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Star Wars Battlefront II: First Impressions
laxie
Member RarePosts: 1,118
This is a quick review of my Star Wars Battlefront 2 experience. It is based on eight hours of trial playthrough, which should be identical to the release experience. Two hours were in singleplayer and six hours of multiplayer.
I won't break down the review into positives and negatives, but instead into categories. If you are on the fence about buying the game, you can look at whatever is the most relevant to you.
Singleplayer
This was the biggest surprise. In multiplayer titles, such as the older Call of Duty games, it is common for the singleplayer to be a showcase of multiplayer maps, with some story slapped on. The developers recycle as much of the multiplayer content as possible. This is not the case here.
The game has a singleplayer campaign worthy of a stand-alone game. The first three missions (about 30 minutes each) are story driven experiences, with most sections clearly tailored for the single player game specifically. There is very little of simply killing stuff, with most of the time devoted to objectives tightly linked to the story. Even in something like a wild space battle, you are being directed to protect an important ship, to clear the tail of your wing pilot, or to disable the enemy target.
Most Star Wars fans will also enjoy the premise of the story. Without getting into spoilers, it is a new, canon story developed in collaboration with Lucas Films. It follows the story of an elite imperial trooper. There are a lot of nuanced themes, which is something I love about movies in general. It paints imperial troopers as much more than mindless followers. There were several subtle moments in the first three missions that explore empire in a way we rarely get to see in the movies.
The campaign isn't massive. There is around 10-12 missions total, which should translate to 5-6 hours plus cinematics. Playing on the hardest difficulty (there are three) isn't a giant challenge either. That said, the missions will likely be worthy of the single player label.
Multiplayer Maps
The game is graphically stunning. The terrain textures especially make the game stand out. This translates to impressive looking maps, comparable to the first game. There seems to be a larger variety, not just in terms of planets, but also in terms of the environment types. At times you are fighting through swampy fields, other times you are in tight structures, long city streets, larger open buildings, or vast outdoor spaces. It makes for a variety of different experiences and also encourages you to try out different classes. A sniper rifle is greatly superior on some points, while being completely useless on the next objective.
In contrast to the first game, the maps here seem to be a lot more thought out in terms of gameplay. For those who didn't play the first game, the maps were often in open areas, with objectives accessible from all sides. Battlefront 2 puts a lot more emphasis on directing players, which makes for a much more interesting multiplayer game. You are still free to move around the map as you please, but key objectives have terrain to support the idea behind them. It's little things like placing a hill on Jakku, letting the snipers juke it out across the map, as the others fight below them. Or having three access points to a capture point in a jungle - one where the defenders have a clear advantage, one for a head on clash, and one favouring the attackers.
Vehicles and Heroes
The special classes (including both vehicles and heroes) are unlocked through battle points. There are specific to each match (you always start with 0) and obtained by playing the game. You get 100-200 for a death, 100 for significant damage to the enemy, 200-400 for playing the objectives. Usually, you get from around 250 per life where you did little, 750 for a decent one and can get well over 1000 if you are doing really well. People who are having the game of their lives will easily be getting thousands of points.
Vehicles cost from 750 to 2000. Special classes, like a Wookiee of Battle Droid, cost 2000-3000. And heroes are in the 6000 - 8000 range. This makes vehicles extremely accessible, even for players who are not that great. Chances are you will get a vehicle at least halfway through the match if you want one. There are still limits on them (to prevent 10 tanks in the game), so there may be times where you have the points but can't call one. Overall though, I often found it completely feasible to play an y-wing bomber ship several times in a row. Special classes don't seem to have this restriction (or people play them very little), as I could always pick that if I wanted.
The 2000 point special classes are about 2-3 times as strong as a regular one. That said, if multiple people decide to focus a special enemy, the special will drop very quickly. This is also the case for heroes, which end up being very situational. A Jedi can do great havoc in tight quarters, but will die nearly instantly if he rushes across a city street against a group of snipers. I think this makes for a much more fun system, where it's not punishing to try take on Boba Fett or Darth Maul, as a lowly assault class.
