Star Wars Battlefront 2 Beta Impressions: Buy or no?

The original Star Wars Battlefront games are some of my all-time favorite games. Mixing various eras of Star Wars to create incredible battles. You can have Darth Vader fight Mace Windu and so many more awesome battles. In 2015, DICE had made a reboot of the series. This made me very excited because I love Star Wars and the Battlefield series. Sadly, DICE delivered a poor game that had very little content. Battlefront 2 is coming and this weekend was the beta. Is it better than the first game? Sorta, but I will dive into all that I got to experience in the beta. I did not play everything available due to time restraints on other things in my life this will not be perfect.

Regarding my subjective perspective of having fun, I will say I did have fun in the beta. I did not have any fun playing the beta or full release of the 2015 reboot. This game added a class system much like a lot of other shooter games. You have a heavy, specialist, assault, and an officer class. I wish there were more to the support classes like the officer. I did not feel like I was able to really give my team that much support in battle. I played a little bit of the specialist who is more of a sniper class, but this map on Naboo wasn’t ideal for sniping. I still liked the abilities and loadout that I was given. My main go-to were either the heavy or the regular assault which is more focused on delivering some brute force. Each class gets 3 upgrades which I was not a fan of. The ones in the beta were not the most useful, but I am sure there will be more variety in the full release. The class system does help a lot in organizing on how to play and playing as a team. There are points rewarded when you get kills or complete objectives. You can spend these points on different characters or vehicles. I  prefer games to have vehicles laying around that I can jump in. I am too used to the original Battlefronts that had dozens of tanks and aircrafts that players can dive right in. The system they have works overall. Each team gets four additional characters. Two will be heavier and powerful such as a wookie or a Clone Jumptrooper. These special characters are fun and be a powerful force on the field. Then, of course, there are the heroes and villains. The beta has Han Solo and Rey as heroes, while the villains are Darth Maul and Boba Fett. Playing as these characters is a lot of fun. You do feel that power on the field, but you can get destroyed quickly if not careful enough. Unlocking these characters with points instead of a random pick up on the field is much better of a mechanic.  Now to move onto the two game modes.

The beta has a space combat game mode called Starfighter Assault and a large scale battle mode that is objective based called Galactic Assault which is, similar to what we see in Battlefield games. Space combat was surprisingly fun with pretty decent controls. It wasn’t entirely different from the first game, but having an actual space game mode makes it easier to move around instead of flying on the planets which were harder. The objectives on defending or destroying certain ships to help your team win were not satisfying to me. Even in the other game mode, the objectives did not make me feel like I was doing much, especially when I was defending. I compare the two modes so closely because they are so similar besides one being more of a grand scale battle and the other being a space oriented game mode. Also in, space battles are that it is not what it used to be in the original Battlefront 2. I miss going inside of the enemy’s main ship to go inside on foot to destroy it from the inside, or to shoot it with my fighter ships to kill the enemy from the outside. Instead, the game just has you shoot specified ships that lead you to win. There are fewer ships for the player to use too. The beta only had three ships, so hopefully, there are more in the full release. I mostly focused on Galactic Assault which was a 20v20 game type. The same problem with Galactic Assault is the same as Starfighter, the objectives are not fun. Most people were just fighting until the game ended. Even when we were all playing the objective to destroy or defend, it did not have a lot to it. The simplicity of the objective and the feeling that it was too easy killed the fun. If the defending team are on top of it, then they can quickly destroy the enemy MTT. Since most people ignore that, then you go into the other two phases in which the attackers, which are droids, will then win. All because the clones team are idiots who want to kill. If played right, it is a ton of fun if you like that Battlefield style gameplay.

The Strike which is 8v8 and Arcade 2vAI game mode I did not touch at all. I got distracted so I will wrap up saying that I did not entirely play the beta, but enough to know my opinions. It is not for me. If you like the 2015 reboot, then you will like this. It is improved in many ways. Just as stunningly beautiful and with incredible sound, which is what is expected out of DICE. I could stare at this game all day because it is that beautiful. The game has a loot box issue which is common to every game now. There is still the possibility of a lack of content, but we will see when the game is fully released. Story mode will be a great addition and it will be canon which will make any Star Wars fan excited. I will say, not to buy it, but do your research before spending your money to see if this is the game for you. We are not far from seeing the full product of this game. Star Wars Battlefront 2 releases November 17 of this year.

Image via Electronic Arts