Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is most commonly called a Soulslike, because of the parry-based combat system and the fact save points exist at meditation zones (stand-ins for bonfires) which fully heal you, but at the cost of respawning enemies. There are also significant boss battles scattered across the campaign and the open world, some of which have one-hit kill attacks. I get it, but at the same time, I've never been sure the description fits. Difficulty, fans have always argued, is a core part of the Dark Souls experience, while Jedi: Survivor has five difficulty options, including one that makes the game practically pedestrian. Added to that, the bosses feel like an inconsequential roadblock, rather than the core purpose of the story as they are in Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and especially Elden Ring. I'd argue the game is closer to a Metroidvania, and that's an avoidable mistake.
As I mentioned in my review, a huge bugbear with Jedi: Survivor is how little it uses the Star Wars universe. You land on Koboh, fly to Jedah, back to Koboh, then back to Jedah, and so on. Koboh is the main hub, with each narrative chapter taking you to a new region and often providing new traversal tools or methods that make previously unreachable areas within your grasp. This is how the game feels like a Metroidvania. Early on, you see a cliff you cannot possibly scale, and so must retreat. Then later, you unlock a way to grab floating balloons and bounce upwards, and suddenly this area of the map can now be explored.
Other open world games do this too, of course. Horizon Forbidden West sees Aloy upgrade her spear throughout, and you'll need all of the upgrades available to explore freely. But this approach has subtle yet important differences. Right from the start, you know that you’ll be in one map for the duration of the game, and the quests laid out help you navigate your way through the world. If you run in completely the opposite direction, then sure, you'll find somewhere you're not meant to be yet. But if you stick with where the game directs you, you'll always be able to conquer what's in front of you.
Koboh is a very different story. I had imagined it would be one of a few explorable planets in the game, but instead you're dumped there and instructed to wander, often hitting parts you're not meant to be in yet, and the game does an extremely poor job of guiding you away from these areas, leaving you stranded. Where Aloy grows throughout the game, Cal's growth feels forced and inorganic. It's bad enough that most of his powers come from 'oh yeah, now I remember, I can fly', but the fact he has this epiphany when he encounters a stumbling block in the story but not in the map only makes these moments feel more forced and fake.
This takes a problem from Fallen Order and makes it worse. Fallen Order was a fairly linear game, but would often let you wander at random. In Survivor, because you're mainly sent to one planet over and over again, the wandering is even more random, and you're left without the focus of Fallen Order. Survivor is a bigger game, which for a lot of people will mean more of the thing they like. It has also upped the comedy and combat, two of Fallen Order's best assets, and delivers a stronger story. All things considered, people will like this game more. But I think the structure and clarity of what the game was being built towards was far stronger in Fallen Order.
I liked Koboh enough, it has biome diversity, visual flourishes, and some of the side quests (called Rumours in the game) had interesting twists and turns. But constantly being sent back to it to wander around at will, often reaching a point I didn't even know was blocked off, made for a messy and frustrating time. It has made one of Fallen Order's weak points even worse, and seems to have done so deliberately. The whole universe to explore and we're stuck bouncing between two planets for most of the game. Why?
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor offers a lot of time for players to sink their thumbs into, and once the performance patches have landed, I think it'll be a popular game. People will like Koboh, and all that they find there. But I can't shake the feeling that this could have been so much better with a neater structure that didn't bore you with the same planets that feel artificial. Jedi: Survivor has made the same mistakes as Fallen Order, and I'm not sure anyone will even notice.