We were Very Wrong About Star Wars Outlaws - Review

Intro how's it going everyone welcome to my channel my name is swanie and for today's video we're going to be giving you our thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws now a big thanks to Ubisoft for providing us with an early access review code this game is absolutely massive and without the code we wouldn't have been able to get this review out at a reasonable time so big thanks to them and for this review I'll be doing it a little bit differently compared to most of my other reviews on this channel I know a lot of you guys really seem to enjoy our back and forth discussion videos for hell divers 2 so I figured we'd try something similar for a big review type video cookie and myself have been playing Star Wars Outlaws non-stop for about a week straight and we're going to be going over our thoughts on what we've played so far so this is going to be a pretty long video so for your convenience we'll be breaking the video up into different sections and we will have them timestamped down below so you guys can skip around the parts that you want to hear and before we get started consider giving this video a thumbs up it helps us out on the algorithm and this video took forever to make so if you guys like this style of review then we'll consider doing more like this in the future so with all that said cookie why don't you start us off what are your opening thoughts about Star Wars Outlaws well I think the most Opening Thoughts important thing to say about this game is it's a lot better than I thought it would be for people that don't know what our opinions were at least my opinion coming into this game I was expecting a pretty bad game a pretty manufactured basic janky kind of game that wouldn't really be that good and it is better than that I can definitely say that pretty confidently in fact I would say the first couple days of playing this I was really really enjoying it we're both Star Wars fans for those that don't know massive Star Wars fans and this is really throws you into the Star Wars Universe very very well and I really enjoyed that aspect of it I will say though as the days you know went on and more and more days there were elements of the game that definitely brought it down a few pegs from being an excellent game to more of a uh not excellent game so it's it's a mixed bag which we'll get into obviously in detail as this video goes on but I do have to say this game was a lot more fun than I thought and I did enjoy it I really did it's but I can completely understand if someone hates this game which is a weird spot to be in but that's kind of my place I really enjoyed it totally would understand if someone hates it and that's kind of how I feel too like I I can see this being a very mixed bag some people people are not going to like this but other people are going to be like wow this is really fun and immersive and you really feel like you're in the Star Wars universe and I was the same way leading up to this game you could see online people were not very interested in it it didn't seem like there was much hype and with this being an Ubisoft game there's that you know stigma of like okay it's probably just going to be a cash grab and it's going to be rushed and that's that's how I felt and then after playing it the more I played it I was like okay I I'm really surprised here this is actually pretty fun and a lot of the like the stuff that would normally be boring in most of these big open world games like these fetch quests and stuff I even was having fun with those and just exploring and doing that kind of stuff so this game took what I would normally not like in most open world games and made it fun and did their own little twist so I did end up enjoying this game and but there there's definitely some things that we're going to get into that is going to be pretty controver IAL and it's it's definitely not going to be for everybody yeah like I said I totally there's many elements of this game that if someone told me I am not going to play this game because of this I totally understand I don't think there's anything wrong with that opinion because there's just certain things that there isn't really a good excuse for why it's in the game one it's an issue there are there's a lot of mistakes like that one the one thing you said that I want to give you credit for because I think it is the most legitimate thing is this game really needed one more year in the oven I think that's the best way to explain this game it's really good in places could have been outstanding if they just would have given the developers more time it's clear there were certain things they needed to iron out that they didn't and I think that would go to a problem with Ubisoft or just them trying to get this out too fast like they should have taken a little more time and then I think they really would have had an excellent game mhm yeah this it definitely needs a lot more polish in a lot of places I feel like to me this game is comparable to like maybe Mass Effect one like it's good introduction to the franchise but Mass Effect 1 to a lot of people wasn't the best of the of the trilogy so I'm hoping that this game is them testing the waters and seeing what people like and dislike and then if there's a sequel they approve Upon A lot of the things and critiques that come from this game and then they make a sequel that's even better that's my hope but yeah it definitely definitely needs more time in the oven considering the Mass Effect franchise I think it either is a Mass Effect one which would be positive because then they'd get better as they get more or it's going to be Mass Effect Andromeda where it's a really good game that was just destroyed by a lot of issues little issues that ruined the entire game and made it bomb to whom and your godamn father sorry my face is tired from dealing with everything and right now I just want to know what happened with Alec and thus made it like Fall Into The Ether that's the so it's it's potentially going to be one of the other I think for this game yeah it definitely has a little bit of both Mass Effect one Vibes and Andromeda which is I mean we'll get into it yeah we we'll get more into that later okay so first topic of discussion is uh let's talk about the The Story story each of you represents some of the most powerful criminal organizations in the Galaxy Pikes Crimson Dawn Huts it's a golden age for the Underworld the Empire's Little Death Star gets blown to pieces and the law is distracted by a rebellion that won't quit it's an opportunity to make millions what did you think of the overall Story the characters the the scripted missions like that kind of stuff well I will start with a disclaimer here we have not beaten the entire story uh and we'll we'll get into that too because the game is massive much more so much much bigger than I thought so that is one thing but at we've beaten most of the story and what I would say from the story