Star Wars Outlaws is INSANE! Star Wars Outlaws Review + Spoiler-Free

Star Wars Outlaws sets new standards for Star Wars gaming in this video review I will be going over all of the things I liked and didn't I've completed the game thanks to an early review copy from Ubisoft before we do get into this review though make sure you do subscribe to this channel so you won't miss any future Star Wars Outlaws videos including news updates and tips and tricks let's get started with all of the things I enjoyed about the game and then move on to the stuff I wasn't a fan of also this will be a SPO spoiler-free review so I won't be discussing any of the main plot points or showing footage of big moments with that note out of the way I'm now going to be able to share my excitement of what impressed me the most when playing this game there are a few areas in particular that raise the bar for Star Wars games the main standout thing for me was just how the developers have done an exceptional job at crafting a game that feels so Lively and lived in at any given moment on screen there can be several of unique props and dozens of NPCs to look at the settlements Cantinas space stations wherever are all expertly handcrafted you can choose to live in Star Wars thanks to this game if I was not reviewing this game for launch I could see myself treating this as a new life to escape in by taking my time and visit every corner of the games Galaxy there's so much to do and explore for both Leisure and working as an outlaw you really can take your time to lose yourself in this immersive Galaxy it's filled with so much Star Wars stuff we've never seen before in a Star Wars game they've nailed the dirty original trilogy look and the game just generally looks great like it's straight out of a New Hope for the most part I would say the sizes of the planets and space stations are great they are very expensive Kea twine and Tashara in particular are huge and look and feel the way they should kajimi is a bit smaller and then cantonica is much smaller and we'll get into that later but there is no shortage of things to do and see on the larger planets plus the actual in-game map is really well done it's not overwhelming it's simple and clear to navigate around the gamees world there are time of day and weather systems on these locations you'll see the sun's rise and set plus random weather per day it could be cloudy or rain gaml to me is the most important part of any game so that's what I'm going to be focusing on next and it will take up most of this video it may surprise you to learn that a lot of this game involves Stealth gameplay as a fan of stealth game such as Hitman myself getting this in a Star Wars game is Just a Dream Come True the game has many mechanics to sneak around and take out enemies even in linear levels you still have some amount of freedom on how you get through that level it was a joy to play despite some issues like AI being dated in their realism sometimes the AI really should have seen a body that I just left out in the open and they just didn't I was playing on the standard difficulty and turning up the enemy difficulty does make stealth harder so maybe the AI is just a lot less dumb with the higher setting if you want more of a challenge you could try that out though by the end of the story I wanted new mechanics in the environment to freshen up infiltrating bases and such it started to just get a little bit repetitive seeing and using the same options around the levels overall stealth was a massive highlight for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it controlling K is great for the most part controls are very responsive with little response time she feels lighter to control than say cow in the Jedi games or playing GTA or Red Dead which at times can make Star Wars Outlaws feel a little bit cheaper though cow is carrying a light saber so that's something to consider this is also more noticeable when platforming compared to the Jedi games C has this weight in his animations and feeling in the controller whereas K feels a bit more arcadey however I do like how responsive the controls are and everything just feels pretty good to use NYX is essential and fun he adds new and dynamic gameplay that we don't really see in Star Wars games let's talk about Gunplay which I enjoyed even if it is basic blowing up stuff was very satisfying I never felt the need to pick up a weapon as K's Blaster pistol has a personality thanks to its modes and upgrades the weapons you can pick up are different enough from K's pistol though and can be useful in certain situations especially the longer range rifles also it was nice to see weapons that we previously have not been able to use in Star Wars games before and even some brand new designs that definitely changed things up a little bit I did find some of the weapons though that you can pick up to be better in certain situations Van's pistol particularly at long range you really need a rifle for that and that was helpful and also when things got really hectic and you had to go loud having a grenade launcher certainly helped I like thinking on my feet adapting to the situation with K's Blaster and then picking a weapon up rather than just picking one up and carrying it around the entirety of the game with me things about K can also be said for ship combats the Trailblazer still feels far too lightweight in the hand but it has this swoosh about it that visually looks great I still believe it should be more Hefty considering the size of the ship but the controls are super responsive and scalable in how easy or hard you want it to be the same can be said for the speeder except it has this heaviness to it in the controls and rightly so it even felt better than when I last used