Squad Mechanic
There is a new feature in the game, where you are automatically grouped with 3 other people who died the same time as you. This means you nearly always spawn with 3 other people next to you. The game rewards you with double battle points if you play near your squad. It is a really interesting mechanic that promotes a fair bit of cooperation in an otherwise manic battle. I found that people don't always play around this - but I am guessing people will learn how to make use of the squad with time.
It's a great feature. That said, there are cases where you genuinely won't want to use it. You may pick a sniper this life, specifically to get rid of a crucial enemy on the left side. At the same time, your squadmate might be picking a vehicle, to help escort people on the right. All in all though, I was excited to see people changing their picks, based on the squad composition. At times, people would see a supportive class in their squad, swapping from their own support to something offensive. Or people would see a ship and would use their own points to play a ship as well.
I won't break down the review into positives and negatives, but instead into categories. If you are on the fence about buying the game, you can look at whatever is the most relevant to you.
Singleplayer
This was the biggest surprise. In multiplayer titles, such as the older Call of Duty games, it is common for the singleplayer to be a showcase of multiplayer maps, with some story slapped on. The developers recycle as much of the multiplayer content as possible. This is not the case here.
The game has a singleplayer campaign worthy of a stand-alone game. The first three missions (about 30 minutes each) are story driven experiences, with most sections clearly tailored for the single player game specifically. There is very little of simply killing stuff, with most of the time devoted to objectives tightly linked to the story. Even in something like a wild space battle, you are being directed to protect an important ship, to clear the tail of your wing pilot, or to disable the enemy target.
Most Star Wars fans will also enjoy the premise of the story. Without getting into spoilers, it is a new, canon story developed in collaboration with Lucas Films. It follows the story of an elite imperial trooper. There are a lot of nuanced themes, which is something I love about movies in general. It paints imperial troopers as much more than mindless followers. There were several subtle moments in the first three missions that explore empire in a way we rarely get to see in the movies.
The campaign isn't massive. There is around 10-12 missions total, which should translate to 5-6 hours plus cinematics. Playing on the hardest difficulty (there are three) isn't a giant challenge either. That said, the missions will likely be worthy of the single player label.
Multiplayer Maps
The game is graphically stunning. The terrain textures especially make the game stand out. This translates to impressive looking maps, comparable to the first game. There seems to be a larger variety, not just in terms of planets, but also in terms of the environment types. At times you are fighting through swampy fields, other times you are in tight structures, long city streets, larger open buildings, or vast outdoor spaces. It makes for a variety of different experiences and also encourages you to try out different classes. A sniper rifle is greatly superior on some points, while being completely useless on the next objective.
In contrast to the first game, the maps here seem to be a lot more thought out in terms of gameplay. For those who didn't play the first game, the maps were often in open areas, with objectives accessible from all sides. Battlefront 2 puts a lot more emphasis on directing players, which makes for a much more interesting multiplayer game. You are still free to move around the map as you please, but key objectives have terrain to support the idea behind them. It's little things like placing a hill on Jakku, letting the snipers juke it out across the map, as the others fight below them. Or having three access points to a capture point in a jungle - one where the defenders have a clear advantage, one for a head on clash, and one favouring the attackers.
Vehicles and Heroes
The special classes (including both vehicles and heroes) are unlocked through battle points. There are specific to each match (you always start with 0) and obtained by playing the game. You get 100-200 for a death, 100 for significant damage to the enemy, 200-400 for playing the objectives. Usually, you get from around 250 per life where you did little, 750 for a decent one and can get well over 1000 if you are doing really well. People who are having the game of their lives will easily be getting thousands of points.
