Star Wars Battlefront II Review

November 17, 2017Randy Guiles blog, Star Wars, Star Wars News, video games, What is New Comments Off on Star Wars Battlefront II Review

To be or Not To Be Great — Star Wars Battlefront II Review 

By Randy Guiles (@giggityguiles)

Back in 2015 EA brought the Star Wars fandom a reboot of one of the most popular games in Star War history, Battlefront. The fans rejoiced at a promise of being able to visit locations from their childhood in stunning graphics. Unfortunately, that is all the fans got. With no campaign, frustrating controls, and a pay to win system in place the game suffered the wrath of the critics and the fans. Battlefront was a beautifully crafted game that frustrated and upset Star Wars fans and fans of shooters in general. It is now 2017 and EA’s second attempt to bring the fandom a solid Star Wars game is upon us. Let’s look at Star Wars Battlefront II.

First off let’s start with the look and feel of the game. The graphics are as good as you can expect from a triple a title. The visuals immerse you fully into the worlds you have grown to love. With great sound as well, you feel like you are in the world of Star Wars. The controls have been reworked and feel sharper than in the previous installment. This reworking is noticed in the multiplayer mode, Starship Assault, the most. More on that later.

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Next let’s go over the game mode options that have been given to you. We will start you off with a list of what they are and then go into exactly what you be getting into. The multiplayer game modes are: Galactic Assault, Starship Assault, Heroes vs Villains, Strike, and Blast. EA has said in future DLC more game modes will be added as they continue to tweak and shape the multiplayer landscape. The other game modes you will be able to play are the Campaign and Arcade mode. Let’s go more in depth on the different Modes.

MODES OF PLAY

  • Galactic Assault – For anyone familiar with Battlefield this is your massive objective based scenario. With having up to 40 players on the field at one time this is the grandest scale battle you will have in the game. This mode has many locations like Hoth, Yavin IV, Endor, and Starkiller Base along with access to vehicles and Heroes. You take control to start of one of 4 classes and build up your battle points as you go through objectives to be able to come back as a Hero or Vehicle. The classes are Assault, Heavy, Officer, and Specialist. Each class has unique weapons and skills and will be the bread and butter across most of the game modes, except for one.
  • Starship Assault – This name says it all as you take control of one 2-3 starships (depending on which group you are) and fight others in epic Star Wars dogfights. The scoring system is similar as it is in Galactic Assault as you build up your points to unleash heroic ships. As stated before the controls here were completely revamped and is in my opinion the most enjoyable multiplayer mode in the game. The ship types you will be able to choose from are Fighter, Interceptor, and Bomber class and with points Heroic ships. Some of the heroic ships include Yoda’s Jedi Starfighter, Kylo Ren’s Tie Silencer, Darth Maul’s Scimitar, and Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing. All Heroic Ships come unlocked with the game.
  • Heroes vs Villains – This is 4 vs 4 straight up light side heroes vs dark side villains. Each round a specific heroic figure is picked to be taken down. Each side has a specific number of lives and the first side depleted of those lives loses. Some of the starter heroes are Rey, Kylo Ren, Yoda, Han Solo, Darth Maul, and Boba Fett. You can unlock heroes through credits as you go through the game like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. These unlocks were surrounded by controversy and will be hit on later.
  • Strike – Strike is an 8 vs 8 objective based match. Very similar to modes from other games like Capture the Flag and Sabotage. No heroes or vehicles are present in this mode.
  • Blast – Here is your 10 vs 10 team death match. No vehicles and no heroes are allowed. Each side starts out with 100 troops at their disposal. First team to be depleted of their troops loses.
  • Arcade – Arcade is a new mode for Battlefront as it allows 1-2 players to work together in specific scenarios for light side or dark side. For each mode completed you gain a star and a minimal amount of credits. This has the potential to be a fun way to learn about character classes and heroes. You will be able to hone your skills at your own pace and increase the difficulty as needed.
  • Campaign – One of, if not the biggest, gripe fans had with the 2015 reboot is the lack of a single player campaign. The developers listened to this and gave us a canonical story set between the end of Return of the Jedi and the beginning of The Force Awakens. You play Iden Versio played by Janina Gavankar (True Blood, Sleepy Hollow, Far Cry 4) through motion capture and voice over. Iden is the commander of Inferno Squad, a high trained spec ops group for the Empire. You follow her as she runs missions behind the scenes for the Empire. On Endor the squad bears witness to the destruction of the second Death Star. Iden is summoned by an Admiral who shares with her the final words of the Emperor, played through a messenger, after his death. She learns about Operation Cinder and is tasked with help carrying it out.

Now that we have gone over the game modes and given you a look at what you will be diving into let’s tackle some of the controversies this game has already garnered. Before the EA Play early release for PC on Sunday it was shown that Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker would cost 60,000 credits to unlock as you go on. A reddit user sent EA a chart showing that if you were to grind out the credits to unlock one of them alone it would take over 40 hours of gameplay. The chart also showed it would take over 4,500 hours or $2100 to unlock everything in the game. In what turned out to be a turning point in this is EA responded in turn by saying that the initial level of credits was set that way to give a player a sense of accomplishment in grinding to unlock Vader. EA had made the ultimate mistake and this post garnered them the most hate of any reddit post ever with almost 50,000 downvotes, possibly over by now. In response to this EA cut the costs by 75% for all heroes. This now makes Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader a more manageable 15,000 credits to unlock. Due to this change however, the credits you earn for completing the campaign has also been lowered. The other issue the fans had the most is the loot crate system, also known as the pay to win model that most shooters tend to follow now. Only Overwatch uses loot crates for cosmetic purposes and fans hope that other big companies follow this model.

As I was writing this EA announced that until further notice all in game purchases have been halted. The fans win once again. EA did state at a later date they will reinstitute it but not until after they have had the chance to fine tune the game. Lastly the campaign itself is shorter than most fans would like. It clocks in at around 7 hours to complete and is a little disjointed in its story telling even though the game itself is as polished as it is. However, through DLCs coming there will be more adventures to add to the story of Iden Versio and Inferno Squad.

Lastly let’s answer the biggest question here. Is this game for you? For the Star Wars lover in you this game is worth a look. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of multiplayer shooters this game offers many ways to get your Star Wars fix. If you love shooters in general and aren’t a huge Star Wars fan again pick this game up. There is plenty of fun to be had in any of the modes if you don’t really want to play the campaign or arcade. With no season pass and free DLC, why not give this game a shot. As for DLC expect the first season of downloads to be available in early December to coincide with the release of The Last Jedi. New Heroes will be added, Finn and Captain Phasma, along with new maps and locations.

Do not let the bad internet reviews fool you into thinking EA failed to deliver a good game. The mechanics of what they put together is a good game. It just has the unfortunate problem of being a triple a title of a big company trying to make money. Games like Destiny 2, Call of Duty World War II, Battlefield 1 all fall to this same issue. However, as I have said above EA is starting to listen to the fans and making changes as needed to appease them. This is new and refreshing for a big company like them to do this. With all the promises EA has given on Battlefront II, they are trying to live up to them. On a scale of 1-10 I give Battlefront II a 7.5 and as EA tweaks the game moving forward, it could go higher. Hope to see you all on the battlefield. May the Force be with you all.