is it's pretty captivating I mean I wouldn't say it's like I'm insanely engrossed or anything but it is interesting it's fun I I am curious about the certain missions some of the missions are dumb but most of them are like okay I I think this is kind of interesting it's neat being placed in the Underworld of Star Wars and this game does a really good job of making you feel like you really are a Smuggler it it does balance that pretty well and it does separate itself from other Star Wars games I was worried this game in a lot of ways would be in a way a clone of the Jedi games from respawn and in a way way it is in certain aspects but for the most part it does separate itself you don't feel like you're an overpowered Smuggler most of the time I I think this game does a good job of telling a interesting story and I I've mostly enjoyed it I I would say that's one of the strengths of this game I wouldn't say it's like going to break your heart or anything although maybe it will I haven't maybe it will by the end but I I think it's it's been engrossing enough that I care about what's going on okay uh I feel kind of the same way I do like a lot of the characters I do like a lot of the scripted missions some of them are pretty fun and engaging and I really enjoy what they're going for but some of the some of the story stuff seems a little rushed and a little I mean it's not the greatest but I think that's because of the open world aspect I think there's just so much going on that it kind of takes away a little bit from the main story missions cuz it felt like some of the characters were really rushed and were kind of just forced upon you like some of the friendships that you make I'm like why on Earth am I even friends with this person I just met them like 2 seconds ago so there's there's some spots like that that's a little rushed and could be polished a little better but overall I do I do like the story I wasn't expecting to like cave s but I do like the main character and I wasn't expecting to like ncks the little pet that you get and I ended up liking ncks yeah I I think the story is pretty good and most Star Wars fans like most people probably going to buy this game I think are are going to enjoy the story I would say the one negative I have about the story is and this isn't entirely negative but sometimes the mission design is just not that creative sometimes it gets a little repetitive and I'm not talking about the side quest or anything I'm just talking about the main story itself having repetitive missions like there's some things where you kind of are doing the same thing over and over and it's not that creative how they're putting it together so there is a little bit of issue with Mission design sometimes like they could have made this a little more interesting and different although some missions are creative but I think that is one of the negatives the story kind of has is the mission design isn't always the most interesting you kind of end up going through the same vents you do the same kind of mission in the same kind of place they kind of struggle in that spot mhm and I think that comes down to the game play which we'll get into a little bit more later with like combat and stuff I I feel like they just made the combat and everything very basic and then that kind of drags the story down and it that's why it does feel a bit repetitive is that you you know there's not much going on with the combat so anytime you're doing a story Mission it kind of feels like I've done this like six or seven times but out outside of that part I do like the like the story that they're telling and I think the dialogue overall isn't too bad for the most part it's pretty good dialogue there's some cringey parts some cringey lines here and there and some relationships just don't work at all in the characters but in general the dialogue is pretty good better than I thought it was going to be so yeah I think they do a pretty good job of carrying the story in that way okay so next up let's talk about the open world this is the first open World Star Wars The Open World game so I mean there's a lot in the open world there's like mini games and side quests and customization and the Speeders and the ships and exploration and The Wanted system like what what do you think of the open world design I think the design like it was pretty good I I this was probably the most shocking thing about this game for me is how immersive the open world actually was I thought it was a good chance to be very dead and it really isn't I mean there are parts of the map where nothing's going on but that's kind of expected especially on a map like Tatooine like you're going to expect part of Tatooine not going to have anything going on it's a desert so it has that but it doesn't feel like the whole area is dead there's plenty of things going on there's liveliness everywhere you get to interact with all the different alien species literally everyone I don't think there's any alien species that wasn't represented in this game in some way shape or form and that's really cool and you get to there's just things going on everywhere there's missions it's almost it's an overwhelmingly high amount of missions there's so much to do yeah and that was the most shocking thing and one of the best elements of this game is there's so much to do and so much going on mhm which I could see that being a turnoff for some people because if you look at like Assassin's Creed Valhalla for example that game had so much content that people got bored with it there was just so much fluff added into the open world and this game definitely has some of that there's definitely a lot of fluff but this game does a great job of making it interesting like uh there was so many like fetch quests and just random side missions but I was still having fun doing it I guess maybe because it's in the Star Wars Universe there's always something going on and I'm riding my speeder or I'm finding something on the side of the road on along my journey but I was having fun doing all these random side missions that normally would be pretty boring in most other video games and to speak on the whole like the game feeling alive that's one of my favorite Parts about this game is like going into a a city and there's people everywhere and there's conversations about things going on constantly and there's little side interactions like there's so many different instances where I would talk to people on the street and they would have like a hint of like go over here and do this Mission or you could overhear people talking and it would give you a clue onto like a hidden treasure one example was I was talking to a merchant and as I was looking through the Merchant's inventory I got sucked out of the the inventory because Stormtroopers interrupted me and was yelling at the merchant like hey you need to pay your taxes for a few credits I could look the other way oh please I I don't have the credits hey don't you guys have a Galaxy