Star Wars: Battlefront II
This is not the Star Wars game you are looking for.
Returning to the Star Wars universe with a new Battlefront game should have been a glorious occasion. However, that is by far not the case. The choices made by the developers and EA have tragically mired what could have been a great game into a state of failure that it is likely to never recover from. The talk will focus on the microtransactions but the problems are much deeper.
One of the main gripes of the previous game was the lack of a proper campaign. You can check that one off with this game but you can add a few strikes against the game for it as well. Some have called it "poorly written fan fiction" and I'm not sure that is inaccurate. The story starts out in a strange place and never steadies itself. In fact it becomes more confusing when not only does the main character switch alliances but you also end up playing as other characters several times. Even the task you are sent out to do in the story don't fit together. There is the sense that the writing was split between groups that were not working together and nobody bothered to check the final product before shipping it. Then there is the last bit of the game that was like a fever dream and felt completely nonsensical. Not to mention the fact that where they left off on the story felt very incomplete and ripe for DLC that should have been part of the game to begin with and not an add on.
There is no need to finish the campaign before hitting the multiplayer but for those that venture in will find more frustration. The gameplay itself is not the issue but rather every system around it. Not only are you leveling your account you will be leveling each class, independently, as well as leveling cards that you assign to those classes. Even with removing the paid loot boxes this system is a mess. Credits can be earned to buy boxes or rewards are earned by hitting certain marks such as number of kills or the like. Even after you get cards for a character you may not be able to equip them if the class you are playing as is not leveled up enough. Frequently you will see that other players that are doing well in a match are higher ranked than you may be and have three cards equipped. This is nothing less than a design flaw with the game to allow the gameplay balance to be ruined by add-on items that were originally to be sold for real world money.
What makes me sad about this game is that it could have and should have been better. The idea of a proper campaign was a big selling point to me. The fact that it is only a few hours long is not an issue but the fact that the story is bad is. I didn't connect with any of the characters and jumping to other characters mid-story made it even less of an investment. The best thing that can be said for the game is the technical pieces of it but that is not enough to account for the bad parts. Graphically this is an awesome looking game. The PS4 version that I played is frankly one of the best looking games I've seen on my original PS4. Everything from the environments to faces have great detail and look realistic. Add to the looks the authentic sounds of Star Wars and this game had the potential to be immersive yet it fell short. The only complaint I had on the technical level was the rolling while using a starship. For whatever reason it really bothered me to the point of becoming nauseous and keeps me from playing much less enjoying those modes.
The saga that is this game is not over. I fully expect EA to comeback with the microtransactions. They didn't build all the systems to support it just to abandon it and it is likely part of their financial reports so... yeah, plenty of motivation to put those back in. Not that people are going to be pleased with any manner of these but we will have to accept them nonetheless. With that said, the microtransactions are not the biggest problem in the game. To me, the biggest problem is the progression systems and how the cards can unbalance the game. Those issues are not likely to be patched in any manner and will probably keep me, and maybe others, from enjoying the game.
