Star Wars Outlaws: MY ONLY HOPE - Review In Progress

I fell out of love with Star Wars years ago realizing the series was becoming stagnant and uninventive while relying on cameos and Nostalgia I simply decided to move on so when I heard about Outlaws I was actually pretty excited for a new story in the Star Wars Universe Outlaws gave me hope for a unique Star Wars experience with a brand new protagonist Kay isn't a Skywalker and she isn't a Jedi she isn't even the chosen one she's really a nobody and she's just trying to survive so thank you to Ubisoft for providing me with an early review copy so that I could experience case story Star Wars Outlaws reconnected me with Star Wars in a way that only a video game can it made me excited for the possibilities I'll probably never be invested in Star Wars like I used to be but this game made me feel like I was in the world experiencing everything I loved about Star Wars to begin with I've always leaned more towards the smaller stories the stories of people just trying to live and survive in this corrupt Galaxy and the stories that are morally complex are where my favorite stories lie Outlaws doesn't have a true morality system where it lets you lean into being corrupted but at its core KVs is just trying to survive and she makes some questionable decisions and allies along the way that is what I enjoyed most about the story there are Han solos and Lando Calrissian type characters all across the world and we got to be one of them and while Kay is far less experienced than Han Orlando there's something special about an underdog story about someone with the card stacked against them and K VES was that for me at times she did feel very young and she made some really stupid decisions and she's very inexperienced in the beginning but she was still in Dearing to me and her naiveness does have consequences you learn from the game by making stupid decisions and the game punishes you for it right at the very beginning you can purchase information on someone you can purchase a ticket to get behind a door and surprise surprise you can't actually do that someone tricked you so you lose your money and you've learned a lesson and I'm hoping that by the end of the game Kay is very confident in her decision making I'm about 20 hours in and Kay has a lot of room to grow but even in the beginning Kay is very Scrappy and resourceful she has a tool for almost everything and she can get out of almost every situation and Nyx is the perfect companion to help get anything done nyx's relationship with Kay was actually my favorite part of the game and nyx's abilities felt very useful stealing breaking locks and attacking enemies made Nick a necessary part of strategy and he's extremely cute while he does all of it and before I get into what I did and didn't like about the game I will say that this game ended up needing more critical thinking skills than I thought it was going to it's a very intuitive game it wants you to problem solve and approach every situation strategically and I'll get into this more in a little bit but first I want to talk about everything that I really liked about the game first I like the the way Outlaws played I felt like the side missions felt important and made sense for K to do it wasn't just a ton of fetch quest which of course there are but they don't bog stuff down the combat and enemies felt engaging and there were a lot of different enemies K's ship was fun to use and modify and I actually really like the space combat and I especially loved the music I really remember the music standing out to me the controls of ship combat felt nice riding the speeder was fun and a good way to travel around the worlds I like the sizes of the cities and the interesting aliens within them and I really like seeing average daily life I like the relationships with the various crime syndicates and how the reputation system worked and I really love seeing Kira even though I don't particularly love her outfit the mini gamess were also really fun to play and and I liked moving around the world a lot of the controls really remind me of Jedi fall in order and the way that Kay moves across buildings and uses the grappling hook all felt pretty familiar I like the worlds that we got to go to and the characters that we got to meet and overall I really liked how immersive the world felt and how much effort was put into World building which Star Wars is known for overall I really liked most of what I experienced and I don't know how the story ends but did feel like I got enough time with the game to know how it actually feels and I did like it it's a game that focuses on the characters and World building which to me are my most important aspects in a game and although I really mostly Lov the game I still have some criticisms and my main one relates to something that I mentioned earlier the game wants you to focus on strategy and planning you are forced to sneak and do things while remaining entirely hidden and some people might really enjoy this aspect of the game but I am a button Masher I usually go in guns blazing no matter what the game so having to tactically plan routes and ways to attack is something I don't love especially when it's forced on me in cyberpunk 2077 you can sneak and remain hidden if you want to or you can go in head first and even if you don't succeed in hiding you can just shoot your way out which is usually my Approach but Outlaws is different wanting to sneak during missions but getting caught means you have to start over entirely this is my biggest issue on one hand it's great that devs have faith in people that they can figure this out and often times I would get stuck and realize there was an easy solution Outlaws is very much for intuitive players players like me who Button Mash and might get frustrated at mission's ending because you were forced to sneak and you weren't sneaky enough so the mission ends might get frustrated and players who like to be strategic and like a challenge outside of combat will probably enjoy the stealth aspect and the critical thinking that this game requires after a few hours I did catch on more and use NX a ton for sneaking and attacking and distracting and that did help a lot but even still there were moments where I was just frustrated and I wished that I could save Mission I am an obsessive game saer for stealth missions I'll progress a little