to protect or something you sure you want to stick your nose into this kid and then I had a dialogue option pop up of like you could either pay off the Stormtroopers to leave the merchant alone or you could buy your own business and let them take care of that and then depending on what your choice was like you could get a discount account for the merchant there's tons of that kind of stuff and it really makes the game feel alive and there's just constantly stuff to do and stuff to interact with and I really like that also there's like five planets mainly that you go to in this game I'm assuming that's it I don't think there's going to be another one pop up like I said we haven't fully beaten it but I'm pretty sure it's just those five planets the maps on each of those planets are really big like it's a big area that you get to explore on each planet with all the different kinds of things that you think of from that planet represented and I'm I was very impressed by that too like you could have a mission in the they all usually have one main city and then they have tiny cities usually in other parts of the map and then there's major parts that are just nature or you know are pretty open and you'll find random Imperial outposts you'll find the random factions have big outposts in the area I really like the diversity of the environments I really like how you could get a mission inside the city and you're like oh my God I got to go all the way out to the other side of the map which I like and I also don't like because the fast travel system is a little wonky because there aren't that many fast travel points and you're like oh God I have to go like it's fun when you do it the first couple times but after that you're like okay I'm sick of riding my Speeder Bike like 3 kilometers to the other side of the the other side of the map uh that they could definitely have improved there but it is neat that you have that much area to explore and see all kinds of different things and the environment does look different it doesn't look repetitive either mhm and they have really good attention to detail because there will be like specific things like on Tatooine I found like six or seven different Easter eggs that were from the movies which is crazy and the same thing kind of goes for other planets like they took planets from the movies and they put them and mapped them out like exactly how they would be and that's really cool um another thing I like is like the mini gamess there are a ton of mini gamess in the open world there's like uh little arcade games you can play there's horse betting there's saach I love saach there's so many different saach tables and there's like tournaments and like missions tied to saach saach was a lot more fun than I thought I was going to be so I I really like that and that's a good way to make money too like you if if you're short on credits you can go bet on some horses and make money or go to Place High Stak saach and bet like a thousand credits and then you can win a lot of money like I really like that sort of thing mhm it's very very immersive like you really feel and I mean that's that's the main thing about the open world that's so attractive it's so immersive you really feel like you're in the Star Wars Underworld the Star Wars Universe from a perspective you don't get to see much in the movies or TV shows and I think this really highlights that which is why I want this game to be successful but you know we'll talk about that too a little bit now we we did kind of mention the speeder and how important that is in general and also the there's the Trailblazer the vehicle that takes you into space and everything do you um do you feel like the vehicles kind of lived up to your expectations or the combat because they were both very important and you use them all the time um the speeder I'm a little disappointed with the speeder and the ship is just okay like I went and did a bunch of the space stuff and once you finish the space stuff there's not really too much stuff left in space to do other than like random side bounties that you get on occasion but the ship is okay like I've had better ship space combat before in other video games and I think the ship stuff is just kind of passable but the speed was a let down cuz the speeder is just really janky and I I just don't like the animations and the the smoothness of the speeder I wish there was different speeder cosmetics and different speeder upgrades you can get like I there's in this game there's so many different variations of speeders that you see different aliens driving around the environment like I wish I could have different model Speeders and stuff so being stuck with this one speeder all game and there's only a couple upgrades you can get and it's just the jankiness of the speed I was kind of let down with the design of the speeder but yeah that it would be really cool if there were a variation of different models cuz you can upgrade your speeder and stuff but it's the same speeder I mean it's just generally you can change its paint job but that's about it as far as customization is concerned so that is kind of disappointing I think the space combat is pretty I'd say it's pretty poor I I don't I mean it gets better with upgrades and stuff but in general it's kind of like I usually avoid all the space missions cuz they're just not that much fun collecting cargo is very janky and very hard to figure out how to actually do it which is annoying and dumb and yeah the space stuff is I wouldn't say disappointing cuz I kind of thought it was going to be bad when I saw the trailers and stuff so I'm not too surprised space combat's kind of what I expected but it is kind of cool and they showed this in the gameplay too how you would be able to go from planet to space and back and forth without a loading screen I do like that I mean it's not it's not like necessarily looks unbelievably good but it's still fun I prefer that to having a loading screen for sure so still like that element it's a disguised loading and if you try to skip it it just sends you to a loading screen so right so yeah it's it's the right it's it's it's a neat idea and I still like it I still prefer it but that's probably the neatest thing about space which is NOT saying a whole lot yeah and then I briefly want to touch on the exploration in the open world there's just so much to do in the open world there's so many things that can distract you and question marks on the map they're like oh there's a treasure here oh this person needs my help there's just constantly things to do and explore and since this is set in the Star Wars Universe I was kind of immersed the entire time I was exploring it's like oh there's a new new town I can explore there's all these buildings I can go in and I really like that part of the open world then the final thing I want to touch upon in the open world is The Wanted system now The Wanted system is kind of intertwined with the factions which is what we're