STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

This game requires wading through 10 to 15 hours of mediocre story and gameplay to get to about 5 hours of really bloody cool story and gameplay.

There are some things that are improved since Jedi: Fallen Order. Platforming is a bit less janky. There’s a fast-travel system now. You can unlock waypoints on your map for collectibles. You no longer have to complete 100% of every area of every map in order to get the platinum. You can customise your lightsaber in a much more fun way (although, frustratingly, my dark side-inspired lightsaber didn’t make the leap from the original to the sequel).

There are some things that have stayed just as bad as before. Long loading times. Game-crashing bugs. Boring collect-all-the-things side quests.

Then there are choices that make the experience worse compared to original. You get 5 different fighting styles, but you can only switch between 2 of them at once. The fast-travel can only be used from a check-point; slowing down the point of fast-travel. Some of the levels are very large ‘open world’ formats that’s mostly desert and mostly boring, whilst others are comparatively tiny and very linear. That makes the game just a very uneven one to play.

And then there are those last 5 hours.

Warning… Spoilers coming up… You were warned…

You get to fight Darth Vader. Actual freaking Darth “You were the Chosen One” Vader. And it is hard. Punishingly difficult compared to the entirety of the rest of the game; and it’s not even the final boss (not even close in fact!). But so, so satisfying when you finally learn his move set and manage to conclude the battle.¹

I spent most of this game waiting for it to conclude, and then by the time this happened, I didn’t want it to end.

It’s a shame there isn’t some kind of boss-rush mode included in the game; because I’d happily fight Darth Vader over, and over, and over again… just for the fun of it!