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During his time in Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Cal is going to lock lightsabers with a deep roster of baddies, battle engorged devil frogs, and fight off entire squads of space fascists. But it is going to be far from easy, in fact, you may find that Survivor pushes back surprisingly forcefully.
When you aren’t getting bullied by amphibians, you will be getting blown to bits by unseen missiles. Lucky for you, then, we have been putting ourselves through the wringer to give you all the tips and tricks that we wish we had when we were but padawans at the beginning of our journey.
8 Parry! Parry! Parry!
This is a pretty obvious hint if you played Fallen Order (or Sekiro), but the biggest mistake you can make is trying to be the aggressor and hammering that attack button. The combat here revolves around the parry. The enemy has a stamina bar and this can be depleted by parrying their attacks.
You can poke and prod your enemies with your lightsaber, and pressure them a little, but the most efficient way to take them out is to deplete their stamina by parrying their attacks and then delivering a devastating combo once they are stunned. Just remember that Survivor’s combat can almost be a rhythm game of sorts. Once you have a feel for an enemy’s tempo, you will be stunning them in no time.
7 Your Enemies Will Tell You Exactly What Attack Is Coming; Listen To Them
You are going to be fighting a lot of the same enemies over the course of the game. Inevitably, you will learn which attacks are the most dangerous. Thankfully, the game doesn’t ambush you with the most powerful attacks. In general, if an attack is powerful, the game will give you more notice that it is coming.
The Probe Droid will make a high pitch beep sound—and a red lens flare will appear—just before firing its extremely fast energy bolt. The Battle Droid has a missile attack that can be tough to force push if you are late reacting to it, but they always fire it from their left arm, so when you see them raise that arm, you can prepare yourself. The most extreme example of this would be a boss like The Spawn Of Oggdo Bogdo; it has an instant kill attack, but you are given quite a bit of forewarning before it uses it. Be attentive to what your enemy is doing, as it should inform what you are doing.
6 Believe In The Power Of Friendship
One of the most interesting additions in Survivor is the ability to, on occasion, be accompanied by a partner. You won't always have a buddy by your side, but when you do, you are able to target an opponent and unleash a powerful attack that will stun them.
Needless to say, this can take a challenging enemy and completely trivialize them. Whenever you are fighting alongside a friend, make good use of this, and you will sail past some, otherwise, pretty tricky encounters. But don't take our word for it, you can use this move against the game's first mid-boss: K-405. This dangerous droid is reduced to rubble in no time.
5 Return To Sender: Rockets, Bombs, Mines, Missiles, And Rockets
In the early game, you may find that the more explosive attacks are an absolute menace when you are fighting groups of enemies. Trying to match the rhythm of multiple enemies is enough of a mental hurdle without having to then worry about a missile sniping you from a distance and ruining your day.
However, what starts off as a major headache quickly transitions into being a golden opportunity. A force push turns your enemies’ explosives into your explosives. A big part of the game becomes knowing who has an explosive and waiting for them to use them so that you can exploit them.
The missiles are the hardest to catch, but those attacks often come with an exaggerated startup animation. This means that you can cheat a little and charge the push, waiting for the missile to launch, and then let it rip the second it launches.
4 How To Best Incorporate Your Heavy Strikes
Cal has access to two types of lightsaber attacks: his quick combo attacks, and his force-using heavy attacks. While those Force Attacks (as they are called), do a tremendous amount of stamina damage, they have another notable attribute. They are slow. So very, very slow.
This means that most of your encounters will primarily consist of parries and light attacks. However, completely ignoring these attacks is a mistake. When used correctly, they can quickly dispatch multiple tough enemies in a single stroke. Even the mighty Purge Trooper, one of the harder enemies you will encounter in the early parts of the game, will have their stamina reduced to absolutely nothing with a single well-timed Force strike.
The best way to hit with these attacks is to use distance intelligibly and land the attack as your foe whiffs their own. Some unlockable Force Attacks can also be pretty potent. The Thrust attack the game forces you to invest in at the beginning of the game is pretty terrible, but if you upgrade it, and increase its range, it becomes far more viable. Once you start to incorporate these moves, you will be a force to be reckoned with.
3 Use Your Lock-On Selectively
When you are fighting one, or maybe two, enemies, the lock-on is extremely valuable. The majority of boss battles are duels, at which point you will almost certainly want to lock on to your foe. However, there are a number of encounters that consist of multiple opponents. In those situations, being locked onto an individual, while also having the camera zoom in, is just a recipe for getting stabbed in the back.
So, you need to pick and choose the moments when you use your lock on. That being said, it isn’t as simple as locking on for smaller groups, and keeping the lock-on off for group encounters. If you are in a fight with an enemy who has a powerful ranged attack, you probably want to lock on to them in order to keep an eye on them. We found ourselves frequently switching between using the lock-on and turning it off during large encounters as our priorities shifted mid-battle.
2 Using Your Revive To Gain An Advantage In Boss Battles
If you die in a boss fight, you will gain your experience back by touching the spot where you fell in battle. However, that isn’t all it gives you: it also fully heals and briefly slows time. While we understand that you may be eager to get your experience back (though, the wise move is to bank the point before entering into a boss battle when possible), you can obviously use these points to your advantage.
Let’s be clear, you are pushing your luck here, but if you wait to claim your Force Echo, you can lean on it when you are in need of a heal, helping you preserve your stim supply. There is also the benefit of it being something you can activate by just touching, unlike with the stim, there is no startup animation. When you encounter a particularly tough battle, leverage this to give yourself a better chance.
1 Choose Stances That Compliment Each Other
As that stat screen for each stance suggests, some of your stances are better fits than others for certain encounters. However, this isn’t Devil May Cry, and you aren’t going to be able to switch between all your stances mid-battle. You are only allowed to have two stances equipped at a time. That’s it.
For the best result, we would encourage you to have one heavier-hitting stance for quickly dispatching weaker foes and one quicker, more mobile stance for dueling. There are certain encounters against bosses that only give you minuscule gaps to land an attack of your own. You’ll have a bad time if you are rocking the Crossguard and Double-Bladed stances. That being said, every stance can be viable, so you could make it work, you’re just going to have to suffer for your eccentricities on occasion.
Another element to consider is the type of Force Attack each stance comes rocking. We think the standard stance has a generally pretty bad force attacks on the ground, but for a skill point it has an excellent jumping Force Attack. The Double-Bladed stance, on the other hand, has some of the best grounded Force Attacks in the game.