Star Wars Outlaws Review
A stealthy take on Star Wars.
Read the entire review here!
Title: Star Wars Outlaws
Release: August 30, 2024
Platform: PS5 PC Xbox X|S
Developer: Massive Entertainment
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Action Adventure Shooter
ESRB: T
Reviewed on: PC
Time Played: 21 Hours
Intro:
Star Wars Outlaws is a game fully immersed in the underbelly of a galaxy far far away, full of scoundrels and criminals trying to make some money by any means necessary. Follow Kay Vess as she tries to get her piece and not get thrown into a jail cell, or worse. With a main story that takes close to 20 hours to complete and countless hours of side activities to explore I would like to share with you what you can expect from the game before giving you my final thoughts and rating for the game.
Where it starts
Kay Vess lives a humble life in a single room above a bar, always on the hunt for an easy way to make a credit or two, in a not so honest way. One day she gets onto a crew attempting to rob the richest man in the area. As with most beginnings, things didn’t quite go as planned. Forcing Kay to run from the planet, in a freshly stolen ship, opening the galaxy for exploration and numerous opportunities to make some money.
Can the kids watch
There were plenty of violent action sequences blasting enemies away with your gun while they try to do the same to you. There wasn’t any blood or body parts flying around so it was graphically pretty tame. If your familiar with Star Wars movies or games, there’s nothing new to look out for if the kids wanted to watch you play.
Working with Nix
Always at Kays side was Nix, a merquaal and easily the best thing about the game. An amazing companion who is very cute and useful. Kay can guide him to pickpocket someone, bringing her the goods. He can also be commanded to help in many situations, bringing Kay a gun that’s lying around, distracting foes so she can sneak by, and he eventually can hop onto an enemy and set their held grenade to explode. Absolutely phenomenal!
Gang Factions
The criminal underworld was run by different groups, Hutts, Crimson Dawn, and a few others. As you undertake jobs and make choices it would affect how accepted you were to any given group. If they really liked you, you were allowed in their territories, could pick up special jobs, or even purchase gang specific gear at merchants. If they didn’t like you, when entering their territories they would try very hard to destroy you. There were a lot of choices and activities that would fluctuate your reputation, usually taking it from one gang and giving it to another.
Criminal Underworld (side quests)
While traveling from one place to another you may come across someone looking for a little help, the kind of help only you could accomplish. These side missions usually had some affiliation with one of the factions, giving reputation for one while usually pulling away from another that you probably ticked off before finishing.
Finding Work (handlers)
Instead of walking around waiting for someone to call on you, you could discover various handlers giving out simple jobs for different factions. Easily the best way to focus on getting in good with your preferred gang. The jobs range from moving something from one location to another, to simple thievery. The reward was some credits and reputation gain, however they usually end in a choice, where you could give information or treasure to a rival gang offering you more credits, but you would lose a little rep with whoever gave you the job.
Stealth Work
Kay did have the skills to take care of business with weapons and such, however most of the time you would want to sneak around enemies without raising an alarm. Some missions even fail if you do raise an alarm. While in a restricted area you would need to hide in tall grass or steam, always staying out of sight until you reached your goal. If you managed to get close enough to an enemy, Kay’s fists worked very well to knock them out allowing you to move on unseen. There was the minor issue of not being able to move unconscious bodies, so if someone came upon a recent attack, suspicions would rise and possibly alarms.
Slicing & Hacking
There were plenty of times Kay was held back by a locked door or chest, requiring her to use her slicer and crack it open. The mini game took a minute to understand but became a fun game of tracking the beat. There were also computers that would need a little hacking done for the precious data they hid. Hacking computers was almost like a game of wordle to figure out, very fun. If, however, someone didn’t like the mini games they could be turned off in the settings.
The Blaster
Even if you managed to sneak into a place and reach your objective without being seen, Kay usually ended up in a huge firefight while trying to get out. She always had her blaster at her side with three different shots to choose from while fighting. The different shots could be upgraded and customized at a workbench, needing special materials for improvement.
Vehicle work
Much like the blaster your speeder and trailblazer could be upgraded after finding the correct materials and a mechanic to install them. The speeder could gain some speed, maneuverability and defense while the trailblazer could get that, and a lot of upgrades to the guns needed to defend yourself in space. It made dealing with some situations a lot nicer when the vehicles were upgraded.
Equipment
Kay could equip three different clothing items and some charms that all gave some benefit for survival. The clothing options would sometimes be a part of a set, giving bigger benefits than normal if you could manage to find all the pieces needed. Usually found at gang specific vendors, and only available after they like you. The charms were generally found in the wild from big chests hidden away. She could equip one major charm and a few minor charms.