going to talk about next but you can like piss off the the Empire and if you have a Max bounty system like a a Max wanted level they will send just endless troops at you and if you get the max wanted level they will send death Troopers like there will be like a Death Trooper encampment and you have to go and kill all those death Troopers to get rid of your wanted level nice and The Wanted system is it's Unique it's kind of interesting it's it's not like Grand Theft Autos well kind of like Grand Theft Autos in a way can be yeah The Wanted system it it can be annoying at times because you can get wanted by multiple factions so if you piss off all the factions like as make them as angry as can be they will send bounty hunters after you to try to kill you and it will be pretty constant so what ended up happening to me is I had the Empire mad at me and I had the pike Syndicate mad at me and they were both just constantly sending stuff to kill me when I was exploring in the open world and until I went and resolved that I was just getting spanned with things so if you don't take care of The Wanted system it can definitely be pretty annoying yeah I had a different experience with the wanted system overall cuz it only happened to me once that they I mean like I've been wanted many times every time you every time the Empire catches you doing anything on their premises you're going to get wanted but I only got Max wanted once and it was pretty Bonkers because I was going away from the base and I thought I was Scott free and then all of a sudden I was being chased by like a thousand biker Scouts and then I started and then it just kept elevating like biker Scouts and then ATS STS death Troopers I'm like what is Tie fighters were coming out of the sky like what is going on I don't know how this escalated like this and I just hid behind a house for but you have to hide for a long time before they leave you alone I mean it was like I'd say five minutes at least like I was at least hiding in the same spot for five minutes before they finally gave up the search so they go hard if you really piss them off um and like and and we'll get into this in a second but you know being in good with the factions definitely makes it big difference so you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff happening in the open world so often mhm they definitely make you conscious of your decisions because if you do get wanted it's a major pain in the ass and it's pretty difficult when you're wanted like when you're driving on your Speeder bike and you come across like six Imperial encampments or six roadblocks with atss you're going to be in for a rough time uh which kind of Segways us into the factions the factions is a major part of The Factions/Reputation System this game it was one of the big selling points um so what do you think of the reputation system and the factions and how that all works well when we went over the game play about a month ago I said that this is the live or die of this game like if this is if this game's going to be good the faction system is going to have to be really immersive and interesting and good over I won't say it's perfect but I will say it is a lot of fun I really enjoy the faction system and I think they overall did a good job on it not perfect like I said there's things that they could have done to make it more interesting but think it's a lot of fun I I think it's really neat your choices do matter at least with the faction system and with how much they like or dislike you and depending on how much they like or dislike you that can make a very big impact on how easy or hard your missions are going forward so there are Stakes there now I don't know if there's as much Stakes as I want there to be cuz it does seem like certain things will happen regardless and it doesn't necessarily make sense like why would this faction be happy with you after you just murdered like 20 of them certain things like that don't make a lot of sense mhm that's kind of where the imperfect part of it comes in but there are a lot of stakes there's certain missions they give you certain bounties that they'll give you that if you fail the first time that's over you don't get paid you don't get another chance at it I really like that element of things it puts some stakes and the most important thing for me was can two people play the game and have a totally different experience with the factions they I think they definitely can okay Monda you got a deal and you've got a job to finish take care of the bomb will I transfer for the data working with the dawn is very profitable I don't know if the story changes massively um we've compared our own games and they kind of seem like they were mostly going the same way you kind of take a different direction but you end up in the same spot kind of thing yeah so it doesn't seem like they're crazy game changers like everything just completely shifts but it definitely changes your experience and it is a lot of fun to work with the different factions and make choices and figure out how to balance them the best and how to get them all in a good spot and it's pretty hard I've never had all four factions like me at the same time yeah it is definitely a balancing act um but yeah I think some of the story stuff is definitely scripted no matter what cuz for example I was trying to get good favor with all the factions except for the Pikes so I was just pissing off the Pikes I had the worst reputation you could get with the Pikes and I just murdered like an entire Camp of them and they hated me and then the next story Mission the leader of the Pikes was like hey I need your your help it's like why on Earth would this guy want my help I just slaughtered all of his dudes and he hates me so that kind of stuff kind of takes me out of it but I feel like that stuff's scripted and they can't really find a good work around that but that would have been tough yeah but I do like the reputation system it's tied to certain rewards and discounts at stores and if you're in good favor with them you get access to their territory so in different cities they'll have sections of the city City that's dedicated to the Hut cartel so if you're in good favor with them you can go in and access their stores and you know place the boach with the with their faction and that kind of stuff and then if they hate you then you don't get access to their areas and you have to sneak in instead of just walking in and they will if you if they really hate you they will send bounty hunters after you and it'll just be endless waves of enemies trying to kill you all the time so you definitely want to be in good favor with these factions and it's a balancing act because nine times out of 10 like if you make one decision it's going to piss off like if I do something for the Crimson Dawn it might piss off the Hut cartel and vice versa so that part is interesting but let let's say you piss off all the factions there's like little side missions you