Star Wars Outlaws review: uneven smuggler saga has its moments

Walking out of a cantina on Toshara and coming across some arcade cabinets in a rundown bar. Playing Sabacc nestled away in a dark, snowy corner of Kijimi. Slowly riding my speeder through the vast dunes of Tatooine. These small, quiet moments of Star Wars Outlaws are the ones that stick with me the most.

While some games like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor have flirted with open-ended areas, Star Wars Outlaws is the most explicitly open-world Star Wars game yet and is at its best when it leans into those sandbox elements. It’s fun manipulating your relationship with factions, switching sides when it benefits you. It’s thrilling to explore several well-realized planets, including ones whose movies didn’t do them justice, like Kijimi from The Rise of Skywalker.

Where Star Wars Outlaws starts to falter more is when it narrows itself down. The combat, narrative, and linear missions have their moments but aren’t nearly as engaging as when Star Wars Outlaws lets players loose in its sandbox. That leaves me conflicted about what’s ultimately an uneven, though enjoyable, Star Wars game. It’s worth playing if you like the idea of living out a smuggler fantasy in an open-world Star Wars sandbox. If you’re only planning on its main story missions, though, it’s not nearly as polished as its more linear peers. But don’t ignore Star Wars Outlaws‘ smaller moments; that’s where its heart is.

Scum and villainy

Star Wars Outlaws follows a smuggler named Kay Vess as she assembles a crew across several different planets to pull off a heist against one of the wealthiest men on Canto Bight. Like most heist-based narratives, it’s full of twists, betrayals, and surprising alliances. Kay Vess is a strong central character, backed up by a fantastic performance from Humberly González that matches the charisma of Alden Ehrenreich’s take on Han in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Kay has a naivete about the universe that we haven’t seen from a Star Wars protagonist before. That makes scenes when she encounters characters like Jabba the Hutt more interesting because I wasn’t quite sure how Kay would react or play the situation. Unfortunately, Star Wars Outlaws is let down by the fact that the rest of its ensemble isn’t as strong. I enjoy the droid ND-5 and animal sidekick Nix, Kay’s primary companions, because they get the most screen time and dedicated scenes together (ones where Kay and Nix eat food together are particular standouts).

Outlaws rushes the introductions of most other side characters, acting as if we should already know who they are or just worry about getting to know them later. That hurts because Outlaws ultimately building toward an ensemble story. Some late-game betrayals didn’t impact me much because I never felt like I truly knew some of the characters involved.

While Star Wars Outlaws doesn’t escape the Rebels versus Empire narrative clichés of most Star Wars media set in this era, it at least skirts away from being a Jedi-focused story, which is refreshing. Kay Vess certainly earns a spot in the pantheon of iconic Star Wars characters, but the narrative overhaul doesn’t reach the heights of Disney-era Star Wars greats like Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and Andor.

This is where the fun begins

Star Wars Outlaws’ better story moments are the ones that you make yourself. This is an open-world game, after all. I’ll remember when I accidentally hit a stormtrooper with a speeder or randomly stumbled on Lando in an Akivan casino more than any of the main story set pieces. That’s because the world design and minigames of Star Wars Outlaws are the game’s greatest strengths. I even love its lockpicking and hacking minigames, which is a rarity in this style of game.

Other minigames, like Sabacc, are equally entertaining. Pulling off contracts or other side quests for Syndicates leads to great emergent moments. I got caught right as I planted a spying device in the territory of a Syndicate that liked me. Later, I made it to a cargo drop-off point in orbit with seconds to spare in a thrilling moment. Those are what sell the Star Wars fantasy more than anything.

That feeling extends to the actual stars. In addition to shooting on the ground, players get to pilot a starship as well — and even blast other ships. The sky combat is simple yet very polished, and the vista around its planets are a lot more interesting than those in games like No Man’s Sky or Starfield. It’s the kind of outer space experience so many studios have dreamed of, but brought to life in the context of Star Wars.

Outlaws‘ progression system is built around that curiosity and exploration, as it encourages players to dynamically find experts across its planets and complete gameplay objectives to gain new abilities at their leisure. That also pairs with the Syndicate relationship system, as Kay’s actions all gain and lose her favor with the Pykes, Hutts, Crimson Dawn, and Ashiga Clan. These systems don’t tie in with the main story as much as I would like, but they’re engaging enough to toy around with in the sandbox. If I weren’t reviewing Star Wars Outlaws, I’d have probably put off finishing the main story even longer than I did so I could make sure I explored every nook and cranny of this universe.

A fine addition to my Star Wars game collection

There’s certainly a dissonance between those two parts of the game. At times, Star Wars Outlaws is quite an emergent sandbox. At others, it’s a frustratingly linear experience with dull Uncharted-like platforming and environmental puzzles and lots of instant-fail stealth sections. This style of stealth, in particular, has been out of fashion in Ubisoft’s own Assassin’s Creed series for years, so I’m surprised it’s so prevalent here. Even then, combat is only passable because the gunplay is a bit clunky.

Like Han Solo, Kay Vess uses a single blaster in battle. Star Wars Outlaws takes a page out of Control’s playbook by allowing players to upgrade and customize this blaster in a lot of different ways. Sadly, it just doesn’t feel nearly as good to shoot with aggressive yet inaccurate aim assist and a general lack of impact with each shot.

Thankfully, Nix is there to give Kay an edge in battle as he can attack enemies or set off some explosives in combat arenas. That only goes so far during a fight, though. Kay is frail, so it’s better to sneak rather than fight head-on. Still, even just comparing this to other Ubisoft games, that stealth isn’t as enjoyable as it is in an Assassin’s Creed or Splinter Cell game, and the shooting doesn’t match The Division or Far Cry.

That’s why I’m ultimately yearning for a version of Star Wars Outlaws that’s better than it actually is. Or, more accurately, I’m wishing it were more focused on its sandbox strengths. It’s stuck trying to be both Uncharted and Red Dead Redemption, but it does itself a disservice by not perfecting one of those approaches. I could see a great Star Wars game in the stellar world design and emergent moments that truly put me in the shoes of a smuggler. Anytime Star Wars Outlaws allowed me to live that fantasy, I was happy to be in its orbit. But so often, it left me hanging in the airlock.

Star Wars Outlaws was tested on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.