This game would be a great sequel, if it weren't for the performance issues. The final boss of this game will be your graphics card and the bugs. This has to be one of the worst PC-Ports of all time.

As somebody who 100% the first game and really loves Star Wars, I just can't recommend it in its current state. The game has many issues, some of which include:

- sudden performance drops in certain areas
- things not loading in correctly, sometimes no clipping through the map before it loads in
- many bugs, like quests not loading in correctly, invisible objects(especially plans) etc.

If it weren't for all of its problems, it would be a really great sequel.
The story of the game is pretty good. There is a lot of side-content with many optional areas to explore.
The map in this game is an overall improvement to the first game, even though they work similarly, this game allows you to find upgrades for the map, that show all collectibles.
The combat feels good with a lot of variety. There are more lightsaber stances and they all feel unique. Abilities are fun and don't feel repetitive. Each planet and faction has there unique enemies, but I wish there was more variety, after a while you get used to seeing the same enemies over and over again.
The companions fighting alongside you are a cool mechanic and they don't feel useless (even though their ai is buggy sometimes).

In conclusion, this game is really great, but the state of the PC-Port is very disappointing. The mechanics are fun and engaging, the story is solid, the combat feels pretty good, but the constant performance issues, bugs and other weird mishaps can really ruin the experience and break the immersion frequently.

Also, the garden is a dumb mechanic tied to an achievement. You literally get nothing for planting the plants other than this one achievement. It's tedious and pointless.

An amazing sequel that improves on the first game in pretty much every way - bigger, better, and more polished overall. The story and characters are still great and genuinely fun to follow. And just to be clear, it’s not a soulslike, it’s simply a fantastic action game with a strong combat system, plus a metroidvania with excellent level design.

The only real downside is the game’s technical state. Nothing that blocks progression, but it’s surprising that after all these years you can still run into some bugs - that’s where many of the negative reviews come from.

Overall, it’s a great game and a great Star Wars experience - highly recommended.

P.S. Thank God they added fast travel between meditation point, it saved a lot of time, especially during endgame exploration.

EA came so close to making a good Star Wars soulslike adventure game for the second time in a row. I'm somewhat baffled how so many annoying things from the first game where improved but so many were left unchecked. I'll add a warning before any major spoilers for either this or Fallen Order.

First of all, to be fair, they made many improvements. The little animations when you find loot or use rest points/workbenches/etc. can eat up a lot of time; they are unnecessary and this game did a good job of shortening them. For example: I don't need a 3-second animation of Cal staring at the lightsaber I was just customizing... I'm going to see it for hours in-game.

Also, having companions engage in combat and interact with the world is a huge plus. In Fallen Order, they literally just stand around the ship while you do everything. It makes no sense. I'm glad they use the companions well in this game.

I think the most MAJOR improvement is the perk system. I can't believe this needed to be said, but cosmetic collectibles are POINTLESS. If people enjoy that, great, but there's no sense of pride for me in finding 90 different poncho colors. If I'm spending time looking for stuff, I want it to matter in the game.

On the other hand, that's immediately walked back by the sheer quantity of stuff in this game. Not interactions, not story variations, not anything remotely interesting... just "stuff." Bloat. Nonsense. Time-wasting collectibles and barterable goods that ultimately get you a handful of game-enhancing things, but then... you're shopping for collectibles. And I know I said the animations were shortened, but there are SO MANY MORE. There's a significantly higher quantity of detours and quasi-cutscenes and it all just amounts to "stuff." Go over here, look at this stuff. Go over there, pick up that stuff. Look at that new colorful stuff you got! Hey, check out this fun stuff happening that you can't interact with! Isn't all this STUFF neat?

Except all the "stuff" they packed into this game doesn't change the fact that all you've been doing is scaling walls and jumping on platforms. I keep finding myself asking "where are the fights?" and "where are the puzzles?" and "okay, can we MOVE ON already?" so many times.

Spoilers for both games ahead:

The main reason I have a critical problem with all the little distractions and cosmetic items in this game is because they are exactly that: distractions. The story is menacingly stupid in how it presents its own premise. Cal wants to find this mysterious hidden world called Tanalorr so that he and his loved ones can escape the Empire and live there in peace. Meanwhile Cal is also wrestling with whether or not he wants to give up fighting the Empire in the first place.

That's a decent hook if you never watched any Star Wars movies but even then, the whole "Cal isn't sure if he even wants to run away while searching for a world to run away to" aspect needs to be considered. That's like buying a plot of land and hiring a builder to build you a house, and only AFTER do you decide if you want to live there. Okay. Anyway, if he wants to FO and leave the fight, why does anyone need this hidden secret world? Seriously, these writers have never seen Star Wars.

And now we've arrived at the core issue: other than lightsabers, stormtroopers, and the presence of the Jedi, this game wants nothing to do with Star Wars as a concept. It isn't creatively thinking beyond the established canon, it's just ignoring it. Fallen Order did this to a similar extent... that entire game fixates on the Zeffo, an ancient alien civilization that is not rooted in existing lore and connect to it in any meaningful way. Everything we know about Star Wars and the Jedi is in Column A, and here are the Zeffo in Column B.

However, that story's redeeming quality is that there is a SIGNIFICANT NEED to care about the Zeffo. One way or another, they were the only ones capable of creating an impervious Force-dependent vault that was used to conceal the names of Force-sensitive children who could rebuild the Jedi. FINE, I can make my peace with that. The list of Force-sensitives is needed, so all this roundabout stuff with the Zeffo is acceptable.

But in Survivor, the entire premise is just a non-starter. The second Cal and company start talking about their quest to find Tanalorr, I'm immediately reminded that they all forgot they live in the Star Wars universe because the writers don't care about Star Wars, where there are thousands of worlds that are wild and vast and unexplored. Remember in Episode 5 when there was an entire plotline about a Jedi successfully hiding from the Empire until he died of old age? I'm gonna go on a limb and say that Jedi was a bigger target for the Empire than Chad from Malcolm in the Middle AKA Cal Kestis. And what was the name of that other super important Jedi who successfully hid for about 20 years and only revealed himself when he was ready to pass the torch to his apprentice? I'm not saying Dagobah and Tattooine are prime real estate, but those are two top-of-mind examples that don't require special hidden knowledge and a bunch of lore-adjacent stuff that only matters in this one standalone story.

Anyway... overall, my feelings are mixed. This game is definitely fun to play, but I wish they spent development capital and resources on the story and ironing out the 7,000 glitches I've encountered within the first few hours instead of devoting so much energy into all the different loot and collectibles and bartering systems needed to style Cameron Monaghan's hair.

5/10