it at the preview event I enjoyed most of the missions even if some were more linear than others and more linear than you'd probably expect for an open world game I guess I really enjoy the stealth so that does help you can go loud at any given point though I would choose to remain silent but some people may just want to go guns blazing and the game does allow you to do that it might even be easy to do so there are inevitable side fetch quests but at least they are appropriately themed for Star Wars and have uniqueness about them there's more variety in these than you think and personally I had fun with the side missions that I did I do think the Star Wars dressing and law to me as a Star Wars fan do the heavy lifting I think though there are some random world events that occur on your travels as well that are completely random they will happen at any time and I like those seeing Storm Troopers fight the Pikes whilst you just speed by on your speeder you can choose to continue on your way or stop and take them out and steal all of the loot just making it clear that the loot is simply some materials and credits it's not a looter shooter in terms of the reputation system I liked deciding what choices to make under pressure or at my own pace it kept you on your toes your choices affecting each Quest is fun even if they don't affect the main Garden Path it's not perfect because you could have potentially really upums and Dawn for the past hour and then do a story Mission and then you meet Cara so it's not entirely realistic but at least there is some player agency there I'd rather this game have this system than not you also also have to remember this is not an RPG with multiple endings this is just an open world Star Wars game that has a cannon story and is not a true RPG in the same ve I say cyberpunk there is plenty of room to experiment with the different factions thanks to the reputation system and it's great it's a lot of fun seeing what each faction do depending what you do based on various missions your decisions you make and such the game features this really clean UI and menus the game's whole aesthetic is just fantastic even down to the mini games it is different but familiar and the menus don't overwhelm me but they have a lot of depth if you want to access it between the game playay and the menus the game is made in a way that you're able to choose how involved you want to be you can just play through the story missions and not bother with anything else in contrast if you want to treat this like you are living within Star Wars you certainly can if you don't like crafting and finding materials that's fine you can choose to ignore those typical open world game elements and just focus on the Star Wars aspect of an open world game what I really appreciate is how easy they made picking up materials I don't like crafting much in games I don't want to spend my time going out of my way picking up materials to level up weapons I felt massive made this more fun and bearable in Avatar fres of Pandora but it still felt like a little bit of a chore towards the end of the game with this game though you can choose to ignore it but I found myself actually picking up materials because it was so easy and smooth to do you can just be running and on a table as you pass by has some scrap on pressing the right thumb stick K will reach out with her hand and pick it up it just feels great or you can have NYX pick it up for you if it is far away or you just can't be bothered however it is effortless though doing it as case so I wasn't really using nyck to pick up stuff much I was just picking them up myself and I would never do this in another game this meant I could actually upgrade my equipment a lot more and try out things this takes me onto progression how you upgrade your tools K herself and how you get better is mostly just by playing the game as you want to the traditional skill trees are gone out of the window with this game how you learn new tricks is a breath of fresh air there are several NPCs that you'll seek out and they are experts in a field simp simply by playing the game we'll earn progress towards challenges that will unlock new skills some skills will require you to find parts or purchase parts to upgrade things like the speeder but just driving the speeder also progresses you to unlocking new features it's all very natural and you won't have to worry about what to spend skill points on anymore meeting an MPC in an interesting setting and then gaining Knowledge from them is way better than just the traditional collect a skill point and navigate on a skill tree menu and having to decide what to unlock Star Wars Outlaws has the greatest settings menu of any Star Wars game nothing comes close from the amount of options at your fingertips to screenshot comparisons of what each setting does in the graphics menu this is what PC game should have as a standard and yet almost every game just doesn't they went above and beyond with this game every Star Wars game going forward needs to have this level of settings anything less is a downgrade from Star Wars Outlaws I won't accept anything less theyve thrown down the gauntlet and every developer putting out a new Star Wars game on PC should take a look at this and basically do that if not better it's honestly astonishing that in just over 12 months we've gone from the embarrassing Jedi Survivor port with a menu which is not fit for PC gaming and then to a near Masterpiece with Star Wars Outlaws honestly going back to any other Star Wars game and changing settings is going to be a disappointment with how far massive have raised the bar here and that's just the graphic settings there is a wealth of other settings for gameplay and accessibility too not only can