These games were a pleasant surprise for me. I was aware of Fallen Order when it came out in 2019 but wasn’t really interested in buying it. I thought it would be only a shoot and slash type of game without real content or enjoyable game play. Man was I wrong! Fallen Order came up for free on Xbox Game Pass so I figured I had nothing to lose in trying it. I enjoyed Fallen Order so much that I immediately purchased Survivor after finishing it. Both games appealed to me with a nice combination of puzzles and battles.
I played both games at the Jedi Knight difficulty.
I found myself pulled into the story more and more the longer I played the game. I liked the character building.
Here are some thoughts on each game.
Fallen Order:
It took a bit to get used to the movements, but once I had the muscle memory developed I found it quite fun to move around the maps. Some sections can be frustrating, but I was able to figure them out.
I found the map to be quite useful and mostly easy to navigate. When I felt stuck in an area I could go to the map and figure out where to go.
I would like a quicker save option, such as saving when you pass over a meditation spot in lieu of having to hit R2 and meditate to save the game.
Some of the meditation stations were annoyingly far from boss fights …so you respawn and have to run back to the battle.
I appreciate that you did not have to go through the same cut scene every time you died and respawned. The only exception being cut scenes that are part of the boss fights.
Parrying or blocking the opponent is the best way to beat them. Continued attacks take a lot longer. You have to dodge all red attacks, but you parry the other attacks and they get off balance allowing you to strike.
I found some of the boss fights obscenely hard! It was out of balance with the difficulty setting I was on (Jedi Knight) and it was highly frustrating. I found most other scenes acceptably hard …but the boss fights were out of balance. I do enjoy a good boss fight, but not when I spend hours trying to defeat one boss ….so I flipped the difficulty to something easier to finish the fight. Any gaming purist may not appreciate that …but it made the game a lot more enjoyable for me to be able to move on to the next scene.
I really enjoyed the different worlds in the game and the challenges they introduced.
Overall, I would rate this as one of the best games I have played in a long time with a good balance of puzzles and fighting.
Survivor
I was impressed by the story line in this game. When I thought the game was finished after a particular boss fight I was surprised by quite a bit more gameplay! The story builds upon Fallen Order with additional love and loss in a world where Jedi are hunted relentlessly.
While it is not open world like Fallout for Far Cry games, it felt more open world than Fallen Order with larger areas to explore and fight random Imperial troops and droids.
I love the humor in the game with the Battle Droids.
I had the advantage of playing Survivor immediately after Fallen Order. It felt like a very natural progression from one game to the next. Cal’s Jedi skills continue to build and develop throughout the game.
You learn new skills and movements that build upon those you learned in Fallen Order. All of these skills come at the appropriate time in the game. There are some very challenging scenes to find your way around …but just like Fallen Order I could use the map to find my path to the next area.
I found I could complete most boss fights on the Jedi Knight difficulty. It was not easy, but it was possible where I was not able to do this in Fallen Order. I feel the developers heard this feedback and balanced the scales a bit on the boss fights.
I liked the introduction of riding some alien animals to move through the larger maps and had a lot of fun with the fight scenes with Merrin.
Finding and opening shortcuts is critical in the game to quickly move through the maps after you respawn.
Throwing grenades/rockets back at droids is a key way to defeat them.
Aerial probe droids are easily defeated once you get the ability to use RB to control the force and smash or raise objects. You smash them to the ground and throw them at enemies when they are ready to explode.
Summary
These are really fun games to play and I highly recommend them if you like puzzles and battles and Star Wars.
douglas adams 