you’d like to use, and you can mix and match them at those same points, but you simply can’t carry five stances into battle. One thing that does seem common, though further time with the game will reveal if I’m right or not, pressing in both thumbsticks slows time for Cal for a brief moment to gain the advantage. This can help slow down the action to let Cal approach battle more strategically. Even with three hours with the game, we were just scratching the surface, leaving a great deal yet to be revealed.

As in the first game, all five of these stances come with their own skill tree, which you’ll grow through points assigned when you meditate. Naturally you’ll also have a skill tree for Survival and Force Powers, making it easier than before to play the game your way. In fact, these individual paths are directly in line with the developer’s intention to allow players to try out new styles and approaches. In the first game we all ended up in the same place, but now there are reasons to specialize.

Rather than a large half-circle, now your powers are presented on tablets, many of which are broken at the beginning of the game. These provide roughly 8 upgrades per tile, with each focused on a specific attack style, using Lightsabers as the example. One for Dual Wield might allow you to reflect two bolter blasts at the same time, where another with the dual saber allows you to unleash continuous attacks by tapping X after the end of the attack chain. It was evident, even after just a few hours, that the key to some of the tougher fights will be figuring out how to best synergize some of the seemingly disparate attacks and skills into a powerful combination. Force pull can also be upgraded to yank them closer to you, or push them all away, putting them in position for a variety of devastating attacks. Your powers are certainly more complementary rather than another tool in the chest, making the time spent to master them more valuable. After all, you are effectively a space wizard – don’t neglect your ability to lift somebody up and then repeatedly slam them into the ground until they stop being a problem.

One of my favorite new skills is one very much neglected in the first game. With a hand wave you can confuse your enemies, making them fight one another. This is handy when you have a Storm Trooper with a gatling laser that can suddenly be hurling bolts at his friends instead of you. I used this to great effect against a lot of human enemies, though obviously this isn’t effectively against droids.

Back on the mantis you’ll have access to any collectables you might have found throughout your journey – Cal will reminisce when he looks at these items, giving you a bit of backstory. It also gives you access to the bench where you can customize every piece of your saber as before, as well as all of BD’s parts. All of the materials adjustments are also back, as well as a great many colors and lusters.

Cal has certainly grown a lot in five years. A few more scars, a beard, and far more reactive hair than he had in the first game. It’s clear the team put a great deal of effort into making his hair look realistic with realistic movement. It’s odd to be spending this much time talking about Cal’s hair, but it’s very clear Respawn did as well. In fact, he has 14 hair styles, 13 beards, 19 jackets, 10 shirts, 10 pants, plus all of the material changes to be found and applied – it’s good to see the man outgrow his unhealthy poncho obsession.

While there was a great deal of exploration to be had in Fallen Order, there was also a great deal of linearity to it all. While you were able to head to nearly any planet at any time, the backtracking was the kind that forced the player to go far out of their way to find things off the beaten path. I was pleased to see that, at least on the planet Koboh, there’s now a sprawling open world to discover without pushing Cal down a mostly linear path. Once you crest the summit of the Southern Wastes, the planet opens up to you to be explored in any way you wish. It’s a little like opening the vault in Fallout, those opening moments in Breath of the Wild, or even the opening of Elden Ring. The world, and any consequences that come with it, are yours to enjoy. To help you with this wider world, you can now thankfully teleport to any previously uncovered meditation point.

If you were the type to start but not finish the first game, then you came back and couldn’t figure out how anything worked, well, Respawn has your back. At any meditation point is a Jedi training option where you can safely re-learn all of the mechanics of the game. It’s another good quality of life upgrade that raises Jedi Survivor to a new level.

Graphically the game has taken some massive steps forward as well. The move to current-gen has given the team the flexibility to really push the overall fidelity, which is readily apparent in every aspect of the game. While Cal still has many of the same powers he ended the previous game with, the animation quality and overall polish on movement elevates the whole experience. Similarly, the fluidity of combat has improved, with many more options for direct hand-to-hand action, but also some flourishes that makes Cal feel more like a practiced Jedi. For example, tackling one beast I leapt onto the mane on its back, swooping around the creature until I shoved my saber into its side to finish it off. Similarly, with both blades extended, I took on another foe and struck the final blow, having lept past him with a reverse-jab attack to seal his fate. It makes the combat feel more visceral and captures that Cal hasn’t been sitting around doing nothing in the intervening time between adventures.

As this is several years after the first game, we’ve moved past the traditional troopers and into the “Roger Roger” age of Battle Droids. That means tangling with enemies like the IG-100 Magna Guard Droid, complete with Elecrostaff (these are the guys who defended General Grievous on his capital ship in the movies), the aforementioned B1 Battle Droids who fall by the thousands against Gungans (of all things), Droidekas (the roller droids with shields), BX Droids (super-agile vibrosword droids that were purpose built to tangle with Jedi) and the B2 Super Battle Droid (the beefier droids that look like they hit the gym), just to name a few. Here’s the funny thing – you shouldn’t kill these guys. Or not at first, at least. The banter between them is often hilarious, and well worth a moment’s pause. The DT Sentry Droid (you may remember these guys from Star Wars Rebels or The Bad Batch) on the other hand has nothing funny to say. In fact, these killing machines are going to be one of the most formidable Droid foes you’ll face, sporting three different loadout configurations that all have to be countered in different ways. KX Security Droids have more of a dry wit as they pummel you to death with their stun batons. You’ll still encounter plenty of human foes in Jedi Survivor, and often far tougher ones than you’ve seen before. Just remember that you are, in fact, a space wizard, so using your force powers is all the more important. If you felt there wasn’t enough variety in Fallen Order, there’s more than plenty of it now.

