Star Wars: Outlaws has been out for a week now, and I’m sure there are plenty of people still reading up on the details of the different worlds and completing the quests in Kay Vess’ adventure. But if this game left you wanting a more typical lightsaber odyssey through the stars, boy, do I have the game for you. Respawn Entertainment, which is best known for shooters like Apex Legends and Titan Falls series, has also spent the last few years developing Star Wars Jedi third-person action and adventure games, which are available for purchase now on PlayStation.
You can pick up your first game right now, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Orderfor just $10 on PS4 and PS5. Continuation, Jedi: Survivor, is also on sale for $31.49. If you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, you can also access the game via EA Play, but when all this subscriptions are fallingyou’ll regret not having what could be your next favorite game. At such a low price, buying them is simply insurance.
Jedi: Fallen Order surprised me when I finally played it. I guess I was a year or two overdue to the party, playing it in the middle of an emotional and mental slump during the first year of the pandemic. I needed any game that would just make me feel anything, and I was throwing mindless money at sales trying to find something that would wake me up and really excite me. I knew I could expect more from it than your average licensed game, given the pedigree of the team working on it, but I just didn’t know Respawn had the chops.
Revival Jedi games are sometimes compared to From Software Dark Souls series thanks to a handful of mechanics and rules that they adapt. For example, the fight in Jedi games focus mostly on smaller and more intimate fights where you are forced to dodge, parry, and pick your moments. You spend the game learning modern lightsaber techniques and the force, but at the end of the day you won’t get very far if you don’t learn to parry and riposte early on. Much like Soulsand perhaps to a greater extent Sekiro: Shadows Die Twicethis Jedi games offer a give-and-take approach to combat. Yes, there are faceless soldiers with blasters you can simply slice through, but there are also plenty of enemies with similar weapons to yours who will keep attacking you until you throw everything you have at them.
These games are also built in a similar way to Souls series. There are meditation points that act as bonfires, you can level up there and even swift travel, but using them also resets the spawning of enemies in the area. When you die in battle, you leave behind a Power impression of your XP and, unsurprisingly, you have to pick it up before your next death, otherwise it disappears completely. Even in this way Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel hand out shortcuts throughout their massive environments, which is similar to the Metroidvania-style approach to level design found in both Souls games and games that I think both series are ultimately more similar to: 3D Zelda Titles.
This Jedi games aren’t nearly as tough as some of these comparisons suggest, unless you specifically adjust the difficulty to the highest levels. I wouldn’t recommend that, though, because while their inspirations are designed around difficulty more thoughtfully, increasing the challenge in Jedi series just changes the dials in depth to make the games more brutal and unfair. Believe me, someone who finished both on higher settings only got a headache from trying to force Jedi games of existence Souls games, so I think it’s better to see them as 3D games Zelda wrapped in Star Wars skin and history.
For this purpose, The Fallen Order AND Survivor both games offer a greater degree of platforming, puzzle-solving, and customary dungeon crawling than the typical Souls game, giving them a much more classic feel as opposed to the newfangled feel of other contemporary action-adventure games. That doesn’t make them feel dated though. They feel like relics of a bygone era of gaming, which I mean in the most complimentary sense. There really isn’t many massive AAA games that engage with both open worlds and those diminutive, focused gauntlets that break up the monotony of constant combat and ever-expanding maps. You’d think the popularity Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and these Jedi games would cause even more.
The two games released so far (a third game is currently in development) tell one of the more entertaining stories in the series’ current installment. Star Wars Expanded Universe. Focusing on padawan turned fugitive Cal Kestis, played by ShamelessCameron Monaghan, the series takes place between Revenge of the Sith AND New hopeCal, a survivor of the Great Jedi Purge, is on the run from the Empire when he encounters the crew of the Stinger Mantis, including pilot Greez and his captain, Cere Junda, played by the inimitable Debra Wilson.
I think these titles, more than most current shows and movies, capture the spirit Star Warsor at least that’s what it’s traditionally meant to me. Cal is far from a perfect protagonist, and as he’s grown up, he’s had to deal with his own flaws and occasional dark-side tendencies. Greez is easily the funniest sidekick character introduced in a long time, and even BD-1, Cal’s robotic companion, feels a lot better than BB-8. Cere and Merrin, the Nightsister who gets tangled up in Cal’s journey, could fill very archetypal roles (and to some extent still do, since Star Wars loves the tried and true trope), but they are also a great source of conflict in Cal’s saga. In fact, they put pressure on him, even tease his sensibilities and challenge him to be a better Jedi, and more importantly, a better man. This cast and these games are as intoxicating as they are capricious, and that is Star Wars For me.
During their journey, they encounter many high-ranking Imperial officers, including many Inquisitors, and even come to blows with Darth Vader himself. Jedi the games cover several planets, encompassing both familiar and completely alien landscapes Star Wars fans. And even though she’s mostly relegated to her own corner of that distant galaxy, I can feel the ambition of the story (especially Survivor) is starting to creep into the territory of books, shows and movies. In my opinion, it’s one of the best investments you can make in the beleaguered Star Wars universe, and one that is worth its relatively low price.
