Battlefront 2
Woah! Talk about a hit. The question remains to be seen if BF-2 is going to be like Rocky 1 or Rocky 2. For those unacquainted with the Rocky comment, I suggest taking a look back at film history.
Aside from the above topic which has to do with the loot box system (I will address that later) I want to give the game a fair judgment in the court of B.G.R.
Let's start with the addition of a campaign, shall we? After Battlefront 1 only being multiplayer and not being bad, I along with 99% of the population, Was overjoyed with the news of a campaign. Moreover, what a campaign it was. Simple, yet fantastic and gripping. A part of the story that was missing that helped us put the pieces together between episodes 6 & 7. The character of Iden Versio was a great addition to the series. Strong female leadership and a badass to boot.
Moving on to the multiplayer, I was not the biggest fan of the multiplayer in BF-1, and because of that, I was impressed with the multiplayer in BF-2. Its fluid and simple (a word I think was used to describe the game in the development stage-I could be wrong though) to the point that it is a smooth transition from one character to another without any real perceived deficit.
As for the heroes that you can play in the multiplayer, they are kind of unnecessary for the game. I found that I had more fun playing the multiplayer as a regular trooper then as a hero. I also really didn't find myself using my star cards. I found that using the standard arsenal was sufficient enough after you got used to them.
The starfighter portion of multiplayer is probably the weakest link in the game. That said, it by far is not terrible. I like that there are objectives that you have to complete so that it is not just a massive dogfight. I also like that there are A.I. teammates that you can focus on and that the enemy team can focus on too. It can give a just a slight enough edge to an inexperienced player to have fun while playing by getting kills even if they are only A.I.
Overall the game offers lots of enjoyment from the weakest player to the most hardcore gamer.
All that said it is that time in the review where we have to bring up the bad stuff. Remember I said I was going to be fair, and there is plenty of bad things as well.
Let's start off with the loot boxes...Everyone's favorite subject right now. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall in that meeting so that I had an actual idea of what was initially said and conceived. The concept of a major triple-A game company creating a pay to win system in a title that costs 60-100 bucks depending on what version you buy is slightly vomit inducing. So let's break down the loot box system to see if we can find any good in it.
At launch the Trooper crates cost 4,000 credits or 200 crystals, Starfighter crates cost 2,400 credits or 120 crystals, and Hero crates cost 2,200 credits or 110 crystals. Now couple that with the number of credits you got in game at launch, which at most was 250 credits and you can see a bit of problem. In a bid to be fair though that only accounted for a portion of credits you could earn, because you can earn crystals from arcade, challenges and some from the campaign as well. You can see how maybe giving a little more money was an option worth considering. So what can you get out of these loot crates, do you get a special version for buying crystals. Well no, You could get the same exact stuff out of a crate by using credits. It would just take you much longer to get the same amount of crates.
The issue here is that the prices are unfair for everyone involved, A simple solution is to increase the number of crystals it cost to open a crate. Say it cost 4,000 credits for a Trooper crate or it cost 2,000 crystals to open the same crate then it seems a bit fairer because if you buy credits, then you are not getting an absurd amount of loot crates. The other option is to lower the number of crystals you can purchase and lower all prices for the crates.
Say something more like 1,000 credits or 500 crystals for a Trooper crate, 750 credits or 250 crystals for a Starfighter crate, and 500 credits or 150 crystals for a Hero crate. Or something along those lines to make it fairer for everyone to get the same amount of loot crates and Star cards. As I said above it is not about what's in the crates that are the issue it is the gap between the prices that proves that it was nothing other than a pure money grab by E.A.
The other issue I have seen and had reported to me is that when loading into a server sometimes everyone is invisible. That is just a server issue that E.A. needs to fix
Overall this game got off to a terrible start. Well, a horrible start but I genuinely believe that this game is good and is a great time to play. It is just sad that E.A. had to screw themselves with a money grab especially if they had not done that this game could have gone on to squash the competition.