Vehicles cost from 750 to 2000. Special classes, like a Wookiee of Battle Droid, cost 2000-3000. And heroes are in the 6000 - 8000 range. This makes vehicles extremely accessible, even for players who are not that great. Chances are you will get a vehicle at least halfway through the match if you want one. There are still limits on them (to prevent 10 tanks in the game), so there may be times where you have the points but can't call one. Overall though, I often found it completely feasible to play an y-wing bomber ship several times in a row. Special classes don't seem to have this restriction (or people play them very little), as I could always pick that if I wanted.
The 2000 point special classes are about 2-3 times as strong as a regular one. That said, if multiple people decide to focus a special enemy, the special will drop very quickly. This is also the case for heroes, which end up being very situational. A Jedi can do great havoc in tight quarters, but will die nearly instantly if he rushes across a city street against a group of snipers. I think this makes for a much more fun system, where it's not punishing to try take on Boba Fett or Darth Maul, as a lowly assault class.
Squad Mechanic
There is a new feature in the game, where you are automatically grouped with 3 other people who died the same time as you. This means you nearly always spawn with 3 other people next to you. The game rewards you with double battle points if you play near your squad. It is a really interesting mechanic that promotes a fair bit of cooperation in an otherwise manic battle. I found that people don't always play around this - but I am guessing people will learn how to make use of the squad with time.
It's a great feature. That said, there are cases where you genuinely won't want to use it. You may pick a sniper this life, specifically to get rid of a crucial enemy on the left side. At the same time, your squadmate might be picking a vehicle, to help escort people on the right. All in all though, I was excited to see people changing their picks, based on the squad composition. At times, people would see a supportive class in their squad, swapping from their own support to something offensive. Or people would see a ship and would use their own points to play a ship as well.
Post edited by laxie on
Comments
Let's talk about the tauntaun in the room. If you've not heard, the game uses a progression system built around star cards. Each class you play has their own unique selection of possible star cards available. A sniper may have a card that reloads their weapon on headshots. A heavy class could have a card giving better resistance to grenades or an improvement to their shield. And a vehicle might have straight up higher damage output or lower cooldowns. At any given time, you may equip up to three cards, giving your class the respective benefits.
Equipping more than one card requires you to unlock the slots first. That said, on the evening of the trial launch day, in my first match, I was already fighting people with three cards of varying rarities. For most players, the worry shouldn't be how difficult it is to obtain the cards, but how difficult it is to defeat a 3-card enemy. The fact that you will be pitted against people with vastly superior cards is pretty much a given.
The cards themselves allow you to define your playstyle. One match, I was fighting a 3-card sniper who had a reload on headshots, lower overheat and faster firing. He was sitting on a mountain overlooking the main entrance to their hangar, eliminating most of our squads that tried to move in. Other times, I was against people with builds specifically designed for flanking enemies - having cards that mask them from your radar and stronger melee. You may have heavy classes built around damage to vehicles, or around defending their team.
And this is where their advantage comes down to. The cards won't let any one player become an unstoppable beast. They will allow them to excel at a role they opt into. The sniper with legendary reload cards ended up being the MVP of the match, but sure enough, I could still take him down if I flanked him from the sidelines. Heavy classes with improved shields will rip you apart in tight quarters (which they would anyway), but fall quickly in long ranged combat. From the other side of the coin, if you are a 3-card legendary sniper and run into a heavy with a shield in a tight corridor, you're most likely dead. As far as I can tell, the cards don't disrupt the rock-paper-scissors gameplay that's fun about class based games.
The cards come from lootboxes, each costing from 2100 to 4200 credits (there are 3 different loot boxes). I'm not sure what's going on there - the prices were changing over the days (perhaps they are still tweaking them, or they respond to demand automatically). The three different lootbox options are trooper, vehicle and hero. Trooper was the most expensive, at around 4000, followed by vehicle at 2600 and then hero at 2100. Trooper means the 4-card box has guaranteed cards for your basic classes, plus random cards and crafting materials. Same with vehicle and hero. A trooper box can still drop cards for your hero/vehicle in the random draw and vice versa.
