Star Wars Outlaws is at its best when players are let loose on planets like Tatooine and Kijimi and at its worst when things get linear.
Walking out of a cantina on Toshara and coming across some arcade cabinets in a rundown bar. Playing Sabacc nestled away in a dark, snowy corner of Kijimi. Slowly riding my speeder through the vast dunes of Tatooine. These small, quiet moments of Star Wars Outlaws are the ones that stick with me the most.
While some games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor have flirted with open-ended areas, Star Wars Outlaws is the most explicitly open-world Star Wars game yet and is at its best when it leans into those sandbox elements. It’s fun manipulating your relationship with factions, switching sides when it benefits you. It’s thrilling to explore several well-realized planets, including ones whose movies didn’t do them justice, like Kijimi from The Rise of Skywalker.
Where Star Wars Outlaws starts to falter more is when it narrows itself down. The combat, narrative, and linear missions have their moments but aren’t nearly as engaging as when Star Wars Outlaws lets players loose in its sandbox. That leaves me conflicted about what’s ultimately an uneven, though enjoyable, Star Wars game. It’s worth playing if you like the idea of living out a smuggler fantasy in an open-world Star Wars sandbox. If you’re only planning on its main story missions, though, it’s not nearly as polished as its more linear peers. But don’t ignore Star Wars Outlaws‘ smaller moments; that’s where its heart is.Scum and villainy
Star Wars Outlaws follows a smuggler named Kay Vess as she assembles a crew across several different planets to pull off a heist against one of the wealthiest men on Canto Bight. Like most heist-based narratives, it’s full of twists, betrayals, and surprising alliances. Kay Vess is a strong central character, backed up by a fantastic performance from Humberly González that matches the charisma of Alden Ehrenreich’s take on Han in Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Kay has a naivete about the universe that we haven’t seen from a Star Wars protagonist before. That makes scenes when she encounters characters like Jabba the Hutt more interesting because I wasn’t quite sure how Kay would react or play the situation. Unfortunately, Star Wars Outlaws is let down by the fact that the rest of its ensemble isn’t as strong. I enjoy the droid ND-5 and animal sidekick Nix, Kay’s primary companions, because they get the most screen time and dedicated scenes together (ones where Kay and Nix eat food together are particular standouts).
