Star Wars Outlaws review for Nintendo Switch 2

System: Switch 2
Release date: September 4, 2025
Developer: Massive Entertainment
Publisher: Ubisoft

Star Wars Outlaws may not have met Ubisoft’s sales expectations when it first released on other platforms last year, but for many fans of the franchise, it’s a dream game all the same. There are plenty of titles based on the IP where you can play as a lightsaber-wielding hero, but Outlaws pursues a different goal: making the player feel like a bounty hunter in a seedy, unsafe part of the Galaxy where trust comes at a premium and everyone wants to kill you. It’s also a very ambitious game for a device like Switch 2, so I was excited to see how the game would play on Nintendo’s new console after a year’s worth of updates and new content.

It’s true that Star Wars Outlaws is, in may ways, the same type of open-world action-adventure experience that seasoned gamers will have already played many times over: it’s filled with enemy bases to clear, repetitive-by-design side missions, skills to unlock, and equipment to upgrade with resources you’ve collected. As such, one of the most common complaints I’ve seen since the initial launch last year is that this game once again follows the “Ubisoft Formula.” On the contrary, to reduce it to only those elements is to fail to see the forest for the trees. Star Wars Outlaws is built with not only a deep love for the Star Wars universe, but also many smart design decisions that make it feel significantly more fresh than I think some players may expect.

The protagonist, Kay Vess, is a fairly by-the-book scoundrel who, at the start of the game, has pissed off the wrong crime syndicate, steals a ship, and flees to the plains of the planet Toshara (one of several locations that can be visited of the course of the narrative). It’s a place filled with Imperial troops, bandits, and settlements filled with everyday folks just trying to get by. But the hub of the planet’s activities is Mirogana, a somewhat sketchy city that’s run just as much by criminal factions as it is the Galactic Empire. And it’s these factions – and how Kay chooses to help or hinder them – that helps make Star Wars Outlaws feel so unique.

There’s a core antagonist that Kay is trying to take down, but in order to do so, she’ll first need to make her way across the galaxy and build up a crew of allies. Her travels will take to places like the iconic Tatooine, the jungle planet of Avika, and the ice world of Kijimi, but no matter where she goes she’ll encounter other crime groups with goals of their own. These factions – the Pykes, the Crimson Dawn, the Hutts and the Ashiga Clan – control various territories, and are all basically working against one another. Everything Kay does will impact how these groups view her. Helping one faction will often piss off another. Taking on side missions or selling intel on the black market might be able to help Kay improve her reputation with certain factions, but getting caught stealing or trespassing, or indeed getting into combat at all with a faction, will bring her reputation right back down. The game is always tracking every action the player does, and at any time the player can see what their standing is with these groups to guide their strategy moving forward.

This reputation system isn’t just window dressing, either. If a faction trusts Kay, not only will they eventually let her just walk right into their territory, they’ll give her access to discounts at faction-controlled shops and even exclusive contracts targeting the other syndicates. On the other hand, if Kay’s reputation drops to the lowest possible level, they’ll shut her out from everything and try to kill her on sight. This system is incredibly engaging and frequently exciting, because it makes everything Kay does feel like it has high stakes. Sure, clearing out enemy bases is a fairly standard activity for an Ubisoft game of this scope, but knowing that getting caught sneaking would have actual repercussions makes the game so much more immersive.

Immersion may be a buzzword in some circles, but it really is what Outlaws does best, I’d say. Yes, there’s a world map that will eventually have many icons on it denoting activities to complete, but it’s the act of exploration itself that creates these opportunities in the first place. Maybe Kay will overhear a conversation at a gambling parlor that will tip her off to a possible cache of valuable goods somewhere in the world. Or maybe a data pad sitting on a counter, easily glossed over, might lead to an enemy stronghold hidden in a canyon somewhere. Even the cat of upgrading Kay’s abilities feels surprisingly organic, because it’s centered in part around completing certain tasks for her connections, rather than just navigating a skill tree. This more organic sense of discovery, combined with a more subtle navigation system that never overwhelms the UI, really helped me get sucked into the game. 

It also helps that Star Wars Outlaws is an immensely impressive Nintendo Switch 2 port. While it doesn’t look as nice as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series versions, the difference is less noticeable than you might expect, and at times it looks almost as good (to my, admittedly, aging eyes). The game uses DLSS to uprender to 1080p in handheld and 1440p while docked, so the game looks very sharp, and environments are dense with details. Even while zipping across the world on Kay’s speeder bike, there was very little texture or object pop-in, which impressed me. The only thing that didn’t look great to me was Kay’s hair, which had noticeable aliasing – something that seems to be more and more common these days.

In certain lighting, environments can look particularly stunning thanks to the game’s ray-tracing, which really makes space station interiors in particular pop – and let’s not gloss over how impressive it is that that’s possible on a handheld like Nintendo Switch 2 in the first place. The game also runs at a very stable 30 frames per second, and I encountered only a handful of frame drops when the action got intense. I did experience a small handful of crashes, but this actually tended to happen more when I was in the game’s menus than while actually exploring or fighting. Beyond that, the game ran extremely well. Make no mistake, this is one of the best third-party ports on Nintendo Switch 2 to date.