You earn credits for completing milestones (e.g. kill 50 people as assault), finishing the story or coop missions, and playing multiplayer. The playing multiplayer reward is awarded at the end of each match, based on time spent. It ends up being between 250-400 credits per map (per 20-30 minutes). This means people who don't play brilliantly will still be getting decent amounts of credits. Similarly, people who are exceptional won't be getting orders of magnitude more (they will clear milestones faster, but will get the same credits for the match itself).
My guess is you can open 1-2 lootboxes per evening of play, not counting the milestones. With milestones, it will be a lot more, especially early on. The drops themselves will take some time, out of the 5 boxes I opened, most of them were tier1 and tier2 (out of four tiers). You also get a good amount of emotes, so you're looking at 2 class cards per box, most of the time.
You can also buy the boxes for real money, costing about $2-3 per box. I think, given the drop rates, there is little point in buying just a few boxes. You'd likely have to buy around 20 to make any sort of "guaranteed" meaningful difference. As I mentioned above, your three cards will need to make sense together, to give you an advantage in your specific role. Getting one epic card won't really guarantee you'll stand out on the battlefield - what you'll end up needing is a set of three cards that play off each other.
As for the crafting (the ability to use materials to get specific cards), the current rates seem reasonable. After opening just a few boxes, I was able to craft two tier1 cards and bring one of them to tier2. It's possible for a player to get their desired build after a comfortable amount of time, accounting for the fact that you need more materials to upgrade the higher the tier. What will probably happen though, is that a non-spender will have 1-2 powerful builds (the MVP stuff), whereas a spender will have many of those.
"a limit being put on the number of credits a player can earn in Arcade mode. After finishing five Arcade challenges, the player is told to come back in 14 hours to earn more. This is the kind of gating that makes certain free-to-play games nearly unplayable, yet here it is in a $60 game."
http://www.gameinformer.com/games/star_wars_battlefront_ii/b/xboxone/archive/2017/11/14/star-wars-battlefront-ii-review-the-dark-side-of-gaming.aspx
This is true, as far as I can tell.
I've been playing for about 12 hours total now, mostly in multiplayer.
The more I play the game, the more out of place the progression seems. It feels awkward at best. Battlefront 2 comes across as two games in one - a perfectly decent multiplayer shooter and a rushed collectible card game.
Single Player Rewards
The arcade mode, a single-player set of minigames (i.e. you are Han Solo in Mos Eisley and have to kill X stormtroopers on a timer) has a time-gated cap on how much credits you can earn. The mode rewards you with 100 credits per match, but earning this reward numerous times in a row is not possible. You have to come back later for the reward to be available once more.
The single-player campaign is even more strict in this respect. It awards 500 credits per mission, with a 5000 bonus for completion. These rewards are one time only, so players who want to replay the campaign won't be getting any progression benefits for doing so.
The developers have stated that they want progression to be consistent across players. This is the one thing I believe - the game is designed with a specific monetization rate in mind and they don't want player skill to shake up the formula.
Levels Only for Show
After the backlash in beta, the game implemented level restrictions on card crafting. This is largely just for show. The progression is still entirely driven by cards and it is perfectly possible to outspend someone else on day one. In fact, those who buy the more expensive editions have decent advantages over those who buy standard.
Cards come in four tiers. For example, one card in the Specialist (sniper) class has the following tiers:
- Automatic reload on headshots + 20% better weapon cooling
- Automatic reload on headshots + 25% better weapon cooling
- Automatic reload on headshots + 30% better weapon cooling
- Automatic reload on headshots + 40% better weapon cooling
The first three tiers are available to anyone from loot boxes (no level progression needed). The fourth tier is now only craftable - which means reaching a certain level, plus buying enough loot boxes to get the materials.As you can see, the difference between tier 3 and tier 4 is not that important. What really matters is either having the card or not having the card.
