Revenge of the Savage Planet (XS)

By Brandon J. Wysocki 12th May 2025 | 2,191 views 

  
Revenge of the Savage Planet is the sequel to 2020’s rightfully well-received Journey to the Savage Planet.  Revenge has switched from the first-person perspective featured in Journey, but keeps, and improves upon, the action-adventure gameplay.  Still replete with Metroidvania elements and satire, the sequel offers more of everything from the original.

  

  

It doesn’t take Revenge long at all to return to the first title's entertaining absurdity.  You’re immediately greeted by the goofy character animations (thanks to the third person view) and witty humor that is officially a hallmark of the series.  While I'm speculating and don’t want to spoil any of it, it feels like at least some of the corporate satire parallels some of the story of the team behind the first game and which, ultimately, formed the new studio behind this sequel.  It’s a feel-good story in real life that merits looking into if you’re unfamiliar.  Regardless of any real or imagined similarities contained in the narrative of the game, it serves as a nice background to the action and exploration.

  

The gameplay feels tight and offers varied elements with steady pacing.  With a nice selection of upgrades (most of which you’ll almost certainly unlock as you progress), the game gives a satisfying sense of agency as you explore the handful of modest-sized world maps; it allows you to choose the order of the upgrades, but also provides a palette of strong platforming and traversal options that make exploring fun and rewarding.  A number of times throughout our playthrough, we would access an area or item that, both in terms of the effort it took and some of comments made by Eko (your floating robot companion), gave us the sense that we had reached that area sooner than intended.  Even if that’s inaccurate, the fact that we felt it was possible speaks to a pleasant sense of freedom in Revenge.

  

    

New additions include base/home decoration and animal capture.  The latter serves as a nice complement to scanning items to flesh out the Kindex (codex), and is a nice way to interact more positively with the often adorable creatures you’ll be, sometimes inadvertently, obliterating throughout the different worlds.  The decoration aspect is a nice diversion and, of course, has some humorous aspects.  It added significance to exploring the world maps for stashes of money so that you can (rather inexplicably) order a variety of furnishings and customize your base to your liking.

  

Likely owing to it losing its novelty, the toilet humor wasn’t as entertaining for me in this sequel.  Your mileage may of course vary.  That said, the gameplay, upgrades, Metroidvania, and collectathon elements are all improved.  Graphics and performance are excellent too, even in splitscreen co-op (which is a lovely option that, along with “system link”, I wish was more commonplace).  In testing on the Series S, performance remained smooth, including in splitscreen play, but the graphics take a hit.  Most noticeable when in motion, there’s a blurry effect/look.  It remains a good-looking title despite that, but definitely a less ideal experience.  The experience on Steam, on our solid rig, was at least as good as on the Series X.   

  

  

Aside from some very minor technical issues, some of which have already been addressed, it’s hard to find much to not like in Revenge.  Its 15-20 hours of gameplay are a thoroughly enjoyable experience; I'll absolutely be revisiting the game and hope to see a sequel and/or other titles from developer Raccoon Logic in the future.  My co-op partner (thanks, Donovan!) enjoyed it so much as to purchase the Deluxe Edition on Steam on day one, even though we had already completed a near 100% playthrough. 

  

  

Revenge of the Savage Planet falls short of brilliance simply because it doesn’t aim for it.  This isn’t a title that’s going to revolutionize video games or present a story that changes your life.  Instead, Raccoon Logic focused on delivering a comprehensively good time, and it succeeded in that!  Whether you’re a Game Pass subscriber or buying it conventionally, it’s easy to recommend if you enjoyed the original or the action/adventure genre in general.