and save and then progress more and save again and with Outlaws you can't do that if you mess up you are sent right back to the beginning of the mission like I said this is probably my biggest complaint I couldn't manually save the game until 3 hours into my playthrough for me not being able to save during missions and tense story moments is frustrating some people will will be totally unaffected by this and will rely on the autosave feature which does save a lot but for gamers like me you might get frustrated for those who don't know I play video games with mostly my feet I use foot pedals which require a ton of reconfiguration every time I start a new game and outlaws had a lot of buttons to remap which is great but even still some things didn't feel customizable enough when controlling the speeder with the mouse option it felt like even at the lowest setting I still couldn't get enough control over it something just felt off another issue that I have with the game is the map itself it's very basic and honestly at times it just felt really useless I'd open the map to see where I needed to go and the icon would be in the middle of nowhere the map also isn't really detailed and it feels like it just didn't have enough information for me to find it useful there is a guide up at the top that relies solely on Direction but this type of navigation isn't something I usually like this could definitely be a personal thing but I wish there had been an actual mini map I'm just the type of gamer who needs a lot of Direction and while I did enjoy the gameplay itself sometimes it felt a bit choppy sometimes hits didn't land the way it looks like it should or I'd be interacting with something and it just wasn't Landing it's hard to describe more that it's a feeling I I also wish that K could collect more weapons it's kind of weird you can only pick them up during missions and then drop them immediately I also hated how much fall damage K took at really short distances those are small nitpicks but they're things that I noticed quite often and like I said my biggest issue is I wish I could save more it felt like I had little control over when to save and this added more pressure to be perfect in the stealth missions and like I said I play with my feet because I'm a disabled gamer so having to repeat things is annoying I wish that the stealth wasn't so forced on you I also wish the facial animations were more expressive sometimes characters weren't looking in the correct direction and just lacked as much emotion as I thought they should have to match the voice that's not a major thing and maybe I'm just not familiar with Ubisoft games but a few times it did break my immersion kind of wondering where the character was looking and my personal critique is that I wish the game was more directive that it pointed you to where you needed to go more than it does it became easier as the game went on and I got more familiar with locations but in the beginning it was really frustrating other people won't have a problem with this though this is just my issue overall I really enjoyed this game I didn't have time to finish it because this is my first review copy and finishing a game this size in less than four or five days and then having enough time to make a video is crazy I guess I'll need to step up my game I do recommend this game though if you're wanting to feel like Star Wars is about more than the Skywalkers or if you're invested in the actual world of Star Wars the World building for me was the best part I don't really think I'll ever fall in love with Star Wars again and I don't really plan on getting invested in the franchise in the future anymore but the Star Wars games will always be a yes for me I love the Jedi Fallen order games and there's something special about interacting with the Star Wars Universe especially in an immersive way that only video games can do the games are what keep the magic alive for me and like I said for me story World exploration and characters are what sell a game for me combat and gameplay are pretty secondary I'd give it a 7.8 out of 10 it isn't revolutionary or Innovative but it succeeds at being an open world Star Wars game and not every game needs to be Innovative or life-changing If You're a Star Wars fan wanting something new without the weight of nostalgia I think you'd enjoy it like I did and that's not to say that there won't be Nostalgia it's Star Wars of course there's going to be cameos and Nostalgia that is kind of the foundation for Star Wars at this point but ultimately it felt like this was Kay's story and that's why I appreciated it so much I do think that I would have really loved to have been able bble to create my own Star Wars character for this story though I liked K and I understand how much it would cost to add a whole character creator with different voices but I think Star Wars has the perfect world to create your own character like K and I do think this was a little bit of a missed opportunity doing that that isn't anything against K just something I've always wanted in a Star Wars game and I feel like it's something that Outlaws could have done I'll definitely finish this game and I hope hope none of what I've said bites me in the ass I'm going to be really annoyed if suddenly K is a Jedi or worse a Skywalker I hope she remains just another average Jane in the Galaxy thank you again to Ubisoft for the review code I really enjoyed this game and I can't wait to finish it I will probably do the Ubisoft plus option though for purchasing the game because let's be real the pricing points for this game are kind of crazy the ultimate bundle with everything cost almost $130 if you're a hardcore Star Wars fan and want to invest your money into that I am absolutely not judging have at it but for me I think the base game and season pass that includes the additional DLC are the things that I really want but I definitely think this story is worth experiencing If You're a Star Wars fan and hopefully my review gave you a little bit of insight but honestly I've never done a review like this before so if there's anything that I didn't touch on that I should next time please let me know if you're planning on playing or not let me know all your thoughts thank you so much to my channel members and my patrons for supporting the channel your support means so much thank you all for watching and see you next time