In Battlefront II, I’m much less excited to unlock a new victory pose for Yoda because that means I received that instead of something that will actually improve my performance. This feels alright in a game like Overwatch, as your in-game performance isn’t dictated in part by the contents of its loot crates. More often than not, they unlock insignificant rewards like emotes and victory poses. Don't get your hopes up.Ĭrates can contain a variety of cards, and each one can apply to a class, a hero/villain character, or a vehicle. It takes a while to earn enough in-game currency to open one, and I consistently found myself disappointed by my rewards. These cards are earned by opening loot crates. Ability cards can grant you improved turrets and shields, increased damage, and new weapons like grenade launchers and homing missiles. Passive boosts improve health recovery and reduce incoming damage. Star cards are inherently tied to in-game abilities and effectiveness. Instead of expanding upon and improving the weak progression options from the last game, Battlefront II’s star card system excises the joy out of multiplayer. As disappointing as it is, it’s nowhere near as disastrous and potentially irreparable as the changes EA has made to multiplayer. One of my two hopes for this sequel was dashed by the weak campaign. These may have felt more welcome in a longer, more substantial campaign, but here they feel like cameos that overstay their welcome and distract from what little story there is with Iden.
#STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT EA RATING SERIES#
Despite being less than five hours long, four of the twelve missions are fan service sections that put you in control of series favorites like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo.
Iden’s lackluster story isn’t even her own. Iden's story takes a back seat at several points. Rather, it just brute forces you with tons of enemies. When difficulty spikes pop up, it’s not because the game throws well-crafted encounters at you.
Certain terminals will allow you to see live security footage of guards, implying that the game has some kind of significant stealth element (it doesn’t). Iden can collect up to eight abilities and four passive boosts, but these are basic tweaks like changing grenade types or improving cooldown times. Its campaign wants to create the illusion of depth. I won’t spoil explicit details, but major alignment changes happen in a jarring and sudden way that’s never really given enough thought or script time to feel like we should actually care about it. While the movies aren’t particularly subtle, everything in Battlefront II’s campaign is as obvious and hamfisted as possible. This being Star Wars, much of the threadbare story revolves around conflicts with her father and the general struggle of good versus evil. It introduces us to Iden Versio, a special forces soldier for the Galactic Empire and daughter of a stoic admiral. The campaign fails on the narrative front, as well. Iden's father Garrick is featured heavily in the story. It all looks great and controls fine, but that does little to remedy the extremely bland moment-to-moment action. It’s every boring objective you’ve ever played in a shooter campaign, but tossed into a blender with some shiny Star Wars stickers. Defend this guy while he activates a terminal. When you’re not mindlessly firing at the enemy, the objectives are rote and uninspired. If you feel like exploring your surroundings at all, you’re met with a “return to the mission” countdown the moment you step off the intended path. You’re pointed in the right direction and shuttled along from shootout to shootout. What could have been an interesting, canonical take on the Empire’s activities between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens instead feels like a Disney World ride. The sub-five hour story makes Call of Duty campaigns seem like nuanced, flexible affairs by comparison. If that delivered on the single-player front and progression was improved over the bare-bones star card system of the last game, there was little to keep Battlefront II from being a huge improvement over its predecessor. Early in its marketing cycle, EA trumpeted a single-player campaign as a core component of the sequel. Battlefront’s revival delivered in terms of presentation and fleeting multiplayer fun, but the lack of a substantial progression system or single-player campaign limited the long-term value of the game.īattlefront II had the potential to make good on its predecessor’s shortcomings. A new trilogy of films was about to hit theaters and enthusiasm for the brand was at its highest in recent memory. When Electronic Arts revived the Star Wars: Battlefront name two years ago, it laid the groundwork for what could have been a successful new take on the series.