can do for each faction that are like little fetch quests and stuff and if you do those it will give you more reputation so if you do tank one of your reputations with these factions you can get that reputation back it's just going to take you a bit of grinding to do so but overall I I did enjoy this this was a a fun experience I like what they have here and I hope that if they do make a sequel to this game they do something more with the faction system like to me I like that you're a Smuggler I like that you're doing missions for all these different factions but for me it's missing that Bounty Hunter aspect like I like being a scoundrel but every one of these factions would hire bounty hunters so I wish that maybe if they do a sequel they make you play as like a Mandalorian or something like I like doing these missions for these people but I wish there was bounties like hey this guy stole from me go kill him I I'm it's missing that factor for me otherwise I like everything else about it I really like it but you're right I think it'd be really cool to see how they could build on it maybe that's with another character maybe it's with the same character but they do more to like change the stakes because I I I like the start that they've got here a lot and I really would like to see him get a chance to improve on it again another year in the oven would have helped this system too but it is a lot of fun and you again very immersive it does make you feel very much a part of it and it does really really matter like if you're not in good with the Hut cartel on Tatooine it is hard it's so much harder Tatooine is like and and I do like that they make it make sense like it's not like all of them have presence on every planet like the Huts control tattooine like the other factions barely matter on tattooine and like you know it just depending on the planet you're on depends which factions are more important to be in the good with and and I like that I think that's cool and stays and makes sense with lore and everything else and if you are in bed in the wrong place then you are going to Stealth/Combat have to get really really good at stealth so that is going to seg us into stealth because stealth is a gigantic part of this game and as it really should be but do you think they nailed stealth in this game swanie or do you think they kind of missed the Mark um so I think stealth it definitely played a bigger role than what I was thinking originally and this I guess we might as well just talk about combat in general in this section um the stealth is very important and before I played this game I said uh like on stream or something I was like I'm just going to go in guns blazing I don't want to do stealth all the time and after playing it I realized that you know you kind of do want to do stealth all the time because if it goes guns blazing it can very quickly get out of hand especially if you're like infiltrating an Empire base if you get detected they send everybody after you and some of the stealth I thought was fun and engaging like going through the vents and using Nicks to distract the enemies and you can sabotage things and the stealth felt more fun than I thought it was going to be but that doesn't mean it's perfect cuz the combat itself is so clunky that as soon as you exit stealth it's kind of I don't know it kind of takes the fun out of it at least for me I kind of feel like this is one of the things that died as it went on the stealth was a lot of fun early in the game as it went on I got really tired of the stealth because it's very repetitive there isn't that many options of things you can do in stealth like it seems like a lot at the beginning but when you've done stealth like 60 70 times it's like okay I'm I only have a couple interactions that NYX can do uh NYX n can press all the buttons but as far as actual distracting he just distracts or attacks there's nothing else he really does and it's the same distraction every time he doesn't do something new like a different animation or something so I mean it's just it gets very repetitive and it can get incredibly annoying because there's some you know problems with the game that like K will do random things that makes no sense like jump out of cover when you don't tell her to it's like and there's just a lot of little annoyances with stealth and you're right if you don't use stealth you're going to get just destroyed especially early in the game before she's got like a little armor to work with she just dies almost instantly so you can't go up against six Stormtroopers at the same time which I like that element cuz she's just a Smuggler she's not a Jedi she shouldn't be able to go up against a battalion of Storm Troopers by herself it's kind of a weird element that they don't quite get right I mean it's not terrible but there's definitely it's not very good I think overall I think that's something they should have spent more time on because it's such a huge part of the game it really should have more variation of what you can do yeah the the combat overall is one of the the biggest weak points for me um cuz like you said there's no Jedi so it's losing that aspect of a Star Wars game which is one of the major hooks for a lot of people when they play Star Wars games is everyone wants to play as a Jedi you want lightsabers you want Force powers in this game you don't have any of that you have stealth you have your primary Blaster and then you don't get any other weapons unless you pick them up off the ground they're like temporary weapons so you kill Stormtrooper you can pick up their E11 or if you pick up or you kill a scout trooper you can take his sniper rifle and you can use them until they run out of ammo and those weapons feel strong and powerful but the problem is I hate my primary Blaster I I just always look for those weapons off the ground because cuz they feel so much better and they're a lot more fun to use and even after upgrading my default Blaster with a bunch of upgrades it still is not very fun to use like I'll shoot someone in the face three times and they just don't die and I'm like what the hell but then if you run up and punch a stormtrooper twice in the head it'll knock them out so there's just a lot of random combat decisions that they made that I just don't really like it's like the combat is very Bare Bones and minimum and it just I feel like since there's no Jedi and force Powers they really should have tried to make this combat seem more engaging and interesting and they didn't it's just very basic and I could see that being a like a major turnoff for a lot of people is after they see how wonky and kind of dull the combat is I could see a lot of people not wanting to play this game because of that yeah I think the whole process of picking up weapons and that's the only way you get to use unique weapons is really disappointing I I would have liked to actually have at least three four weapons of your own to like use in different situations like maybe