Today’s Game is Jedi Survivor. So fast after the first one? Yeah. Originally I didn’t plan on it, but I figured some stuff out and managed to get ahold of a copy. I figured if I ended up liking it then I could look into getting a copy of my own here in a few days with the steam sale. I’ll probably try and balance this with something else too as knowing me there’s a decent chance I’ll get burnt out back to back with nothing else.
I do have a few gripes only a few hours in. They’re small I think but still pretty major gripes. First off, the UI doesn’t get hidden in the photo mode when taking a photo. So like all but a few of my photos were ruined. Some I turned off the UI for but the others were botched. A few I got to crop though.
The other gripe I’m not really sure how to put into words, but Cal almost feels looser in the way he controls? The only way I can think to describe is like if you’ve ever played an Anime game made by Bandai Namco or something. There’s just something off about the way the characters control. It’s a lot more egregious in those games, but I’m getting just a little bit of that same feel here. Once I got used to it I kind of stopped noticing it though.
The game looks just as amazing as the first one. And it runs well on my rig at 1440p60fps (which checks out because that’s the target resolution of my card). I did want to tool around with stuff though (I can’t help myself but to mess with things), so I installed Optiscaler and FSR4 just to experiment with options. Honestly couldn’t tell a difference between native res and FSR 4 with the Highest Quality and Ray Tracing on, so I left it on for now.
I did notice Cal’s hair looks a little sloppy from a few angles but I think that’s just an engine thing as I noticed some of it in the first game too.
I finished this game, and I kinda hate that so many people get locked out by gameplay and performance issues. By the end, your unlocked abilities are great, the story and character development are very well-done, and there’s a lot of optional stuff if you like.
It’s especially impressive given the writing task is “The Empire is winning, there’s no imminent disaster, no sequels can mention anything Cal accomplishes, make an interesting story from that”. It even handles topics like the Dark Side a bit better than other Star Wars media.
Late gameplay spoilers
The Dark Side is a Kratos-esque “Rage Mode” unlocked near the end of the game after someone does something absolutely despicable. It feels empowering and decimates enemies, but also feels like it cuts so many mechanics you shouldn’t use it much. It’s pretty effective in gameplay role matching with story elements.
Performance is definitely abysmal. I managed to save most of it by using Proton GE, which helped a ton for some reason (regular Proton had bad frame stuttering for some reason), but in the open areas there’s some pop in and stuff I’ve been noticing.
Spoiler
Going into this I had hopes Dark Side might be an unlock able thing, It’ll be interesting to see how they write it into the lore.