Star Wars Jedi: Survivor previous-gen review — Almost the definitive version?

Unless you have a bleeding edge PC, there’s no real definitive version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. You won’t get a consistently smooth 60 fps and good image quality on any console either, so you’re really picking what you want to compromise when choosing what platform to play the game on. Well, add a few more more compromises to the list, because the previous-gen versions of the game are finally here. However, when played a certain way, this PS4 version might just be the best experience you can get on a console.

For the full skinny on Jedi: Survivor, check out our original review right here. This sequel picks up some time after Jedi: Fallen Order, with Cal fighting the good fight with a new crew. Things go very badly very quickly, which means you need to get the gang back together to defeat a new threat to the galaxy. Editor-in-Chief Ron Burke gave it a score of 95, even stating it was an early contender for 2023’s game of the year.

Given how much the game relied on current gen hardware, and still stumbled at points, it’s easy enough to understand why it took developers a year to cram the game back onto previous-gen consoles. Just looking at the file size, it’s only a third of the original’s 155 GB: 49.35 GB. At first glance you might not be able to tell why. Survivor still looks absolutely gorgeous playing this version on a PS5.

Let the first cutscene play for a bit and you’ll be able to hear how they saved all that space: compressed audio. A lot of sound effects and dialogue sound like they’re coming out of a SEGA CD. Not all audio has been compressed, however, as the music sounds like it’s been entirely left alone, most dialogue along the critical path is still a decent quality, and the most common sound effects are unscathed. The first planet, Coruscant, started to give me a headache after a while, but leaving there for Koboh, you hear the compression less often. It’s still incredibly jarring when you do, and I would love a high quality audio pack as free DLC, but it’s more bearable.

The other compromise this port deals with is loading screens. Loading a save will prompt a loading screen, exclusive to these versions, with its speed varying drastically depending on what platform you’re playing on. I spent most of my time with this PS4 version on my PS5, and while this initial load was annoying it wasn’t too terribly long, taking about 30 seconds not including the annoyingly unskippable logos before the main menu. Doing my due diligence, I installed Survivor on my PS4 Pro to compare the same section and it’s… rough there. The initial load takes a minute and 30 seconds now. While this version on PS5 is a pretty consistent 60 fps, on PS4 Pro it’ll almost never hit that target. There’s no performance or graphics modes either, so you’re stuck with this essentially unlocked framerate.

There’s a few more instances of loading throughout the game, such as when entering Greez’s bar. PS5 fares significantly better here again, though it did crash when entering a cutscene after that load so… results may vary, I guess.

While I wouldn’t recommend this version for PS4 unless you’re absolutely desperate to play the game, I still think it’s worth considering over the native PS5 version. Loading and compressed audio are basically the only things wrong with this port. You’ll be waiting a bit more and see textures pop in when exploring (I did have one very odd moment where a pillar I knocked down as a shortcut took a bit to load in as well), but that’s about it. The game still looks pretty dang good, plays just fine, and is a very stable 60 fps as far as my eye can tell… outside of the lightsaber stance menu, which seems to be 30. Add in that hypothetical high quality audio pack, and I would be perfectly happy playing this version over the native PS5.

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