you have a pistol you have a rifle you have a sniper rifle shotgun like that would have been kind of neat to have one of each and then you upgrade it however you want to but to only be able to pick up the weapons as you go I maybe that's the more realistic approach but it's kind of dull yeah the pistol is just so useless in most situations and the caveat for that would be well maybe they just want you to use stealth all the time and that's true but there are certain times that they make you have to go up against like six or seven Storm Troopers at the same same time which doesn't make any sense to me I'm like why is Kay even able to get out of this by the rationale I thought they were going with so the combat's just kind of confusing to me it's it's not very good uh the enemies aren't good either you only go up there's not that much variety to the enemies they're all basically the same except for a couple of uh special Troopers here and there there there's not a lot of variety to that either this is clearly the one part of the game that they definitely could have done a lot better on uh cuz it's just not entertaining she's got her dead eyee thing which is fine I guess but it's just the same thing as every other Dead Eye you've ever seen except maybe a little less realistic and a little less good okay yeah so I'm not a big fan of the Dead Eye like there's six Storm Troopers all around you and you just like freeze time and take them all out and none of them can hit you while you're doing it same with the Speeders you can't really fight when you're on a speeder you can only use your dead eyee so you're being chased by like six or seven people on Speeders and you have to wait for your dead eyee to recharge and then you activate it and you highlight the enemies and then you don't even get to see your character shoot them it just kind of shoots behind you as you're driving and yeah if they make a sequel they definitely need to rethink their combat system because I wanted the combat to be way better I mean it's passable but it it's not good by any means and one of my biggest irks is how you pull out grenades like you have to pull out grenades by opening up your satchel and then like you have to hit left on the d-pad and then you have to hit down to pull out a grenade and it's just it's designed poorly and it's just not not that fun which kind of leads me into the abilities the ability system for the combat is weird because you have these different uh experts and then you have to do like little mini side missions and objectives to learn different abilities and a lot of the abilities are some of them are okay and then some of them are very underwhelming I was really hoping that there was an ability where I could just carry one of those big weapons on my character until it ran out of ammo or something like I was holding out hope like maybe if I unlock this character I can have an ability where I can carry a sniper rifle and that just never happened I've unlocked most of the abilities in the game and there's nothing like that which is a big disappointment and a lot of the abilities are are very hard to unlock like they're a lot more complicated than they need to be to unlock something very small and simple so you can go hours and hours and hours of playing without getting a single ability upgrade CU you have to go out and specifically do certain things like go find this item and go find me this material and go find credits and then you can unlock an ability I yeah I just don't think it feels worth it like I see those missions pop up and I'm like I don't want to go to the other side like I talked about before about going to the other side of the map and how annoying that can be I don't want to do that just to like get the start of a new ability like that's that's just I I've seen those missions come up and I have no motivation to do them like that just doesn't seem like it's going to be worth it I'm like after I do three of those missions I get one ability and it's not even a good ability I could it couldn't I mean I don't know cuz I I don't have it but I'm like this ability could be useless like the last ability I got so those missions are kind of like dumb and I don't know why they did that that way I I don't like the ability system it's just not not that fun engaging and it also takes away from like there's no XP system so you can kill like 500 enemies and it doesn't matter whatsoever you do not level up by killing enemies you do not level up by completing missions you have to do these specific guidelines to unlock an ability so it kind of sucks the fun out cuz it's like oh man I just snuck in I killed every Stormtrooper in this base and I didn't get anything from it so mhm the whole combat system I think needs a revamp in the future they're to make a sequel cuz I get what they were going for but it did not translate into very much fun yeah so interestingly this uh Performance review has kind of gone like my uh experience in the game itself starts out really good and slowly gets worse because as we get to the worst part of the game which is the performance for me at least I think this is the worst part of the game and it's not in some ways it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be which is sad because it's still pretty bad this was the obvious thing that people had seen and have been talking about since the the first trailer came out like facial animations look weird they don't look good and they don't look good like that didn't get fixed they still look weird they still look bad I will say it didn't distract me as much as I thought it would like I got through the game and it wasn't bothering me a ton but there are sometimes it's just awful like the lips are moving and the words don't fit what their mouths are doing like it just looks super out of syn and super strange the eye animations are sometimes really off and it and it can definitely take you out for some people that is a total deal breaker and that yeah like they can't get past that and if you can't you're not going to like this game cuz it happens a lot and it's it is weird and it is annoying and it's definitely a problem and I can't say it's any better than it looked in the original trailers it looked like it was going to be bad and it is bad the facial animations are very poor oh yeah same kind of goes with uh her hair he's hair is her hair is wild I I just grew used to how ugly Kay's character model is it is awful in some cutcenes like some cutcenes her hair is all over the place it's glitchy one time I went down an elevator and her hair stayed behind I don't have any clip of it I wish I did but her hair like stayed up and my body went down with the elevator there's tons of that kind of stuff and there's just a jankiness to this game like one it gets there's tons of spots where you lose frames like I was losing frames constantly I turned everything down to like low to medium in settings and the graphic settings just to try to squeeze every frame I