Being way behind on my backlog of games, I only recently got around to starting to play Star Wars Jedi Order and I will admit that I have been loving it!  So when the opportunity came up that I could go out to LA and check out Star Wars Jedi: Survivor several weeks before it comes out, you can bet that I jumped on the opportunity!  Getting some hands on time with an unreleased Star Wars game is any geeks dream after all!

This last Thursday, I got to spend several hours playing a slice of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and my initial reaction was just…WOW!  As I’m sure you can clearly see by the screenshots scattered around this post.

What I got to play of the game was absolutely amazing.  Visually, it was stunning and an upgrade to the already impressive Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order which was already a beautiful game.  And that makes sense considering its a sequel.

So I’m sure you are wondering what sort of juicy tidbits I can share about the Jedi: Fallen Order sequel?

Well, there is a lot I can’t say because of NDA stuff and I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprises as far as the story and characters anyway.  That said, there are some things I definitely want to talk about.

First, we are of course continuing to follow Cal Kestis on his Jedi journey fighting the Empire.  And of course he has the adorable droid, BD-1 with him.  And the pairing is just as charming as it was in the first game.

As for some more interesting information that isn’t totally obvious, you now have more abilities to customize Cal, his fighting style, facial hair and even the look of BD-1.

Being able to customize Cal’s clothing, facial hair and the look of BD-1 is great for those that really like to customize things to make them feel their own.  However, I’m not one of those people so if customizations are just visual and have no effect on the gameplay, I tend to ignore them.  That said, I think its still a cool feature.  So lets talk about what I found really interesting.  Having 5 fighting ‘stances’.

with Jedi Survivor, you now have a lot more options than just wielding a single lightsaber.  So just what are the fighting ‘stances’ and how do they keep things interesting?  Here they are:

• Single – The standard lightsaber, balanced for offense and defense
• Double-bladed – The staff is great for crowd control
• Dual Wield – Cal’s lightsaber split into two lightsabers. Great for aggressive play, high skill ceiling.
• Crossguard – A powerful, deliberate stance that allow you to deal massive damage at the cost of long wind-up times.
• Blaster – This stance allows Cal to deal with long-range foes.

For my time with the game, I decided to play with the double-bladed lightsaber.  They seemed to have really dialed in the feel and usefulness of having a double-bladed lightsaber so it made things a lot of fun to play.

I didn’t get to try it but one thing that was showed in a demo at the end of our play session was using the blaster to shoot multiple enemies at once.  It was every bit as badass as it sounds and it received a HUGE reaction from everybody at the event when they saw it.

As for the rest of the time with the game, we were told that we could either pursue the main storyline or play side quests if we wanted but that we should expect the main storyline to take up all of the play time we had.  So you could look around the room and seeing different people playing different areas based on their own interests.

They did highlight a side mission that culminated in a challenging boss fight so I decided to check it out and see if I could do it and the main storyline.

The boss fight with Rancor (seen in the screenshots) was definitely a challenging one.  I didn’t count how many attempts it took me but I would guess somewhere around a dozen.  And even with that, I still managed to get through the regular story part while others just went for the boss fight and struggled with it to the point that they didn’t make it all the way through.

One thing I did feel was different than the experience I have had so far with Jedi: Fallen Order is that things felt like they flowed better and that I wasn’t constantly having to solve puzzles to progress which I have found frustrating at times with Fallen Order so I think this is a refreshing and much appreciated change.

Ultimately, the game felt like a great evolution from Fallen Order and I honestly can’t think of a single thing that I didn’t like about what I got to see of the game.  Assuming it doesn’t just completely fall apart later in the game, I think the developers really hit it out of the park with this sequel.

I can’t wait for the game to come out on April 28, 2023.  I will have Fallen Order finished by then and ready to play it!  Anybody that knows me knows that I never pay full price for a game (sales or freebies are my friend!), but for the first time in many years, I’m going to be making an exception to that rule because this game feels just that good and worth every penny to play it on day one.

How excited are you for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor?  If you aren’t counting down the minutes until its release, then you aren’t excited enough!

Share this with any Star Wars loving gamers you know!

Note:  Everything mentioned and shown in screenshots was taken from a work-in-progress and may or may not make it to the final game.