Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Review: A Starbound Epic Held Back by Performance Woes

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Star Wars Jedi: Survivor — out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X — has the immense task of following what many consider to be one of the greatest Star Wars games in recent memory. 2019's Jedi: Fallen Order restored hope to the galaxy-spanning franchise with a daring story and robust souls-like combat system, rebelling against EA's belief that single-player games were dead. It was a strong blend of FromSoftware's risk-reward mechanics and the power fantasy of being a lightsaber-wielding Jedi, albeit with limitations in exploration.

That's what developer Respawn Entertainment cranked up in the sequel — a sprawling semi-open world design with six planets to ping-pong across, a fast travel system, expanded combat, and more. But does simply making its scale bigger and grander equate to a quality Star Wars Jedi follow-up? Read on to find out.

We open to the Imperial city planet of Coruscant as a handcuffed Cal Kestis, now labelled a ‘terrorist', gets shoved around its underbelly by a group of captors. In the five years since Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, members of the Mantis crew separated and spread out around the galaxy, while Cal grew into a powerful Jedi Knight, bearing battle scars and an even stronger resolve to topple the Galactic Empire. The sequel wastes no time dwelling on past events, simply offering a small recap cinematic to set newcomers on the right course — some of the jargon and references can still be rather confusing, though.

It's soon revealed that Cal, in fact, wanted to get captured, as a means to get in close proximity with Senator Sejan and steal some valuable intel. This kickstarts an action-packed feature film-length thrill ride, as Cal storms through the tangled base — wall-running across glowing