With Jedi Survivor we see a whole host of new traversal options. One such addition is the ability to z-jump between adjacent walls. This embraces the verticality of the game in new ways, opening the door to new puzzle types and areas to explore. Similarly, Cal now has an air dash, grappling hook, and using his lightsaber to drag down a wall to safety.

A combination of backtracking and lack of fast travel may have made for some extended sequences of drudgery in the first game, though thankfully with clear map marking on what was and was not accessible with your current equipment helped quite a bit. Now, this is made even more clear, with markers that automatically pop onto your map, indicators of where you came from in case you get turned around, and yes, thankfully, a full fast travel system. Cal can now fast travel back to any meditation point he’s previously uncovered. In addition to fast travel to get around quickly, Cal can even tame some beasts to get around, as well as utilizing creatures as a sort of glider to get around longer distances, but these are moments for you to discover.

Ramblers Ranch is a cantina on Koboh, serving not only as a central hub to which you’ll return throughout the game, but also as a place to shop for new customizations, as well as a chance to find new quests, meet new characters, and often get yourself into a heaping helping of trouble. Koboh is meant to be a world you come back to over and over, with some areas locked off by powers or equipment, not unlike you’d find in an open world game like Breath of the Wild. In fact, this is likely the most apt comparison, and one that is as much a compliment as it is full-throated encouragement as Respawn has done very, very well. The world feels alive, and there’s always something to do, with new discoveries around every corner.

One of the best aspects of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was the puzzles, and they are back and vastly improved in Jedi Survivor. One such sequence we saw on Koboh was the Jedi Chamber listed as the “Chamber of Reason”. The name suggests there will be several of these types of puzzle and platforming chambers, so I was excited to see how the team at Respawn upped their game. Boy was I in for a treat. These meditation chambers are entirely optional (minus the first one which is story-connected) for those who enjoy this sort of gameplay, but rewards away those who do.

As these Meditation Chambers have been in place for hundreds of years, Cal can use his Psychometry (his ability to infer knowledge from objects he touches using the force) to learn about those Jedi who came to test themselves in this place in the past, and what they learned or encountered along the way. These can help Cal solve the puzzles, as well as revealing more of the story of these ancient spaces. The rewards for solving these optional Meditation Chambers are far better than a cosmetic or a new poncho – you’ll be introduced to a new upgrade called “Perks”.

25 in all, Perks can change the way combat unfolds in new and interesting ways. You start with three perk slots, and more can be unlocked as you progress. Higher power perks can even consume multiple slots. These can improve your block meter, tighten your attack window, improve your force powers, and more. We could only see a handful of them during our limited time with the game, so it’ll be interesting to see how these play out in the endgame.

My favorite part of the day, besides the vastly improved combat, was the dialogue improvements. Whether you are dealing with droids or humanoids, taking a moment to hear what they have to say before you act is often rewarding. They might give you information on troops you’ll encounter, or other valuable intel, or they might just make you laugh your butt off.

During one sequence, a droid is talking about how much he loves the scenery, and that he loves his easy job. He watches the cliff, he looks at the scenery, and he’s good at it. He wonders if at some point he’ll get promoted for doing such a great job, and that then he can make the other droids guard the cliff…but then he laments that he wouldn’t be able to look at the scenery anymore. “What a dilemma” he says, to which Cal remarks “Dilemma solved” having cut him in half with a quick strike from his saber. The team put a great deal of effort into these, and it shows. Every interaction feels a little more alive and it adds some real personality to the proceedings.

You won’t be alone on your journey – far from it. During my time with the game I met lots of folks like Mosey Cimmaron – a local tracker/hunter who runs the stables at Rambler’s Reach. I also met a massive armored bipedal creature named Rayvis who leads the local gang called the Bedlam Raiders. While his name for the gang is a bit on the nose, his intentions are somewhat more vague. We meet him as he rather unhappily tosses a local creature named Turgle (who resembles a frog) through the local cantina’s door. He’s rather upset that this guy sold him a fake key to something unspecified that he’s searching for, and he’d like to make an example of this poor creature by chopping him to bits. We aren’t having that. After a quick battle with his lieutenant, Rayvis is happy to “withdraw in peace” with the ominous “be seeing you”. Turgle is happy to have kept his skin, ingratiating us with Doma – a local merchant. While Cal may feel like he’s spinning his wheels as everything he does can’t stop the steady growth of the Empire, his willingness to help seems to net him plenty of allies.

While I didn’t have time to experience this for myself beyond a single new shop, I did get a note from a developer that the side content will affect the outpost. Rambler’s Reach Outpost will supposedly gain new activities, pick up additional inhabitants, and open fresh commerce opportunities through recruitment and side content completion. Based on my time with the game so far, it’s precisely what Cal needs – for something he’s doing to actually matter.

It’s always a challenge to pre-judge a game based on a single slice, but this is one of the few instances where the developers effectively handed us the keys and said “Go, have fun” without any further instruction. There’s a lot I won’t reveal because it would ruin your experience with the game, but one thing was clear when I looked around at the end of the day and the team was practically prying the controllers from our hands – I wasn’t the only one that didn’t want to quit playing. There’s a lot to see and do in Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, but based on what I’ve seen thus far, lightning is going to strike twice – Jedi Survivor is your early contender for action game of the year.