Star Wars Battlefront II: After Patches

Star Wars Battlefront II is regarded as an awful, rushed game with an abundance of overpriced micro-transactions, and shady loot boxes. This was the case in November of 2017 when the game originally released; to this day people still scoff and blow Battlefront II off as it was some cancer on the game industry. It’s been two years since, and the team at DICE has been hard at work making balance changes and adding new maps, modes, heroes, villains, and even more outfits that are sure to get Star Wars fans excited.

Now I first played Battlefront II on the release date. Being the Star Wars fan that I am I couldn’t help but get pumped for a new single-player story that runs parallel with the original trilogy; yet also ends right before The Last Jedi. I played through the roughly four-hour campaign in a single sitting, and I wasn’t as disappointed as others were for a few reasons. First: I had read the prequel novel Star Wars Battlefront II: Inferno Squad, so I had more time to see the struggles of the main character Iden and her crew. It also allowed me to see how it would make sense for a life-long imperial to change sides and join the rebels.

Secondly, I enjoyed the base story, seeing new characters that help expand on the Empire and help the audience sympathize with them when they’re normally painted as the faceless bad guys. I loved running through the forests of Endor and experiencing the lightning storms on the Imperial planet of Vardos. The campaign showed so much respect and love to Star Wars and that is thanks to writer and life long Star Wars fan, Mitch Dyer. It is also thanks to the lead writer for Spec Ops: The Line, Walt Williams. The Battlefront II campaign was filled with Easter eggs and references that aren’t only meant for the hardcore fan who has read every book and seen all the animated shows, but also things the more casual fan could pick up.

After the main campaign ended I was really excited to take a look at the first free update, Star Wars Battlefront II: Resurrection; which was made available a week before the release of The Last Jedi. The Resurrection update was a continuation of Iden’s story that had taken place during The Force Awakens. Here we get an emotional journey as Iden and her daughter Zay are on a mission for revenge after Iden’s husband is killed by a former member of Inferno Squad. These new missions added some much-needed emotion and motivation that the original story kinda lacked.

Battlefront II’s campaign did suffer from repetitive missions, and unless you were going back for the extremely easy to find collectibles, it was mostly a one-and-done playthrough. However, that’s where multiplayer comes in. Multiplayer in Battlefront II started as extremely unbalanced, chaotic, and had pay-to-win elements with its star card system. In this system, players could pay real-world cash for in-game currency that would allow them to upgrade these cards. Upgrading the cards allowed player health to last longer, made explosives more powerful, and made the hero characters were virtually invincible to a new player.

This, along with slow unlocks and a lack of progression lead me to stop playing shortly after the Resurrection update, though I did hop on a bit during the Solo season; I didn’t stick around very long due to similar issues though. It wasn’t until The Clone Wars update that i got into the multiplayer for a bit longer than I would have otherwise. In this update, we saw a new map on Geonosis, new heroes Anakin and Obi-Wan along with two new villains Count Dooku and General Grievous. It also introduced new clone appearances from the different companies and a host of general improvements.

There are still a host of problems that unfortunately cannot be solved with a few updates, due to the fact that key gameplay and character progression are baked straight into the core of the game. Problems remain like unbalanced teams, with one team always seem to have a distinct advantage when defending objectives in modes like Galactic Assault and Capital Supremacy. The issues extend all the way to the match-ups of Heroes VS Villains, where depending on your star cards and how powerful they are, it can feel like you have no chance unless you grind out other game modes to get in-game currency.

The last big thing Battlefront II was criticized for was its microtransactions. Players used to be able to purchase crystals to unlock loot boxes that would unlock star cards, but now crystals are for cosmetic items only; and leave most of the unlocking of in-game items to long grinding that gives very little payoff. Now don’t get me wrong I’m an RPG fan and love grinding in games as long as it gets me the feeling of satisfaction, but in Battlefront II I got nothing but an empty feeling as I was going for credits to unlock new heroes and weapons.

After the patches, I had a lot of fun with Star Wars Battlefront II, but most of the time I was playing on the same two maps, switching sides, and I would feel bored after an hour or so and would think of playing something else. However, I still find myself going back every once and a while when I get the urge to live in that universe and play out some chaotic battles on some amazingly detailed environments, with Iconic characters.

At the time of publishing, Battlefront II is worth the $18 or so it would cost to purchase, and doesn’t deserve all the hate and negativity that it gets now. Sadly, with no new announced content on the roadmap at the moment, I think I can safely say that I probably won’t pick Battlefront II back up until some new content gets released.