you fine-tune your performance and Graphics but you are also able to tweak so much about the gam playay you can make it as easy or hard as you'd like it's not just a simple Global game difficulty toggle like with most games individual elements of the game can have difficulty changed or even removed if a mini game like the lockpicking one is annoying you and you just want to skip it you can just turn it off I now want to talk about performance and bugs unlike Jedi Survivor it does not suffer from the Major Performance issues or engine related stutters it's not perfect but it's also not too surprising given this high level of fidelity and scale but at least it's in a much better State than Jedi of was that is a very low bar though that should never have released in the way it did for context I played at 1440p on high SL ultra settings rate tracing gone with d LSS on as well with a 4080 super and I9 4900 K the game runs at above 60 to 90 for the most part really demanding areas would see those 1% lows drop to say 50 FPS but it did not feel nowhere near as bad as shedi Survivor that said you can't just be using the lowest level of performance as a comparison but I'm just using that as a recent example and also it's somewhat similar in terms of it Fidelity and it also had semi-open worlds there is some unstable frame pacing going on in particular in certain cutscenes but the game still overall feels good in the hand but of course I would prefer a much more stable frame rate if possible in all areas I did come across dozens of bugs but they were mostly minor graphical ones in my entire playthrough there was nothing gamebreaking or frustrating there were mostly just imersion breaking I did have one blue screen of Def but I'm not sure if that is down to my processor being an I9 or it's also because this is a pre-release version of the game however I didn't lose any progress it does seem to save pretty good it has a lot of checkpoints you can also manually save the game if you wish to do so some parts of the game you can't save manually but I didn't lose any progress when I did have that crash some examples for graphical issues include artifacting using dlss flickering objects when in MO eely Reflections not displaying correctly MPCs clipping through objects and end5 appearing then reappearing seconds later most of these really should have been ired out before launch there's always a chance that a day one patch or the first postlaunch patch does fix these but I can't speak on something I don't know a common question people will have is how long will it take to complete this game based on my experience of just simply playing through the main story and doing just a few of the additional side quests it took about 20 hours I did rush through some areas in order to complete the Story 4 review but there is still so much content after the game's main story is done there is so much to unlock and find out and do I could easily see myself putting in another 20 plus hours just to deeply get immersed within this game fast travel is also extremely quick any area you visit will become available Force fast travel you can open up the map from anywhere you are select a location press X and a couple of seconds later you are the this also works cross Planet so if you don't want to do the full takeoff and Landing sequence you can just simply hop from one planet to another skip it all it's impressive in terms of the music this game has a different approach to what we've heard in previous Star Wars games and it works for the most part you won't hear iconic tracks such as the force theme Imperial Mar or any John Williams for that matter and it doesn't really matter in terms of this story not every piece lands that Star Wars feel for me but wow K's theme does and it's catchy you'll keep hearing it in your head even after you've put down your controller it's the main theme that carries you through the game and elevates your journey with K I can really appreciate when people take risks and try something new with Star Wars and that's what they've done here the case story it works for the most part and also some of the tracks found in the C of very much Star Wars and you'll like them in terms of characters it was somewhat of a mixed bag um Gonzalez who plays KS was the standout as you'd expect her performance was great it brought a lot of fun and feelings we don't usually see from a good side Star Wars character I mean she is on the good end of the spectrum but at the same time she's not a Jedi she's not part of the Rebellion it is really interesting to play and watch a character who does not care about the Empire or Rebellion or the war and is just really looking after herself and NEX nd5 played by Jay ringcon was also well done I think people will love Kay and Andy's relationship but wish there was more time spent together the narrative overall was fine I enjoyed various aspects of it but it wasn't groundbreaking in any way I do feel that the pacing was off though Parts just went really quick at times to the point where I wished I spent more time with these characters before certain events happened I did like the twists and turns there was some great stuff in there but there were also moments of pure convenience and fan service which may turn some people off you also have to keep in mind that this is a Star Wars story and it has the quirks of Star Wars but it is also a very fun and different story and I liked overall it did have some cutcenes and gameplay moments that really evoke the feeling you get when watching the original trilogy in particular a new hope as for why I think the characters were a mixed bag well I felt that the facial animations and voice acting took away from the experience the expressions of some of the NPCs felt