Looking at the video games released under "Star Wars," players have experienced countless times the feeling of wielding a lightsaber and unleashing dazzling Force powers. But in "Star Wars: Outlaws," the protagonist's style takes a turn. They swagger into a bar, unfasten their gun holster, sit in a certain booth, and argue that all these flashy moves can't compare to the reliable blaster that has accompanied them for years.

This open-world (or more precisely, composed of several open worlds) action game's highlight is "gunfights" and "betrayal," which closely resemble the style of Chewbacca's best friend. However, in essence, "Star Wars: Outlaws" does indeed provide a Han Solo-like experience. Whether for better or worse, it first offers a good-looking appearance and an adventurous spirit full of appeal, but it occasionally reveals some "rough edges," leaving one slightly disappointed.

Of course, considering that this fun-filled space Western is set between "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" (i.e., the Empire's peak power period), the real Han Solo is still frozen in carbonite, unable to move. So instead, we play as Kay Vess, a cunning thief who grew up in the notorious gambling city of Canto Bight, a crime-ridden den filled with scum and villains.

At the very start of the game, she quickly showcases her skills in using a probe-style lockpick, and her tireless enthusiasm for this kind of work is evident. Although, like those who came before her, such as Dash Rendar and former Jedi Kyle Katarn, she has never truly stepped out of Han Solo's shadow—just another smuggler with a heart of gold.

The difference is that Kay is always accompanied by a cute little pet, Nix, with short whiskers around his furry little head that resemble six fingers, making him quite adept at various sneaky operations. Since they botched the vault heist at the beginning of the game, this humorous duo is forced to crash-land their stolen ship, the "Trailblazer," elsewhere, arriving at the stunning but perilous desert planet of Toshara, which has African savannah-like scenery.

Over the next twenty hours of gameplay, Kay and Nix will be drawn into various risky rescue missions and shady underworld deals, traversing and exploring the four main planets and pirate-infested space. Along the way, they will try to unite a group of like-minded outlaws, all in an effort to return to Canto Bight to clean up the mess left behind and erase the bounty placed on Kay by crime boss Slytherin.

This ruthless casino owner is the main antagonist in "Outlaws," appearing quite intimidating but neither as evil as Emperor Palpatine nor as insidious as Grand Admiral Thrawn. He usually keeps a certain distance from the protagonist and only appears in a few cutscenes.

Even so, "Outlaws" is filled with interesting exploration in its story. Kay will visit some familiar places, like Jabba's Palace on Tatooine, where they have also recreated the dungeon beneath the palace, leaving a deep impression. Additionally, there are new locations, such as the massive Republic-era cruiser wreckage on Toshara. During this time, they will also have to deal with countless different criminals, including a temperamental Sullustan thug on Akiva, who brazenly orders you around while propping his feet on a table made from his carbon-frozen brother (proven by Captain Solo himself that carbon freezing isn't fatal at all).

Although the 2018 film "Solo: A Star Wars Story" showcased similar scenery on the big screen, the effect was less than satisfactory. However, the crime story in "Outlaws" feels like a fresh experience (at least in terms of gameplay), as it almost entirely abandons the duels between lightsaber wielders. Additionally, Kay's profit-driven motivations mean that the protagonist's conflicts rarely go beyond the realms of the Resistance and the Empire, much like "Andor."

In fact, this is a heist story through and through, merely set in a richly detailed and beloved sci-fi universe many of us have grown up with. The game carefully reimagines this setting, much like other "Star Wars" themed games. "Outlaws" feels a bit like a Guy Ritchie crime film. By the time I got to the end, I had witnessed so many shocking betrayals and deceptions that the plot became increasingly tangled, much like the HDMI cables behind my TV. "Outlaws" delivers a conclusion with a rebellious spirit, and Kay ultimately transforms from a profit-driven rogue into an empathetic partner.

Although her ultimate goal may be much smaller than blowing up a Death Star, the world stage Kay inhabits is unexpectedly grand. We need to clarify upfront that this game is neither "No Man's Sky" nor "Starfield," so you can't freely fly around each planet or land wherever you please.

However, aside from the relatively compact cityscape of Kijimi, the other sandbox areas in "Outlaws" are generally vast and form a sharp contrast with each other—from the iconic arid deserts of Tatooine (where the sand is coarse, rough, and gets everywhere) to Akiva's dense rainforests, crisscrossed with river networks that you can turn into convenient highways by unlocking the waterborne driving upgrade for your speeder bike.

