Star Wars Outlaws (Switch 2) Review

With the Switch 2 still pretty fresh, the system has already shown it can handle some visually stunning games. Although we’re still in the early days of the console/handheld, and even when a game is ambitious, it wouldn’t be the first time a port has had a bumpy transition. Fortunately, Star Wars Outlaws is not one of these examples and gives hope for the future of the system.

Star Wars Outlaws is set in the time period between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. You play as Kay Vess, a rookie Scoundrel who wants to make a name for herself. Joined by her little fuzzy creature-in-crime Nix, Kay immediately bites off more than she can chew, getting hung out to dry, stealing a ship from a crime boss, and having to juggle loyalties between syndicates. To get out alive, Kay is roped into pulling a massive heist in hopes of trying to pay off the bounty on her head. With the help of the surprisingly burly commando droid ND-5, Kay will need to put a team together, sending you around the shadier parts of the galaxy.

You get to experience a few of the Star Wars’ more ruthless planets and the space surrounding them, with most of the action taking place as a third-person stealth/shooter Ubisoft Open World game, as you sneak around Imperial bases and smuggler hideouts. You also get to take your game to outer space in the Trailblazer, your home and base of operations for Kay and her crew.

The tricky part of Outlaws for me was having to remember Kay is meant to be a proper outlaw. The decisions you have to make for Kay aren’t usually the ‘nice’ or ‘nasty’ choices, but variations of whether you will cross someone or not for the sake of more credits, or where you want your reputation to go. While you might help along the way, you are also often looking to fill your coffers and walk the tightrope of different loyalties. Initially it can be a tricky decision as to which syndicate to side with, as being in poor standing with any one of them makes it harder (or outright deadly) for you to travel through their areas. Not only does it make it harder to do any other jobs through their turf, but if your name is mud, it’s even harder to win your way back into their good graces when their jobs are off the table too.

It turns out once you’ve had a bit more time to run a few jobs and earn some credits, you can mitigate this by buying and trading in valuable data to whichever syndicate you want to improve your standing with. It doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk if you want to keep good or excellent standing as often as possible, with bigger story missions often boosting your reputation with one party and a bigger hit to another. You get to at least choose your poison and then work your way back from there.

The Switch didn’t get much in the way of the more recent Ubisoft open world games. Outlaws moves on from some of the older open world trappings, but it can still get a little weighed down by what they couldn’t let go of. You no longer have to climb towers/lookouts to reveal more of the map area; now it’s more natural exploration of the world. Upgrades, however, are still bogged down with having to scour the worlds to grind for resources. It never feels too much, at least, either through just collecting anything in your path or being able to purchase some resources; you can still eke out a living in the Outer Rim.

Since the game originally came out on other platforms, there’s been some time for changes along the way in response to player feedback. If you played on one of those other platforms around launch, you may have seen these changes, now here from the start for your benefit. Stealth is more forgiving compared to the initial launch, no longer instantly failing a mission unless there’s a specific reason. I understand why people didn’t like it, although knowing you can shoot your way out of the situation diminishes some of the tension when you’re meant to be stealthy.

While each planet has its own central city, there’s plenty of time on Kay’s speeder bike as you speed around the surrounding areas too. The speeder bike can be fun to zoom across the planets’ surrounding areas. As you pick up more jobs for the syndicates, it helps you become pretty familiar with the wider world and locations, especially as some of the more generic ‘take this from point A to point B’ or ‘steal or plant something here’ can tend to happen at the same spots.

As expected with an open world game, there are a few side activities to help earn some extra credits. Most of the activities take the form of space gambling. There’s Fathier racing, Sabacc, and a space follow-the-card game. All are different enough, and Sabacc is tied to one of the additional ‘DLC’ missions that will require you to pay attention and learn how to play. You can also hop on an arcade game if you just want to aim for some high scores. If you want to get distracted picking up requests and jobs, you can be busy for many hours beyond the story. As always with big involved open world games, I eventually got to a point where I had to stop myself from getting distracted by these. Fortunately, the main story is pretty fun as it immerses you in the Star Wars universe; it’s up to you how far off the path you want to explore.

It’s still early days with what the Switch 2 is capable of when handling ports of more recent-gen games. Games like Cyberpunk have had years of work, including years of repairs to get to such a high point. Outlaws looks and runs better than most initially expected. It’s great to see companies making the effort to squeeze the most out of the hardware. The game generally runs at 30 FPS; it never felt like it really dipped often.

I had initially written about some visual issues that were around at launch. The biggest being Kay’s hair being distractingly shimmery, and a lot of metal elements were giving off an ethereal sparkle and shimmer. In October 2025, there have been a few patches, and there has been a bump up in texture quality, and any distracting shimmer or sparkling has reduced.

Hell, the team even managed to get the game’s file size under 20GB, which is wild that it was under 30GB in the first place! While it could be something further addressed by patches to come, there does feel like pop-in has become more noticeable in places. They’re often at times where it doesn’t matter; maybe it’s a trade-off currently for the increased detail. Regardless, the game looks great and has continued to so far. It gives me hope for other Ubisoft games on the way, like Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

The game sounds unmistakably Star Wars, without leaning into the famous symphonic movie score. Instead, it features grooving Cantina tunes, hitting up the jukebox whenever there is one to see what the Galaxy has to offer. It still gives that Star Wars feel, although it feels a little more like The Mandalorian than the John Williams hits. It should be no surprise that the other sounds within this universe are authentically Star Wars too, with no shortage of Gonks and other droids chirping and beeping amidst the blaster fire and engine roars.

Star Wars Outlaws is a wild space adventure. It feels like a part of the Star Wars universe as opposed to just trying to shoehorn Star Wars into a mismatching game. If you get overloaded on big open-world games, that is still a risk here, although finishing the game isn’t dependent on getting too bogged down either. Star Wars Outlaws is another great game to show off what the Switch 2 can do when devs get the opportunity to make it work for the hardware.

Rating: 4.5/5