Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Ordermay not have been a perfect game, but it lay some excellent foundations forStar Wars Jedi: Survivorto be built from. By all accounts,Star Wars Jedi: Survivorimproves on its predecessor in just about every way, from enemy variety to its more fluid combat system to its expanded lightsaber stances to its improvedMetroidvania level design. But there’s one big way in whichJedi: Survivorimproves upon the first game, and that’s in its side activities.
Generally speaking,Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Orderdidn’t really have any meaningful side content to dive into after players rolled credits on the main story. While players needed to explore every inch of every planet and unlock every chest along the way for the Platinum, that’s about all thatFallen Orderhad to offer in the way of side activities, and players weren’t really incentivized to seek that out. Thankfully,Star Wars Jedi: Survivortakes the basis ofFallen Order’s side content and turns it on its head, giving players some truly compelling additional content to hunt for after the game’s story has wrapped up.
RELATED:Star Wars Jedi: Survivor - Greez’s Cybernetic Arm Has a Dark Origin Story
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s Holotactics Mini-game Is the Perfect Continuation of Fallen Order’s Scanning Mechanic
Star Wars Jedi: Survivorcontains a plethora of side content. While it’s not quite on the same level as big sprawlingopen-world action-adventures likeHorizon Forbidden West,Jedi: Survivorstill has plenty entertain players when they’re not rushing through the main story. Players can complete little fetch quests for some characters, fight legendary bosses, and of course, find an eye-watering number of collectibles scattered across the galaxy in loot crates. But by far one ofStar Wars Jedi: Survivor’s most engaging side activities is its Holotactics mini-game, which takes oneFallen Ordermechanic and runs away with it.
A lot ofStar Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s runtime involved scanning different objects, animals, and enemies with BD-1’s sensor. to get the Platinum trophy, players will have likely had to spend a lot of extra hours scouring every inch ofFallen Order’s open-ended mapsto ensure that they got every single scan in the game. As fans can imagine, this process was incredibly tedious, and the only incentive to actually complete this arduous task was getting that Platinum trophy.
Thankfully,Star Wars Jedi: Survivortakes this mechanic and spins it in a way that makes it genuinely fun for players. Not only does scanning an enemy provide the player with extra little lore details, but it also adds that enemy type to the player’s Holotactics arsenal. A brand new mini-game, Holotactics is unlocked when players find Bhima and Tulli in the Boiling Bluff area of Koboh’s open-world. After saving the pair from a ravenous Mogu, they agree to return toPyloon’s Saloon in Rambler’s Ranch, where they’re happy to teach Cal Kestis a new game called Holotactics.
Essentially a holo battle simulator, Holotactics sees players select an army to go up against an AI’s own hologram force. Each round gives players a specific amount of points they can spend on individual units, with more powerful units costing more. It’s a fairly simplistic mini-game, but the real hook of Holotactics is that players unlock units in the game by scanning different enemy types out in the wild. Though it’s a simple form of incentivization, it’s a fairly effective one, especially as players will likely naturally encounter every enemy type in the game by the time they roll credits, making it a fairly easy task. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but Holotactics is just one big example of howRespawn has clearly listened to fan-feedbackand implemented it inStar Wars Jedi: Survivor.
Star Wars Jedi: Survivoris available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S
MORE:Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Makes Smart Use of One Fallen Order Boss
