Star Wars Jedi Survivor: Laser Spade and Dark Lati your PC and Steam Deck

A little less than five years after the launch of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Respawn strikes again with a sequel worthy of its predecessor. The narrative universe of Star Wars expands with a new, sumptuous chapter; however, for the overall critical judgment, we refer you to our complete review of Star Wars Jedi Survivor.

As with any great cross platform launch, however, we could not avoid a test armed with a mouse and keyboard and, despite the absence of official checks, also of Steam Deck, Valve’s handheld hardware which has now become the reference point for this segment. Before starting, we confirm that in this article you will not find spoilers, but only an examination of the technical characteristics of the game on PC.

Imperial requirements

This new act in the adventures of Cal Kestis develops after the events of Fallen Order and straddles the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy, offering an insight into the imperial era during the period of consolidation of the resistance.

To analyze the performance of the game on PC we used our usual test machine, also recently used for the graphic analysis of Cyberpunk 2077 Overdrive and composed of an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X processor on X670E platform, flanked by 32 GB of memory DDR5-5200 and an RTX 4070. The title was downloaded onto a PCIe Gen4 NVMe drive and, once installed, its actual weight is 129.89 GB.
According to the specifications disclosed directly by EA, we are well above the minimum target in terms of resources and system requirements: to play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the threshold is a PC with at least one AMD Ryzen 5 1400 or Intel Core CPU i7-7700. As for the graphics sector, the minimum wage is represented by a Radeon RX 580 or a GTX 1070 from NVIDIA, with DX12 support and at least 8 GB of video memory.

EA’s advice, however, is to rely at least on a Ryzen 5 5600X or Intel Core i5-11600K, in tandem with a Radeon RX 6700XT or RTX 2070. In short, if to play at a minimum with abundant use of upscaling tools it is a fairly dated machine is enough, to obtain an acceptable experience a rather high-performance PC is needed, although the demand for video memory is really expensive compared to the final result, which is still really pleasant.

Yes, because Jedi: Survivor is a game that offers a high-impact glance without aiming for excessive realism, and improving the Fallen Order experience in a completely natural and linear way. In this sense, even the ray-traced lighting, where available, convinces without marking a significant change from the artistic imprint of the predecessor.

Up and down performance… lots of parkour

Compared to the console versions, which make available to the public a high fidelity preset in 4K at 30 FPS and one that instead favors performance, on PC we will have a slightly more layered range of options, also improved compared to that of the previous chapter thanks to the presence of a wider set of parameters on which to intervene.

Graphics presets range from Low to Epic and Ray Tracing is optional, while the partnership with AMD brings FSR 2.0 upscaling technology. The absence of DLSS makes us turn up our noses, and some technical problems with FidelityFX Super Resolution – if possible – made us regret it even more. slight shimmering on minute objects, such as antennas in the distance or cables or railings. A less typical problem instead concerns the audio sector, which using FSR presented problems of overlapping, repetition, sudden interruptions and busted mixing. After a series of attempts we realized that disabling AMD’s technology was 100% decisive, and therefore we continued our journey without upscaling (fortunately, the resources of the RTX 4070 granted it to us with some compromises) pending of a fix that unfortunately has not yet arrived with the first patch: for this reason we believe it is our duty to underline its existence even if only to provide you with a palliative but effective solution.

Net of the scaler issue, which is still one of the accessory technologies, it is worth emphasizing how the whole experience is still poorly optimized, with noticeable frame drops despite limited or normal GPU usage percentages. We don’t think they are bottlenecks but, it is probably the consequence of loading some game segments, since in fact the bulk of the slowdowns occur during animated transitions, entering or exiting cutscenes and near checkpoints.

The performance we got was in line with expectations, guaranteeing over 60 FPS at the 1440p target resolution with Ray Tracing active and the Epic preset, but with the help of FSR at ultra quality. Without this technology, the average is around 50 frames per second, while in 4K you can play fairly well both at native resolution and using the scaler.

Speaking of visual rendering, the change of pace is significant especially in terms of real-time lighting. The character models, truly spectacular during the cutscenes, are convincing in the game phases but – understandably – not as detailed, while the textures are particularly accurate but, to confirm the suspicions about the problems deriving from data access, we also found one sporadic surface pop-in.

Compared to the console counterpart, the PC version of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor does not show a sensational difference in quality, but what is seen on the screen is increasingly defined even with FSR, an indication of a particularly invasive use of upscaling on living room machines.
This leads to an even greater appreciation of the quality of the surfaces and of the models while, again compared to the console version with 4K presets, some slight variations in the mapping of the lighting of some objects can be noticed, which seem to respond dynamically only on PC.

On the move? Not today

Unfortunately, on Steam Deck the title is still very far from its ideal form and EA itself was keen to underline this. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor has not been verified for Valve’s portable console and the stringent hardware requirements can put even the most daring users in difficulty. Looking for a happy medium between definition and frame rate it is not possible to reach the threshold of 30 FPS, while it is very easy to put the machine in difficulty with crashes and very dilated loading times.

Furthermore, the mapping of the controller does not always respond correctly with all the consequences of the case. It is not yet clear what the fate of the mobile title is and the developers have not unbuttoned themselves much in this sense, but the strategic partnership with AMD bodes well for a miraculous optimization intervention that allows Steam Deck to overcome even this trial.

In short, to best express its value in the PC ecosystem, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor still requires some more or less substantial intervention, although the overall judgment on the title remains excellent.