stiff while some of the other more important characters didn't have as good performances compared to um as K towards the end of the game those performances did improve but it was just a little bit jarring watching and listening to Kay who has this high quality performance both in the facial animations and movement and her voice with less lifelike characters within the same room as her another thing I found jarring and quite strange is that there were four pre-rendered cutscenes in the entire game and that's it they looked great but they were so infrequently used that it took me out of the experience when it would go from an in-game real time cutscene to this pre-and cut scene and then back to it it just didn't really make a lot of sense to me these cutcenes take a long time to make so much so that the skin color of one of the characters is different to the final version in game I do wonder if they wanted to do pre-rendered CGI cutscenes for the entire game and then decided in development not to do that and just kept some of the more impactful ones it's just weird to go from 99% of the time in and game cutcenes that were real time smoothly transition into gameplay and then have these really high fidelity pre-rendered CGI cutcenes the real time cutcenes were fine for the most part as well but they did lack the quality compared to say Jedi survivors real time cutscenes I do think the lighting and shots were just not as good so it was a step down in quality but at the same time they were just fine once the credits have rolled you can go back to fly exploring the game and doing all the additional side content that you didn't do beforehand plus playing with the reputation system of course however you can't visit Kanto bite it was just at the beginning and end end of the game and that was disappointing to find out because you can't revisit it once the game has ended I thought going into this that's probably going to happen nope even though it isn't an open world Planet like the others in the game I still would have liked the option to just have the starting section available to us to experience after the game has come out just so we can walk around and take in all of the visuals and the NPCs and details I really do hope massive consider adding this as a playable area in the future once you have completed the game surprisingly the last two to three hours of the story are pretty linear you also can't do the open World stuff until you have completed the game during this time period it does give you a point of no return warning message and you can hold off for as long as you want but this felt more like a traditional Star Wars game and lack some of the magic this game gives you in the earlier parts of it some of its uniqueness is gone until the game ends and then you get back to how it was before I get why they did this but it was just a little bit I don't know jarring I guess there is plenty of stealth in this section of the game and you can choose how to navigate through these linear levels so that was fun I enjoyed my time with it speaking of gameplay this is not Star Wars GTA at Rockstar's level you can't go in expecting that and you can't pull out your gun in certain areas and kill civilians the AI is just not receptive to everything you do it does lack life fullness in that department there is a lot of freedom in this game but not to that level we've seen in other games personally I wasn't going to go around killing civilians at random but there are some restrictions that do feel a bit frustrating to me such as not being able to use your speeder in certain parts of town or your Sprint speed caps in select areas this game is the closest thing will'll get to a GTA Star Wars game and that's fine Rockstar are never going to make a Star Wars game and this will do the game's physics in some areas are also outdated and lack realism it just breaks the Emer of me sometimes K doesn't rag doll so when she call for so when she comes off her speeder it just looks awkward the speeder gets stuck and floats when I would have thought it would have fallen on its side or something like that I don't know meanwhile things like claw physics and hair are much better it's a small thing but walking through flexible materials is realistic and doesn't lower the frame rate and does not lower the frame rate as seen in other games though quite a few of the visual effects like fire do run out safe 30 frames per second or something so that sticks out like it's saw fun so is this the open World Star Wars game that we have been waiting for so long for outlaws delivers Star Wars Outlaws delivers an underworld fantasy in many unprecedented ways the game's Galaxy feels alive and I want to continue to live in it although due to its sheer scale and detail some Corners had to be cut with outdated ways of handling parts of the game I think people will be very happy with what they gotten overall I think people will be pleased with what they will play congratulations to massive along with all of the Ubisoft support Studios and everyone else who participated in the development of this game for pulling off this huge job I'd love to know your thoughts on anything I've talked about in this video so please do let me know down in the comment section below are you excited to get Star Wars Outlaws this week also if you are going to purchase Star Wars Outlaws on PC please consider supporting me and using my Creator code on the Ubisoft store just type in as a trat checkouts and you'll be helping out the channel thank you and if you enjoyed this video be sure to drop like subscribe so you don't miss any future Star Wars Outlaws videos and if you miss any of my previous videos click on the playlist on screen right now and I shall see you in my next video goodbye