Finding Professionals
An interesting mechanic used for new skills wasn’t the need to collect experience points and spend them, but to complete various actions to unlock them. As you go through the game you would come across different professionals that would help you learn their skills. Things like lock picking or fighting with big guns, one even helped with special trailblazer moves. It was fun accomplishing the tasks to unlock a new ability to use in the game.
Open World treasures
While exploring the vast open worlds you would see a lot of question marks popping up on your compass, when getting near it would show up on your map showing you how many treasures were inside. A handy bit of information if you felt like taking a break from the main game to explore and find new materials for upgrading or equipment. There weren’t a lot of fast travel points to be found, so you would end up discovering a lot of optional areas to explore.
Outro:
Have you seen anymore on the game or played it yourself? I would love to hear any comments, thoughts, or concerns you have below, while you do that I’ll move forward to my personal thoughts and ratings!
Star Wars Outlaws was a fulfilling experience in the Star Wars universe. Full of different aliens going about their lives, plenty of wildlife to deal with while exploring, and a lot of different places to see and experience. They did provide subtitles for the various languages everyone would speak which normally wasn’t a problem, but there were some scenes where a conversation would be happening in the middle of trying to play the game and it was very difficult to read what was being said and getting through the game at the same time.
The main gameplay being stealth wasn’t terrible, it was easy enough to grasp the fundamentals of sneaking around, however it didn’t feel as easy as other stealth games I’ve played. Minor annoyances like getting onto a ladder from a stealth position and immediately standing up at the top instead of going back into a crouch. I was spotted more than once because of that. It was very satisfying watching all the different ways Kay would knock somebody out when given the chance, it just felt like the stealth work could have used a little more work as a whole.
It was nice to change things up a bit from Kay’s blaster to the different weapons lying around or dropped by enemies. But they generally came with low ammunitions, and Kay could not hold onto a new gun if she had to climb or jump down. She was constantly dropping the rifle to move forward, forcing me to use the blaster more often than not. The blaster wasn’t a bad weapon, but some of the dropped rifles were very powerful and nice to use.
The best part of the whole experience was Nix. That little guy was amazing, so cute and helpful. He was a very nice addition to the whole stealth scene. It would have been impossible to get through most situations without him distracting enemies or destroying alarms. He even got his own equipment in the form of food, giving him very good benefits. The only thing that was odd to me was in order to obtain the food equips I had to find a food station in a city and go through a long mini game of sorts. Pressing keys at the perfect moment so they could properly grab a bite or chew their food.
I really liked the skill progression system for the game. Hunting down professionals in some aspect and finishing their introduction mission gave me a list of actions to complete to unlock some really nice abilities for Kay. The lack of an experience system didn’t allow someone to grind out a lot of skills and mow over the entire game, it was nice to excel specific areas of expertise by doing things that involved that area.
It seemed like there was a lot to the game between all the points of interest in a world, dealing with the gangs, and finding equipment to wear, but after playing the side objectives for a couple hours it didn’t feel near as complicated as I had thought. I didn’t change equipment much after buying some at the beginning of the game, it didn’t feel necessary to move forward. I explored some of the side objectives and enjoyed the excitement of searching for unknown treasures, so there is a lot the game has to offer in terms of playtime. The main story could be finished around 16 hours of gameplay, but I would say there was at least double that with the side activities to enjoy.
And without further ado, let’s get the ratings underway.
The visuals weren’t smooth. Some cut scenes looked great, but a lot of the environments and characters started to get a little crusty as I got in for a close look. It’s getting a 2
The story was great. Following Kay as she tried to keep a sense of humanity while surviving a dog eat dog profession was engaging and moved at a steady pace. Nothing absolutely ground breaking in terms of storytelling, but good none the less, I’m giving it a 4
Gameplay had it’s ups and downs. It seemed to play as intended in most areas of the game. I feel like stealth and speeder controls could have used some work, but I still managed, that’s a 3
As far as replayability, I wouldn’t want to play through the game again. There were choices to make that may change some story elements, but the gameplay doesn’t warrant a new playthrough, I’m giving it a 1
I had fun with Star Wars Outlaws. Sneaking through imperial bases and discovering new treasures was great, and controlling Nix made for excellent times. I’m handing out a 3
Earning a 2.6 out of five for Star Wars Outlaws. Placing it on the midshelf. Not the greatest open world game out there, but still good and entertaining for a few hours. And if you’re a huge Star Wars fan I’m sure you would enjoy a lot of what the game has to offer.