Star Wars Outlaws [Review]

Impressively above average, Outlaws shines in its world building, quest discovery and how the world sometimes feels livable and makes sense, with a simple but decent honor system and nice overall story, even if everything feels a bit predictable. But while it is above average, it is not by much, as unfortunately some problems and mistakes on the game hinders what could've been a truly great experience.

The syndicate quests are impressively well written as the “important character” quests, the ones that give new abilities. In fact, all the character progression throughout the game is very well done; it is fun to unlock and find new abilities, and they often add cool new mechanics for almost every aspect of the gameplay and the gear is quality over quantity with, again, gameplay changing aspects that makes getting them really rewarding.

The game presentation and performance is solid on PS5 as well, on Quality Mode, at least. I've suffered from some crashes (about 3) and there were, indeed, some bugs – but mostly visual ones. The faces are not always well animated, and the lip sync is oddly off almost all the time; but the cities and open areas are amazing in many ways.

Outlaws have, indeed, a lot of jank on the movement side. Kay is not very much responsive and there are lots of little lags and stutters on her movement here and there that makes controlling her not that good. The gameplay, though, is pretty diverse with many types for the blaster and weapons obtainable from enemies that make the gameplay loop good. The space segments are, again, unexpectedly fun, but not revolutionary by any means.

The overall story is great and the cast of characters is good, but the dialogues can sometimes be hit or miss and very, well, ubisofty. The stealth is abysmal and completely stuck in the past. The structure for good stealth is here with different paths to solve problems, disguises, having to rob key cards and hide in vents, cameras and whatnot; but the enemies are just really, really dumb and don't work together nor search for bodies or anything. Really, the stealth drags this game a bit down and should have been less focused.

A game that is nice to play and think about, that can kick-start a franchise and receive amazing sequels, but dragged down by really janky movement and horrible stealth. All in all, I really liked Kay, Nyx and ND-5 and I Hope to see them again sometime in the future in a more polished and unexpected game.

7/10