I spent about 15 hours with the game, and looking at walkthroughs I’m guessing I made it about halfway through the main questline with a bunch of extra exploration sprinkled here and there.
I remember enjoying the first entry quite a bit, with its competent blend of light soulslike elements and Tomb Raider-like traversal through open environments that rewarded exploration. I don’t know what happened, perhaps my taste has shifted significantly, because playing ‘Survivor’ felt like a waste of time. This is the kind of game where you can point to almost each mechanic and tell which game it took it from. Same goes for the story - it’s the most cliched, uninspired Star Wars fluff you'd come to expect from the Disney era SW. The NPCs are usually nicely animated, they exchange quirky dialogue clearly inspired by the Marvel movies, the environments are vast with plenty of opportunity to explore (although the reward could be something more substantial than a new grip for the lightsaber or a new haircut for Cal). The combat usually works just fine and there is some variation in how you can utilize your weapons, which this time include a laser pistol. But it all just feels so bland, generic and safe that a couple of hours in I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn about any characters fighting, once again, against the evil Empire. I was forcing myself through the main story because I try not to abandon games, but this time the game simply wore me out.
One other thing I need to mention is the game’s technical state. I was playing on Series X and in performance mode the actual performance was far from perfect. Apart from losing frames regularly the backgrounds would often flicker, as if some objects would take too long to load when I was moving the camera around. There were some odd hitboxes here and there, at some points I wasn’t able to use the right stick to switch lock on between targets which I found particularly infuriating. Every time I’d wake the game with Quick Resume I’d have to wait a good 10-15 seconds for it to stop stuttering, and one hard crash made me lose quite a bit of progress. There are also tons of awkward animations, where Cal gets blocked on various objects.
I remember enjoying the first entry quite a bit, with its competent blend of light soulslike elements and Tomb Raider-like traversal through open environments that rewarded exploration. I don’t know what happened, perhaps my taste has shifted significantly, because playing ‘Survivor’ felt like a waste of time. This is the kind of game where you can point to almost each mechanic and tell which game it took it from. Same goes for the story - it’s the most cliched, uninspired Star Wars fluff you'd come to expect from the Disney era SW. The NPCs are usually nicely animated, they exchange quirky dialogue clearly inspired by the Marvel movies, the environments are vast with plenty of opportunity to explore (although the reward could be something more substantial than a new grip for the lightsaber or a new haircut for Cal). The combat usually works just fine and there is some variation in how you can utilize your weapons, which this time include a laser pistol. But it all just feels so bland, generic and safe that a couple of hours in I couldn’t bring myself to give a damn about any characters fighting, once again, against the evil Empire. I was forcing myself through the main story because I try not to abandon games, but this time the game simply wore me out.
One other thing I need to mention is the game’s technical state. I was playing on Series X and in performance mode the actual performance was far from perfect. Apart from losing frames regularly the backgrounds would often flicker, as if some objects would take too long to load when I was moving the camera around. There were some odd hitboxes here and there, at some points I wasn’t able to use the right stick to switch lock on between targets which I found particularly infuriating. Every time I’d wake the game with Quick Resume I’d have to wait a good 10-15 seconds for it to stop stuttering, and one hard crash made me lose quite a bit of progress. There are also tons of awkward animations, where Cal gets blocked on various objects.