Fans React: The Most Loved and Loathed Features of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Written by Ivo Teel — May 12, 2024 at 04:44

April 28th, 2023 marked the first anniversary of "Star Wars Jedi: Survivor". So I thought, why not find out what you, the players, really think of it. Well, I've been taking a pulse on the fandom –  you know, digging through those YouTube debates, those Reddit rabbit holes, the whole nine yards – and let me tell you, fellow fans, the Force is strong with this one...mixed with a few lingering frustrations.

What the fans loved about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

“Those lightsaber stances are pure gold!” This seems to be the unanimous verdict across Reddit. It’s hard to disagree. You've got the slow, heavy Kylo Ren vibes. You’ve got the blaster-and-saber combo for when you're feeling fancy. And you’ve got acrobatic moves that basically make you Jedi Spider-Man.  The way you can really customize your fights and feel out your own style –  that's pure make-your-own Star Wars right there. This comment from a redditor sums up the whole thing: "Thought the lightsaber duels in Fallen Order were pretty slick and couldn't get any better; I know so little.”

Many fans are thrilled about how much you can customize everything. Lightsabers, outfits, and even your droid companion, BD-1, can all be tweaked to the player’s liking. It sounds like being able to change BD-1’s look makes him feel even more like a partner in adventure. “Picking out parts for BD-1 is like prepping your best buddy for a big day out!” a fan explained in a forum post. “Customization for BD-1,  new outfits for Cal... come on, it's basically a Star Wars dress-up game at this point, and I'm here for it!,” a Redditor raved. 

The depth of the characters and the story really stood out to most people. Cal is more relatable as a Jedi with a past that affects his future, something many fans said they connected with. “None will convince me otherwise; Survivor’s makers had one brief: make players feel like they have a past in common with Cal,” a YouTube comment read. 

Survivor does another thing well: new characters stir things up; old friends return to add more layers to the story. But what really got people fired up was not “having to relearn abilities” or “regain gear we'd already mastered from the last game”. “No cheesy "force power amnesia" backwards step – yayyyy!” was the top rated comment on a forum thread about what fans felt after the first hour of gameplay. Indeed, “finally, a sequel that actually respects my progress as a player," was a common refrain.

What the fans loathed about Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Look, as awesome as Survivor is, there's always some space for improvement, right? I was never too far from a ranting Redditor who “hated being frozen mid-battle on my PS5”. Some fans have been griping about those pesky frame rate drops –  especially on consoles – that “mess with the flow of those epic lightsaber duels”. 

For some, “big twisty reveals were pretty heavily foreshadowed and were obvious a light year ahead”. “I love the story, but sometimes I wish it would really shock me,” a fan noted. Perhaps it’s down to knowing one’s Star Wars too well, perhaps it’s something for the game-writers to note. 

So not everyone is blown away, but most are. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor did something that sequels are notoriously bad at – keeping what was good in the first story, and making it a bit better. Fans said that if Respawn can repeat this success one more time, they’d have “given us a Star Wars trilogy made for the Gods.”

Star Wars Jedi : Survivor is available to download on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox one. You can check other PS5 games out at our dedication section on the site