could out of it and there is still some parts of the game you're just going to have frame loss that's just that's just how it is and I I froze SLC crashed I think three times so far in my playthrough like I was just walking around and suddenly the frames would dip and it would just freeze my whole screen would freeze completely I had to completely just go open up my task manager and quit out of the game cuz there was nothing I could do and outside of like the poor frame rate there's just a clunkiness to the movements and the animations like if you're hopping over a rail or you're trying to dodge or you're trying to just run side to side there's just a clunkiness to your movements it feels like it's it's not smooth it doesn't feel good it kind of takes me out of the experience because my character is moving in a way that doesn't look natural like one second I'm here and then it's like all my movements are are like like stiff it's like I'm a robot it's it's really hard to explain yeah and that's especially bad in certain situations like the stealth and the combat that we just talked about it's very janky and feels very badly designed like sometime like you'll pop out in the weirdest moments during stealth and they'll be like why that doesn't make any sense for her to do that in that situation why did she do that and with the combat yeah it's just it's a janky feel the space stuff is Jank iny and doesn't feel quite right yeah there's a lot of those little issues and even the liveliness we talked about before is very weird looking sometimes like the Speeders that go past you on the road will look strange sometimes people talking to each other can look strange I mean it all looks good if you're not focused in on it but when you really focus in on it's like that looks not so good anymore there's a lot of that and this is what comes back to my original Point more time in the oven what have fixed this stuff this is very fible stuff like this is not like you need a whole new game this is just the kind of stuff that you could have ironed out with more time and I this this game screams that they did not have enough time like they needed more time and they rushed this out it feels like they're just like we want that Star Wars money now we don't care we'll fix it later and for those that are going into this looking for these types of glitches you're going to be notice them and you're going to be very upset for it no but for those that are playing this and they can turn their brain off to that sort of thing like there's a whole group of people that don't care about frame rate they can play on 30 FPS they don't care once I got used to 60 FPS anything less than 60 I think looks awful now and this game is Just constant dips and ups and downs and it's closer to 30 than it is 60 and like you said it's like Speeders driving by it looks clunky and looks like they're teleporting cuz they're just their animations is just janky the combat people getting behind cover and people in cutcenes it's just a jankiness and it's just they definitely needed like a whole another year in the oven with this thing and maybe it'll get better over time but at launch this is going to bother a lot of people I mean I would say that I am one of those people that isn't that bothered by frame rate typically like I I can play at a lower resolution it doesn't bother me a whole lot but I can't get past the clunky stuff the stuff where the animations look weird and I mean I still noticed that kind of stuff and and and if it's bothering me it's really going to bother other people because I am I'm very accepting of those things yeah I can be pretty tolerant of bad graphical problems but even I like it took me out of a lot of cutscenes I'm like I think there was one time K's eyebrows disappeared which I don't even understand how that happened I hope I found footage of it I should have it playing in the background like I I don't know what's going on here right I was just kind of and I'm like I can't really get into what's happening in this story cuz I'm too focused on what happened to Kay's eyebrows there there's a lot of moments like that and it's so disappointing cuz this is the stuff that I could see them fixing in a couple months not all of it I I don't think they can fix all the facial animations in a couple months but they can fix all the little glitches and you know Stormtroopers that are standing on top of tables when they're not supposed to be stuff like that they can fix but it's I judge the game by what it is at launch and it's it's got a lot of issues yeah it definitely does but now Let's uh talk about our closing thoughts conclusion uh Conclusion/Final Rating I know we talked about a lot of things that we didn't like but overall I did enjoy this game even though it has those performance issues it has the clunkiness of the combat it's just something about an open world Star Wars game felt so alive and I felt so immersed like I was in the Star Wars universe and playing around with these factions that we've seen in the on the big screen and in like the Disney TV shows these factions are brought to life and it feels like I'm in the Underworld and I'm I'm working with these these factions and like getting to see Jaba and doing missions for Jaba like that stuff is so cool to me so and I was engaged the entire time like even those side fetch quests normally that would be really boring but for some reason it works in this game I mean that's what a Smuggler would do in the Star Wars Universe they would just smuggle things that sounds very boring as as a video game but it was actually pretty fun and I feel like this game could have a very bright future if this game sells well and if they take the money and they double down and they're like all right the sequel we're going all out we're fixing all these problems why come Mass Effect one Mass Effect one like I said at the beginning was you know it set the groundwork and people were intrigued and they liked it and then for Mass Effect 2 they're like all right we're stepping up our game we're going to make Mass Effect 2 phenomenal and Mass Effect 2 is one of my favorite video games ever I could see them doing that like the foundation here is great I think they're just testing the waters cuz you know it's a big gamble for them making a Star Wars game they've never done it before uh they didn't know if people were going to like a game set in like the Star Wars underworld so it's it's a big gamble so I'm hoping that enough people play this and they like it that they could make a better sequel I I guess that's my overall thoughts is this game was okay I hope they learn from it and they make the next game better cuz this has a very good foundation there's a lot of stuff I liked here I was having a lot of fun it's just the performance the combat and that kind of stuff kind of takes me out of it I really wish the combat was a lot better than what it is I'm kind of curious is is it because of our Star Wars fan bias because we do