Kay's speeder bike can be upgraded with various additional features, such as performing a "bunny hop" trick, which is a nice design since it's your only mode of transportation while exploring each planet. Despite seeing many vehicles coming and going in the bustling settlements of "Outlaws," with some people leisurely riding dewbacks and towering AT-ST walkers patrolling the area, you can't ride or drive these vehicles.

Looking back at "Grand Theft Auto V" from ten years ago, where you could obtain any vehicle in sight, and last year's "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," where you could freely create your own vehicles, the limited types of available transportation in "Outlaws" are quite disappointing for a modern open-world adventure game. However, thanks to the continually unlockable new features, the overall gameplay doesn't become monotonous, but it's just passable.

"Assassin's Creed: Star Wars"

However, in "Outlaws," the player's goal is not just as simple as getting from point A to point B. Along the way, Kay will inevitably deal with various criminal organizations and need to infiltrate different Imperial bases and criminal territories. These facilities typically have multiple entry points; for example, you can choose to find an underground ventilation duct and crawl in, or use a grappling hook to swing over high walls. Just make sure to mark these points of interest with binoculars first (a basic operation in Ubisoft games).

Kay has a furry little partner, Nix, who is crucial to the game's stealth gameplay because he can basically be considered a space cat drone, functioning similarly to the smartphone in "Watch Dogs." You can hide behind cover, have him interact with switches, or briefly distract security cameras to allow safe passage. He can also cling to guards' faces, giving you the opportunity to knock out enemies and send them to sleep, among various other assists.

Nix is undoubtedly a very obedient good boy, so after every job, I never hesitate to let him happily feast at a street vendor. The reason I enjoy this eating mini-game, besides the pleasant experience, is mainly that these mini-games can provide me with special dishes that further enhance Nix's skills.

Kay also has her own special skills for infiltrating these heavily guarded facilities. Personally, I'm not a fan of the symbol-based puzzle challenges in "System Shock," where you have to play an electronic mini-game to deactivate cameras and reprogram sentry turrets, which feels like trying to solve a crossword puzzle in a foreign language (although you can convert symbols into numbers if that makes it easier for you to understand).

However, I never got tired of the rhythm-based lockpicking mechanics in this game, which are as intuitive as "Simon Says" yet incredibly effective, making it one of the quickest and most satisfying lockpicking methods I've experienced in a long time.

But overall, the stealth gameplay in "Outlaws" still feels somewhat incomplete. Sometimes stealth is overly simple, like when I use the whistle-lure-and-assassinate routine from "Assassin's Creed," luring enemies one by one to my hiding spot and then stacking their limp bodies like firewood.

Other times, the stealth system in this game becomes quite unpredictable. For example, when performing a stealth takedown, even when there are no other witnesses around, the alarm somehow gets triggered, causing all my efforts to hide to go down the drain, making the situation spiral out of control and leading to other issues.

Smuggler's Gunfights

"Outlaws" offers players a solid cover-based shooting system with realistic sound effects and powerful smoke and gunfire effects. However, due to a lack of overall innovation, it lacks the novel design of "XCOM" and feels more like a standard shooter.

Whenever Kay enters a combat zone, there are always a few explosive barrels placed around, so I generally make full use of these flammable and explosive targets in each encounter, thinning out the ranks of these stormtroopers and criminal gangs before mopping up the remaining forces. To prevent my blaster from overheating, I also have to constantly keep an eye on active reloading during the process. The combat challenges are all about mastering the timing to detonate the barrels to eliminate as many enemies as possible, but we've been doing this for decades, so while it's fun, it's not enough to make the combat design in "Outlaws" stand out.

The simplified gunplay in this game can also be accelerated through triggering Kay’s "Adrenaline Surge" skill. This skill charges when she takes damage, and upon activation, it slows down time, allowing for quick marking of multiple targets and hip-firing at them (essentially the same as the "Dead Eye" mechanic in the "Red Dead Redemption" series). This skill is quite practical and cool in most cases, although I occasionally found Kay shooting directly at the cover in front of her after some stylish maneuvers, rather than at the targets I marked.

Kay can only carry her own blaster and grenades at all times, which is a somewhat limited design. Although she can pick up and use weapons dropped by enemies (such as the A300 Blaster Rifle and the Z-6 Rotary Cannon with a built-in shield), she has to discard them when the ammo runs out. In short, you can assign Nyx to help you pick up these weapons, which is a unique pet interaction mechanic in this game.

