Star Wars Battlefront 2
What a piece of junk!
Developer DICE / CRITERION GAMES / MOTIVE STUDIOS • P ublisher EA • P rice $ 89.99 • A vAilAble At ORIGIN, RETAIl ea.com/en-gb/games/starwars/battlefront/battlefront-2 Greed
is the path to the Dark Side. Greed leads to microtransactions. Microtransactions lead to loot crates. Loot crates lead to suffering. But I’m not even going to take the microtransactions into account for this review. Why? Well, they were turned off at launch and were still off at the time of review. Also, they’re far from the only problem with the game.
But first, some good stuff. Star Wars Battlefront II’s presentation makes me starry-eyed. It certainly looks and sounds pitch-perfect, whether it’s the Dice-forged multi, Motive-built campaign (which is a love letter to Star Wars fans), or Criterion-constructed Starfighter Assault.
Criterion has, mercifully, rebuilt the starfighter handling from the ground up, and it’s a lot of fun. It doesn’t have the depth of a space sim, of course, but it makes Dice’s Fighter Squadron mode look like Jar Jar Binks by comparison. Starfighter Assault is the most fun I had with Battlefront II outside of the campaign. From the tweaked handling, the busy but informative UI, and the sheer joy of dogfighting, this is the Star Wars dogfighting you’ve been looking for.
Interestingly, it’s the prequels that shine in this mode, with the varied starfighters and better objective-based maps. It’s just a damn shame that the progression system is tied to loot crates.
This isn’t relegated to Starfighter Assault; it’s rampant across Battlefront II, and it’s the biggest gameplay flaw of all multiplayer modes. In a hidden progression system, play time isn’t at all linked to progression of that role. Instead, ranking up a trooper, special unit, hero, villain, starfighter, or hero/ villain ship is exclusively determined by the number and quality of Star Cards you have for that role.
The best way to get Star Cards is from loot crates. Otherwise, you’re reliant on crafting parts to purchase or upgrade Star Cards to rank-up your roles, which lets you personalise up to three ability slots, depending on your rank. There’s an added catch. While troopers have a mix of passive and active Star Cards – the latter of which are restricted to specific slots, which is actually balanced – every other role has only passive ability Star Cards. These passive Cards impact base values like damage, health, and cooldown times.
It means luck plays a bigger role than it should, in terms of loot crate dice rolls. In fairness, there are moments of fun to be had, in almost every mode. Clutch moments make you feel godlike, and close matches are great. But they’re a rarity, because there’s no team balancing, in terms of skill, or even numbers. Hell, you can’t even switch teams, and there’s still no server browser for multiplayer.
It’s a damn shame because there is a solid, accessible shooter experience buried beneath these balancing issues. Future updates might help it, but if my time with the game is any indication, where the smaller modes are already dying, the community likely won’t stick around long enough to wait for the necessary hydrospanner work. NATHAN LAWRENCE
ranking up is exclusively determined by the number and quality of Star Cards you have