With the Swap 2 nonetheless fairly contemporary, the system has already proven it might deal with some visually beautiful video games. Though we’re nonetheless within the early days of the console/handheld, and even when a sport is bold, it wouldn’t be the primary time a port has had a bumpy transition. Happily, Star Wars Outlaws just isn’t one in every of these examples and offers hope for the way forward for the system.
Star Wars Outlaws is about within the time interval between The Empire Strikes Again and Return of the Jedi. You play as Kay Vess, a rookie Scoundrel who desires to make a reputation for herself. Joined by her little fuzzy creature-in-crime Nix, Kay instantly bites off greater than she will be able to chew, getting frolicked to dry, stealing a ship from against the law boss, and having to juggle loyalties between syndicates. To get out alive, Kay is roped into pulling a large heist in hopes of attempting to repay the bounty on her head. With the assistance of the surprisingly burly commando droid ND-5, Kay might want to put a staff collectively, sending you across the shadier elements of the galaxy.
You get to expertise a number of of the Star Wars’ extra ruthless planets and the house surrounding them, with a lot of the motion going down as a third-person stealth/shooter Ubisoft Open World sport, as you sneak round Imperial bases and smuggler hideouts. You additionally get to take your sport to outer house within the Trailblazer, your own home and base of operations for Kay and her crew.
The difficult a part of Outlaws for me was having to recollect Kay is supposed to be a correct outlaw. The selections it’s important to make for Kay aren’t normally the ‘good’ or ‘nasty’ selections, however variations of whether or not you’ll cross somebody or not for the sake of extra credit, or the place you need your repute to go. Whilst you may assist alongside the best way, you’re additionally typically seeking to fill your coffers and stroll the tightrope of various loyalties. Initially it may be a tough choice as to which syndicate to aspect with, as being in poor standing with any one in every of them makes it tougher (or outright lethal) so that you can journey by their areas. Not solely does it make it tougher to do some other jobs by their turf, but when your identify is mud, it’s even tougher to win your approach again into their good graces when their jobs are off the desk too.
It seems when you’ve had a bit extra time to run a number of jobs and earn some credit, you’ll be able to mitigate this by shopping for and buying and selling in beneficial information to whichever syndicate you need to enhance your standing with. It doesn’t imply it’s a cakewalk if you wish to preserve good or wonderful standing as typically as attainable, with greater story missions typically boosting your repute with one get together and an even bigger hit to a different. You get to at the very least select your poison after which work your approach again from there.
The Swap didn’t get a lot in the best way of the newer Ubisoft open world video games. Outlaws strikes on from among the older open world trappings, however it might nonetheless get somewhat weighed down by what they couldn’t let go of. You not must climb towers/lookouts to disclose extra of the map space; now it’s extra pure exploration of the world. Upgrades, nevertheless, are nonetheless slowed down with having to scour the worlds to grind for sources. It by no means feels an excessive amount of, at the very least, both by simply gathering something in your path or having the ability to buy some sources; you’ll be able to nonetheless eke out a dwelling within the Outer Rim.
For the reason that sport initially got here out on different platforms, there’s been a while for adjustments alongside the best way in response to participant suggestions. In case you performed on a kind of different platforms round launch, you could have seen these adjustments, now right here from the beginning to your profit. Stealth is extra forgiving in comparison with the preliminary launch, not immediately failing a mission except there’s a selected cause. I perceive why folks didn’t prefer it, though realizing you’ll be able to shoot your approach out of the state of affairs diminishes among the stress once you’re meant to be stealthy.
Whereas every planet has its personal central metropolis, there’s loads of time on Kay’s speeder bike as you pace across the surrounding areas too. The speeder bike could be enjoyable to zoom throughout the planets’ surrounding areas. As you choose up extra jobs for the syndicates, it helps you change into fairly acquainted with the broader world and areas, particularly as among the extra generic ‘take this from level A to level B’ or ‘steal or plant one thing right here’ can are inclined to occur on the identical spots.
As anticipated with an open world sport, there are a number of aspect actions to assist earn some further credit. Many of the actions take the type of house playing. There’s Fathier racing, Sabacc, and an area follow-the-card sport. All are totally different sufficient, and Sabacc is tied to one of many extra ‘DLC’ missions that can require you to concentrate and discover ways to play. You can too hop on an arcade sport in case you simply need to intention for some excessive scores. If you wish to get distracted choosing up requests and jobs, you could be busy for a lot of hours past the story. As all the time with large concerned open world video games, I ultimately acquired to some extent the place I needed to cease myself from getting distracted by these. Happily, the principle story is fairly enjoyable because it immerses you within the Star Wars universe; it’s as much as you the way far off the trail you need to discover.
It’s nonetheless early days with what the Swap 2 is able to when dealing with ports of extra recent-gen video games. Video games like Cyberpunk have had years of labor, together with years of repairs to get to such a excessive level. Outlaws appears and runs higher than most initially anticipated. It’s nice to see corporations making the hassle to squeeze essentially the most out of the {hardware}. The sport typically runs at 30 FPS; it by no means felt prefer it actually dipped typically.
I had initially written about some visible points that have been round at launch. The largest being Kay’s hair being distractingly shimmery, and a whole lot of metallic components have been giving off an ethereal sparkle and shimmer. In October 2025, there have been a number of patches, and there was a bump up in texture high quality, and any distracting shimmer or glowing has diminished.
Hell, the staff even managed to get the sport’s file dimension underneath 20GB, which is wild that it was underneath 30GB within the first place! Whereas it could possibly be one thing additional addressed by patches to return, there does really feel like pop-in has change into extra noticeable in locations. They’re typically at occasions the place it doesn’t matter; possibly it’s a trade-off at the moment for the elevated element. Regardless, the sport appears nice and has continued to thus far. It provides me hope for different Ubisoft video games on the best way, like Murderer’s Creed Shadows.
The sport sounds unmistakably Star Wars, with out leaning into the well-known symphonic film rating. As a substitute, it options grooving Cantina tunes, hitting up the jukebox at any time when there may be one to see what the Galaxy has to supply. It nonetheless provides that Star Wars really feel, though it feels somewhat extra like The Mandalorian than the John Williams hits. It must be no shock that the opposite sounds inside this universe are authentically Star Wars too, with no scarcity of Gonks and different droids chirping and beeping amidst the blaster fireplace and engine roars.
Star Wars Outlaws is a wild house journey. It seems like part of the Star Wars universe versus simply attempting to shoehorn Star Wars right into a mismatching sport. In case you get overloaded on large open-world video games, that’s nonetheless a danger right here, though ending the sport isn’t depending on getting too slowed down both. Star Wars Outlaws is one other nice sport to point out off what the Swap 2 can do when devs get the chance to make it work for the {hardware}.
Ranking: 4.5/5