But the way "Outlaws" handles these secondary weapons is simply eye-opening, giving the impression that it is deliberately forcing the player to discard these weapons. Every time you perform a melee attack, you have to drop your weapon; when you climb into a ventilation shaft, you have to drop your weapon; when you climb walls or ladders, you again have to drop your weapon. Who came up with this brilliant idea? RoboCop?

If I pick up a sniper rifle, wouldn't the reasonable thing be to take it to a vantage point where it can be used to its fullest potential? But in reality, I often get one-shotted by enemy snipers positioned on high ground, even when I’m still hiding behind cover, which is truly infuriating. Why do those Imperial scum have such superb weapon-handling skills, and I don't?

Despite the combat system being very simple and highly repetitive, as the game progresses, I did become more interested in the combat mechanics, especially when I could upgrade my blaster and gain more firing modes. For example, the ion module configuration can significantly improve effectiveness against droids and temporarily disrupt enemy shields, while the energy module configuration can cause an explosion upon a charged hit, punishing those heavily armored Gamorrean guards. This design is threefold, effectively giving the player three weapons that can be switched at will.

At the same time, I also appreciate how "Outlaws" expands Kay's various skills through in-game challenges (mainly to complement the traditional skill tree system), adding some reward objectives for completing challenges, such as unlocking a rather useful fake surrender move after performing a certain number of melee kills, catching enemies who have already spotted you off guard.

Nevertheless, the combat system in this game never quite reaches the best standards of flexibility and fun as seen in Ubisoft’s own "Far Cry" series, and subsequent combat quickly becomes incredibly tedious, with the occasional encounters with probe droids or Rancors (but that only involves adding bigger exploding barrels).

The chase combat design in this game is even more laughable, but you have to admit it becomes one of the most humorous aspects of the game. Once you get into a vehicle, you can’t aim freely. Instead, you can only try to dodge the hail of bullets from pursuers while waiting for your adrenaline to charge up until you can finally activate that bullet-time multi-kill ultimate to cut off these persistent tails.

But here’s the problem: since you often need to shoot at enemies behind you, and the camera is always so sluggish, taking a long time to turn back to the front, I often find myself crashing straight into a rock I didn’t have time to dodge right after executing such a multi-kill, just like those scouts chasing Luke in the forests of Endor who ended up crashing spectacularly. On the other hand, if I speed toward a cliff and brake at the last moment, I can watch those pursuers fly right past me and crash into the cliff, which is equally fun. At least in this game, chase combat is equally dangerous for both enemies and me.

Since this is a "Star Wars" game, "Outlaws" naturally features space combat. Basically, every time I pilot Kay’s ship, the "Trailblazer," through a hyperspace jump, I immediately find myself in a cinematic dogfight. Whenever I get tired of the grueling stealth missions on various planets, I often choose to sneak out and bully some TIE fighters, which is indeed a good way to vent frustration. However, aside from adding an auto-turret and a rapid-fire cannon, I haven’t made many modifications to this ship, as the opponents I encountered didn’t seem too challenging.

In fact, I didn’t spend much time exploring space because although you can find resources among the floating debris, my inventory is always filled with alloys and fabric conveniently stolen from various enemy outposts, so there doesn’t seem to be much need to venture into space for more resources. In this regard, "Outlaws" does not limit the number of items players can carry (except for weapons and health-replenishing "Bacta flasks"), which I find comforting because I can pick up any resources I find without worrying about the cumbersome item management like in "Starfield" or "Resident Evil."

The Intrigue of Criminal Forces

Although you may have seen similar content in many "Star Wars" games, one of the most interesting and novel features in "Outlaws" is the criminal network system, which reminds me of the reputation system in "The Outer Worlds." Simply put, throughout the entire game, it's basically impossible to please all four criminal factions while completing a task, and you will always offend one side. If you get along well with a particular criminal faction, they might order their merchants to give you a big discount, but conversely, you won't be able to move freely in the territory of the faction you've offended.

This is a rather clever system that makes each task more meaningful, rather than just checking off a task list and mindlessly moving on to the next task, because you need to carefully decide which faction to sell the stolen goods to and evaluate the benefits you gain from it. At one point, I was on such good terms with one faction that I could ruthlessly pressure a shopkeeper under their control to give me a rare item for free, in exchange for a favor I promised to do for him, although I had no intention of keeping my promise because I had already planned to betray them.

It's worth mentioning that this system is vastly different from similar gameplay in "Mass Effect," because the various decisions I made in "Outlaws" don’t seem to have a significant impact on the overall plot’s ending, but I did get an authentic rogue experience, as I constantly had to reassess whether to keep my promises in each deal to maximize benefits at that time. For example, before I prepared to explore the surface of Tatooine, I made sure to gain the favor of the Hutt Cartel, as Jabba’s thugs control large areas of the planet, and if I wanted to complete a full exploration, I had to avoid unnecessary conflicts as much as possible.