love the Star Wars universe so much is that why we enjoy and if a person isn't a big Star Wars fan are they going to get anything out of this game or is this like purely you got to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this game I feel like you have to be a Star Wars fan if you are not a Star Wars fan you're I don't think there's much here for you cuz it's just going to be a a clunky bad performance dull combat mess but yeah because all the stuff we liked has something to do with the Star Wars lore the Star Wars world and that's what we enjoyed the most for a person that doesn't really care for the Star Wars world I can't recommend this to you but if you do love the Star Wars World especially and and I think what's cool about the underworld is this is something that didn't get explored a lot in the movies and TV shows it's like we got a taste of it but we didn't get the whole thing which I think was a really smart idea for them to focus in to make a video game about it because it's not something we get to enjoy in the movies and video in the past video games and TV shows and stuff so this gives us that opportunity to really get in deep and at least so far again the story could change on us but they allow you to be a part of the underworld they don't be like all right and now you're a good guy I mean I guess you might make that decision maybe but you know we'll see but I like that they let you be a part of the underworld and make all these choices and do quote unquote bad stuff they let you make NE bad decisions you can just stab everyone in the back if you want to just to make a quick Buck which is cool I like that I like not being forced to be the good guy and there's a couple different dialogue things that pop up in the game where it seems like K doesn't really care like just straight up hate the Empire as much as some people like she doesn't like the Empire but it feels like she's more open to like working with the empire in a couple different areas which is she doesn't like the rebels which is an interesting point of view that Disney's kind of played with that a lot lately in their TV shows and stuff about the rebels aren't perfect either which I really like that element of it but uh yeah I I like how they deal with the rebels in the empire in this game so far at least so I really as a Star Wars fan I really hope they get another chance to make this really good I just don't know if that's going to happen there's a lot of bad press uh coming out about this game before it even comes out and I'm not sure the game is good enough to overcome that bad press because the stuff that people are really upset about is mostly true like the facial animations is terrible and it does have performance issues but if people think that this is just a run-of-the-mill extreme cash grab I I wouldn't say that I know ubisoft's got some pretty crazy uh versions of the game and stuff that's another story but as far as the game itself like there's a lot of effort they put into this game I I can definitely say that like there's a lot of people that love Star Wars that worked on this game I can feel that in the stuff that they did it's just it's held back from being a great game because they it clearly seem like they didn't have enough time I will say though that this game is very friendly to like new players and people that are new to video games so maybe you're a Star Wars fan but you're not really big into video games but you thought this looked interesting and you want to check it out this isn't that difficult of the game because the combat is so basic I feel like they were just playing it super safe with this game and they didn't want to get too into it cuz they wanted to sell as many copies as possible so that might be why the combat is so dull uh and because of that like my girlfriend could probably play it for example she's I'm getting her into video games she's not the best at video games but I feel like this is a game that is one she could play because it's not too hard so if you're worried about uh difficulty I don't think you have to worry about that for Star Wars Outlaws so to close it out if we had to rate the score out of 10 what would you give this game Cookie I think I would give it a 7 three it's a good game I enjoyed it um I was thinking a lot higher before like in the early game part of it cuz it was really entrenching me into the world and everything but as you go along the performance really does start hurting the game and the rep the repetitivity and stuff so yeah I I think 7.3 is a pretty good place uh to put this game but like I said before a lot of elements that people could hate but I enjoy the game it's a good game I'd recommend it especially to Star Wars fans yeah I'm in a similar boat um when I first started off I was really loving it but then as you said The more we play it the more repetitive it got and the combat and everything but I was having a lot of fun so I'm sitting somewhere between like a six and a seven and a half so maybe I'll just go like a uh just a seven or maybe a 6.8 6.9 out of 10 just because those performance issues just bogg it down so much if if this game had better combat and better performance and it was smooth as butter I would be giving it like an eight maybe eight and a half maybe even higher it's just that combat and the performance is so clunky and not very fun that I definitely have to knock at some points and as of as as of how it is at release I'm sitting at like high sixes out of 10 but it that doesn't mean it's a bad game I still enjoyed it and I think Star Wars fans are going to enjoy this game it's just there's a lot of people I feel like are going to be turned off and are probably going to skip out on it so I would say maybe wait till this game's on set sale or something to pick it up I I definitely wouldn't pay full price of like the H hundred some dollars to get it early it is not worth that but if you're a diard Star Wars fan and you need a Star Wars game immediately I'd maybe get it on release day or wait till it goes on sale and wait till they have some like patch fixes and stuff to try to fix some of that clunkiness yeah it it it's it's probably performed better in about a month or two just kind of a shame but that is kind of modern gaming so yeah that is what it is all right so uh that's going to do it for our thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws let us know what you guys think down in the comment section down below if you made it this far into the video thank you this was a long video so I appreciate you guys making it this far if you made it this far consider giving it a thumbs up because it helps us out in the algorithm and if you guys like this sort of thing we will continue to do these like dual reviews in the future uh so if you guys are new here hit the Subscribe button and hit the bell for notifications that way you don't miss out on any future videos and that is going to do it for us and we will talk to you guys in the next video