What matters even more is having card slots in the first place. A class can have up to three card slots, which are unlocked by "Card Level" (literally meaning how many cards you own), not to be confused with "Player Level" (how much you play). This means the first 10 hours of playtime are especially rough: you will only have one slot and no cards to begin with. It will take you a couple of play sessions to get enough loot boxes, to get enough cards, to unlock your slots.
Hero / Card Split
If you, like me, decide not to spend money on microtransactions, you are facing a conundrum. Your in-game currency can either buy loot boxes (making you stronger) or unlock heroes (letting you play as them in multiplayer). This means you have to choose what to save up for.
This is a subtle issue, but it's fairly annoying, especially right now at 12 hours of playtime. I am realising that unlocking heroes is very important. Everyone starts with the same basic pool of heroes, meaning that if you do well in a match and get to play as one, chances are someone might already be playing it. If you unlock more of them, you won't presumably have to fight others for them as much.
The annoying thing is that I currently decided to save up for a couple of heroes - which means not buying loot boxes. This translates to me knowing that for the next couple of days, I'll be playing a lot but won't be progressing in my classes at all.
Competitive Intergrity is OK
Inspite all of this, I still hold the belief that competitive integrity is somewhat fine. You can kill a person in 3-5 shots with a sniper rifle, so even if someone have 3x Tier 4 cards, you can find opportunities to take them down. After about 15 hours of playtime, you will likely have enough cards to have three slots on most classes, resulting in a somewhat level playing field.
The potential issue is that cards (and card levels = slot unlocks) are class specific, meaning if a new class/hero comes out, you will hit this slight pay wall again, for each new thing coming out.
The question shouldn't be "Does the progression system bother me?". We shouldn't even be put in a position where we need to ask that question.
The question should be "Would it be better if you couldn't buy loot boxes with real money and we just paid, optionally, for upcoming DLC like the good old days?".
But that aside, other than being a solid shooter like all the other good ones, I wonder what they felt was really good about it. I guess I could read some reviews.
From watching videos it looks like its very literally a standard Battlefield game with different skins.
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
BF2 is a good game.. as in the gameplay itself and how brilliantly it captures the Star Wars theme, style and feel. It's the rest of the stuff that's causing all the problems. If it didn't have all this loot box and progression controversy surrounding it then it could easily be a contender for one of the best Star Wars games ever made with only SWKotOR 1+2 beating it in my opinion.
anyway...fair enough thanks for clarifying
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
I preferred the older older Battlefield games. Like the original Battlefield 1, 2 and 2142. Modern shooters seem to have gone a little backwards instead of forwards, except for the graphics obviously.
So, developers decided to dumb stuff down. Their primary method of doing so was increasing recoil and bullet spread so that accuracy wasn't important, as well as handing out grenades like candy and giving you more health. This means that everyone, regardless of skill, can get kills. Spray and pray and lob some 'nades and you'll get some kills, get some xp and keep progressing.
And, the tactic worked very well. FPS's shot up in popularity and online multiplayer is the biggest draw.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
So, MT aside what does this game have ? A 5 to 6 hour long, cliche filled single player campaign. Multiplayer the likes we've seen and played countless times before with 0 innovation. Shiny graphics.
Sorry but this far and away from being excellent or classic. Not even good. It's mediocre, just a mediocre game. If it wasn't for the "Star Wars" next to the "Battlefront" very few would grant this game a second look.
- Automatic reload on headshots + 20% better weapon cooling
- Automatic reload on headshots + 25% better weapon cooling
- Automatic reload on headshots + 30% better weapon cooling
- Automatic reload on headshots + 40% better weapon cooling
The first three tiers are available to anyone from loot boxes (no level progression needed). The fourth tier is now only craftable - which means reaching a certain level, plus buying enough loot boxes to get the materials.As you can see, the difference between tier 3 and tier 4 is not that important. What really matters is either having the card or not having the card. "
10% is not that important?