All that said, it is true that beyond the more interesting design choices that Star Wars Outlaws attempts, the game certainly treads a lot of familiar ground, too. There isn’t much innovation in the gunplay, for example, which feels pretty standard as far as third-person shooters go. Her blaster is her primary weapon, and while it doesn’t require ammo, it can overheat (although this can be mitigated with a carefully-timed pull of the trigger). Kay can also carry up to one enemy weapon at a time, although these are disposable and can’t be upgraded like her blaster.

Luckily, Kay has other tools she can use in combat, like smoke bombs and grenades, but perhaps her biggest asset is Nix. This little alien fellow hangs out with her 24/7, sitting on her shoulder, ready and waiting to leap into action at a moment’s notice. Nix can be sent to attack foes, distract them with his cuteness, or even activate explosives. While exploring, Nix can be sent to steal items off foes or activate switches to allow Kay to pass through otherwise locked areas. It’s certainly possible to get through fights by just blasting everything, but using Nix makes the game much more fun because it fits so well with Kay’s vibe. She’s not a seasoned professional, and she’s often outgunned, so getting a little scrappy and improvising in creative ways aligns well with her character.

Being sneaky is also a great way to go, and will be better for the player’s reputation over the course of the game if they can pull it off. Luckily, the game’s maligned instant-fail stealth missions have been made more forgiving, but getting caught is still not a great move. Kay’s skills in this regard can’t compete with the likes of Agent 47 – she won’t be moving bodies around or anything like that. She will spend a lot of time slinking through tall grass, shimmying through vents, and hacking into terminals to deactivate turrets and cameras, though, and I always got a kick out seeing Nix help me take down a foe from behind. I really enjoyed the stealth, partially because of how smoothly Kay moves, and partially because of how many ways I felt like I had to try and complete my objective.

Beyond infiltrating enemy territory, there’s plenty of other things to do in Outlaws to kill time. My favorite activity was Sabacc, which is a skill-based card game with bit of chance involved. It’s tricky to explain, but the goal is essentially to build the best hand of cards while also sabotaging other player’s chances to remain in the game. It’s simple to learn, but consistently entertaining to play and I never passed up an opportunity to enjoy a match when I stumbled across a table. There’s also the Star Wars equivalent of horse betting, which would be unremarkable if not for the fact that some matches are rigged, and if you find the right tips out in the world you can use that info to your advantage. Beyond that, there’s plenty to discover out in the various open world maps, from traversal challenges to races and emergent combat challenges.

And of course, I’d be remiss if I fail to mention the fact that this game doesn’t limit the action to the ground. Kay’s totally-legally-acquired ship, the Trailblazer, is her gateway to the stars, and while the space exploration isn’t on the same level as something like No Man’s Sky, it still plays a pivotal role in the game’s flow. After Kay ascends from a planet, she’ll enter the space immediately around that planet, and there’s plenty to do here too, although certainly it’s not as fleshed out as it could be. Some of the best story missions take place in space, with Kay needing to sneak into an imperial ship or something along those lines, before making a daring escape in the Trailblazer when things go wrong. She’ll get into dogfights with TIE Fighters and roaming bandits, and stumble across faction-controlled space stations to infiltrate. She’ll fly through debris fields to recover loot and equipment for mercenaries back on the ground. And of course, she’ll jump through hyperspace to reach the other planets available in the game (once the story allows). Her ship may not be the fastest or the strongest, but it’s nimble, and flying it is intuitive with an easy-to-master dual stick flight system. I always looked forward to my time in space; even when I felt like I wasn’t discovering something, just the act of flying felt empowering and exciting.

All of this taken together – the reputation system, the sense of adventure, the rewarding combat and stealth mechanics, and of course the incredible Star Wars vibes – really come together to form something special. There’s very little about this game that I didn’t love. The rough edges that the game launched with have been mostly sanded out, the porting work is excellent, and this version of Outlaws includes all the game’s previously released story expansions to boot. This game simply nails what it set out to do: create an open-world Star Wars fantasy where you get to explore a chunk of the galaxy as a bounty hunter who’s constantly pissing off the wrong person. It may not be wholly innovative or unique, but it’s excellent at just about everything it does, and it was exactly what I had hoped it would be.

Star Wars Outlaws isn’t just an excellent Star Wars game; it’s an exciting open-world adventure that makes its relatively straightforward gameplay loop significantly more interesting thanks to some smart design decisions. The game’s immersive reputation system raises the stakes of just about everything the player does, and really makes the word feel dynamic and interactive beyond what most other games in this genre attempt. It’s also an excellent port that runs very well on Nintendo Switch 2, and serves as a great showcase for just what this system is capable of. If you’re looking for a sci-fi world to get sucked into, and you want to feel like a blaster-slinging bounty-hunting badass, you’d be hard-pressed to find a more compelling and complete package than Star Wars Outlaws.

Star Wars Outlaws copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.