Respawn Entertainment’s sequel is a huge improvement over Jedi: Fallen Order, and a virtual blockbuster without compromise
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s opening sequence is spellbinding. Amid the sprawling megastructures of the city-planet Coruscant, a daring heist ensues. Having escaped the clutches of Darth Vader’s Imperial inquisition in the last game (Jedi: Fallen Order), fugitive Jedi Cal Kestis is now an agent for the Rebel Alliance, and his latest target is hidden inside a corrupt senator’s luxury space-yacht. What follows is a 90-minute thrill ride as Cal pursues the yacht through Coruscant’s tangled underbelly, slicing through stormtroopers and pirouetting across the city’s impossible architecture.
It’s everything you want from a Star Wars adventure and a blockbuster video game: visually spectacular, mechanically sophisticated and riotously entertaining. Respawn Entertainment’s first foray into Disney’s sci-fi universe had moments of vision, particularly in its beginning and ending, but sandwiched in the middle was an uneven mixture of Uncharted-style platforming and combat inspired by Dark Souls, set in environments that only occasionally lived up to the promise of its introduction. Jedi: Survivor is an enthralling follow-up and a huge improvement. Not only is it a masterclass in cinematic action, but its eclectic mixture of mechanics is also much more elegantly implemented. The result is the best Star Wars game in 20 years, as compelling in the hands as it is magnificent on the screen.
The difference reveals itself when Cal leaves Coruscant, travelling to a distant planet named Koboh to lie low and repair his damaged spaceship. Unlike Fallen Order’s second planet, a flat, confusing and uninspired backwater named Bogano, Koboh is a vast and striking open world that you’ll repeatedly revisit for the rest of the game, slowly unpicking the paths to its array of eye-catching landmarks.
