The long-awaited sequel to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order; Star Wars: Jedi Survivor has officially been released on both console and PC platforms and was greeted with tons of praise from reviewers who receive early access to the game.
Unfortunately, the shower of praises does not last long as apparently fans who want to enjoy the game through PC are being slapped with the reality of bad optimizationー which sadly, is starting to be a typical trend for AAA games in recent years.
Just on its first day of release, the Steam page of the game received an overwhelmingly negative review however as of writing the review has started to even out a little bit now sitting in “mixed” status with more than 3,000 reviews.
What happened in the PC landscape?
As if it is starting to become a tradition in games that are released by AAA publishers, Star Wars Survivor has been reported to suffer from a bad optimization experience as well as performance issuesー even before the game itself is downloaded.
One user on Reddit has posted their frustration of having to wait a long time for the game to preload. However, after a thorough look, this seems to lean towards Steam’s attempt to prevent leaks on pre-released games as the game is downloaded in an encrypted format which then needs to be decryptedー usually taking 2x of the original size.
Some other users even recommend just deleting and redownloading the whole game after the release as it seems to be a faster solution for those who have a good internet speed.
Sadly, even after being able to download and unpack the game, the frustration doesn’t stop there because as soon as the game launches, some report that they cannot get past the title screen!
Those who are able to get past them can finally get to play the game albeit with a catch, it suffers from infuriatingly bad performance optimization as several of Steam’s most helpful reviews describe:
“RTX 4080, i9-13900KF, 32GB 6000 DDR5, latest drivers on Win 11. I can get around 30 fps. Amazing.”
“Game is extremely fun but performs terribly. I’m using a 3090 FE and 5700x and getting a consistent 30 fps in some areas. Other areas give me a mostly consistent 45. This is at 1440p. Lowering the settings and using FSR don’t make a tiny bit of difference. And it goes up to like 19 GB of VRAM. It’s a rad game but definitely wait unless you have 24 GB of VRAM and don’t mind playing games at 30 fps.”
“3080 is not good enough to run the game apparently :)”
For comparison, the minimum official specification to run the game requires Intel Core i7 – 7700 or Ryzen 5 1400 for AMD, 8GB of RAM, and at least 8GB of VRAM GPU with GTX 1070 for Nvidia and RX 580 for AMD.
As for recommendation, it still uses the same minimum VRAM which is 8GB but with RTX 2070 or RX 6700 XT, upped the RAM capacity to 16GB, and either Intel Core i5 – 11600K or Ryzen 5 5600X.
With that, it is clear as day that the users’ specs have passed the recommended suggested specification even with tons of legroom for the game to run with higher resolutions however even with a 3090FE, 5700X, and is set to just 1440pー and an FSR, the game can’t even achieve 60 FPS which should be a bare standard for such setup.
Acknowledged by the developers
Since 28 April 2023; the same day the game got released, the official Twitter for Star Wars Jedi Survivor has made an acknowledgement statement and is planning to take a look at the issue.
“While there is no single, comprehensive solution for PC performance, the team has been working on fixes we believe will improve performance across a spectrum configurations,” the team wrote. “We are committed to fixing these issues as soon as possible, but each patch requires significant testing to ensure we don’t introduce new problems.”
While it sounds like good news that the developers took notice quickly, from its wording, the statement itself does not really sit right. It kind of implied that even before the release, the developers are aware that the game might run in a botched state and yet still roll the release regardless.
What about those who play on consoles?
So far, there have yet to be any odious complaints about the game. Though, it does not rule out the usual triple-A release curse, a bad optimization.
A Reddit user shares their experience in PS5 using the “performance mode”, a mode designated to target 60 FPS and it seems that the game struggles to keep that consistent.
Another user also adds that the graphics in performance mode seem to look a bit pixelated during combat. Considering that PS5 uses AMD Oberonー an equivalent of RX 6700 XT, it means that the issue lies in its AMD FSR optimization.
The good news is it runs fine in “quality mode” which is basically a 30 FPS experience.
When does Jedi Survivor come out and is Jedi Survivor available on PS4?
For those who are out of the loop, the game Star Wars Jedi Survivor was released on 28 April 2023 available on PC and current-gen consoles; PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
As PS4 has reached its soft-finished state, the game is unfortunately not available on that platform.
Bottom line
Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is a promising and fun game with a stellar review according to those who get to play before the official release; however it is currently being plagued with bad performance optimization, especially on PC with some even rendering it to be unplayable.
The console players are also facing similar issues however so far it’s far more tolerable than the state of the PC release.
Developers have acknowledged and promised to bring a fix sometime in the future just right on the same day of the game release.
The game is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox X/S platforms and is unavailable on PS4.