Being able to explore without obstruction is crucial because, as you shuttle between the four main planets, the game naturally guides you to discover secrets or uncover opportunities. Every time I overheard certain conversations in a bar or finished reading some forgotten datapad texts, the game would point me to locations where I could find new treasures or get sure-win betting tips for the races. This design gives me a sense of achievement in my exploration, rather than the force-fed tasks typical of most other open-world adventure games.

This game indeed has some bloated and tedious side quests, such as uninspired racing events and fetch quests, but it also has many excellent side quest designs, like trying to match holographic images with specific landmarks (somewhat similar to Link's Sheikah Slate) to track down hidden treasures with rich rewards like a large amount of credits and equipment, which can later be used to customize Kay's outfit and vehicles.

However, where "Outlaws" truly shines in its quest design is in its ability to turn seemingly insignificant side objectives into thrilling multi-stage adventures, which often pleasantly surprise me. One unforgettable example is a mission where you’re tasked with finding upgrade parts, but the situation quickly escalates into a life-threatening ordeal, and suddenly I found myself thrown into the domain of a sarlacc, launching into a tense escape from the giant sandworm.

"Outlaws" can combine countless "Star Wars" elements and "Uncharted"-style spectacular action-adventure scenes, and it’s precisely because of these incredibly vivid and unexpected plot twists that this game can truly shine. So far, I’ve completed many similar quests. Considering that I missed a lot of seemingly equally unremarkable side quest opportunities earlier in the game, there may be even more tasks I have yet to discover.

However, to fully enjoy "Star Wars: Outlaws," you must learn to accept the game’s shortcomings, especially in the PS5 version I played, where the bugs are truly outrageous. Throughout the game, I witnessed NPCs dropping their guns from their hands, only to have them slide back like a yo-yo; guards getting stuck in terrain or walking through walls; speeder bikes coming to a sudden halt when trying to descend a slope; and repetitive texture bugs, like when you crouch to enter stealth mode after climbing onto a platform, Kay would immediately clip through the platform and fall; the ship experiencing strange black screens when entering space; the climbing button interactions not responding; chaotic mission navigation; crucial mission objectives disappearing, forcing me to reload a save; suddenly teleporting both bike and rider to another location on the map while driving; and countless instances where the dialogue audio completely disappeared.

There’s no doubt that it’s hard to eavesdrop on what someone’s saying when they suddenly turn into the worst mime on all of Tatooine. Although I’m tired of saying it, I still want to suggest: if the issues mentioned above are enough to make you want to quit, it might be best to wait for Ubisoft to fix them before considering diving in.

Summary

Ironically, Kay’s ship is called the "Trailblazer," but there’s actually not much groundbreaking design in "Star Wars: Outlaws." Many of the creative ideas in this game have already appeared in other open-world action-adventure games. Instead, this game feels more like the "Millennium Falcon," a hodgepodge of scavenged parts cobbled together into a beat-up ship, but when it’s at its best, it can still greatly satisfy the ultimate fantasies of "Star Wars" fans.

The criminal network system is cleverly designed, deeply immersing players in the weight of every choice within missions, with some quest designs being very creative, often bringing unexpected surprises. Having friends like Nyx always by your side not only adds an extra dimension to Kay, the otherwise unremarkable smuggler character, but also grants her a series of more practical skills. However, even with these advantages, it cannot cover up the game’s stiff and repetitive stealth and combat mechanics, not to mention the string of optimization issues that are hard to ignore at launch. But, I’m sure most people probably expected that.

Pros

• The semi-open exploration of several "Star Wars" planets is refreshing.

• High-quality art that meets fans’ expectations.

• Outstanding mission design and plot twists.

Cons

• Lack of groundbreaking new designs and creativity.

• Some item-related designs are puzzling.

• Stiff and repetitive stealth missions.

• Dull combat experience.

• Endless bugs.

Review ScoreThe criminal network system is cleverly designed, deeply immersing players in the weight of every choice within missions, with some quest designs being very creative, often bringing unexpected surprises. Having friends like Nyx always by your side not only adds an extra dimension to Kay, the otherwise unremarkable smuggler character, but also grants her a series of more practical skills. However, even with these advantages, it cannot cover up the game’s stiff and repetitive stealth and combat mechanics, not to mention the string of optimization issues that are hard to ignore at launch.