User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 417 Ratings

User score distribution:

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  1. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    The greatest franchise of them all marred once again by identity politics. The writing is absolutely horrible. The graphics, audio, gameplay are decent but that's to be expected with the amount of money that probably went into the game. Nothing groundbreaking though. In the end, the whole experience is just soulless. A massive letdown after EA mostly turned things around with "Jedi: FallenThe greatest franchise of them all marred once again by identity politics. The writing is absolutely horrible. The graphics, audio, gameplay are decent but that's to be expected with the amount of money that probably went into the game. Nothing groundbreaking though. In the end, the whole experience is just soulless. A massive letdown after EA mostly turned things around with "Jedi: Fallen Order".

    EA, please hire some decent writers next time.
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  2. Dec 30, 2020
    0
    Surprising when I see a game rated at 5.7, and think to myself "That is way too high". Disney and EA have destroyed the Star Wars of my youth :(.
  3. Oct 6, 2020
    0
    I get angry when I play games that aren't fun.
    This game is.
    It's not fun. I hope that Star Wars will stop.
  4. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    There is no optimization, the plot is unrealistically bad, the graphics are terrible, the multiplayer modes are terribly boring. This game is not worth the money.
  5. Oct 5, 2020
    0
    Even if you remove all the SJW bs being forced down our throats, this game still suffers from some pretty apparent flaws. Game stutter (even on a high end PC). Mouse/KB controls suffer from slight input lag (forcing controller use for me). Not only the lag but the fact that the mouse aiming reticle does not auto-recenter (making your ship steer wildly if you have the reticle pulled toEven if you remove all the SJW bs being forced down our throats, this game still suffers from some pretty apparent flaws. Game stutter (even on a high end PC). Mouse/KB controls suffer from slight input lag (forcing controller use for me). Not only the lag but the fact that the mouse aiming reticle does not auto-recenter (making your ship steer wildly if you have the reticle pulled to one side). While visually appealing (except for explosion debris) the game still feels "empty".

    I don't know; even if the flaws were fixed in this game, there is not a whole lot to do. Can't see myself playing this long term whatsoever... wish I was still within the refund window. Not only are the flaws a turn off... but the agenda behind it all too. When will game companies realize we play video games to sometimes escape reality for a short time, the last thing I want in my entertainment is someone pushing propaganda at me.
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  6. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    много ниггеров, ужасно скучная игра, плохой сюжет, унылый геймплей. ПОЗОР!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! КТО ЭТИ ИГРЫ ПОКУПАЕТ???????????????? игровые студии полностью утонули в "толерантности", феминизме и прочих дегеративных идях, но игры с каждым годом ХУЖЕ И ХУЖЕ!!!!!много ниггеров, ужасно скучная игра, плохой сюжет, унылый геймплей. ПОЗОР!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! КТО ЭТИ ИГРЫ ПОКУПАЕТ???????????????? игровые студии полностью утонули в "толерантности", феминизме и прочих дегеративных идях, но игры с каждым годом ХУЖЕ И ХУЖЕ!!!!!
  7. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    Просто очередной, скучный высер EA за 2200 руб
  8. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    * Before I start my review, I'd like to mention that I do NOT have a VR headset, so I did NOT play this game in VR. I will not review the VR portion of this game since I did not experience it.

    When I first heard about this game, I was extremely excited for it. It looked like a lot of fun, the multiplayer looked interesting. I was hyped for it. Bought the game today, and requested a
    * Before I start my review, I'd like to mention that I do NOT have a VR headset, so I did NOT play this game in VR. I will not review the VR portion of this game since I did not experience it.

    When I first heard about this game, I was extremely excited for it. It looked like a lot of fun, the multiplayer looked interesting. I was hyped for it. Bought the game today, and requested a Steam refund within 1 hour of game play. This game is horrible and a HUGE disappointment. I watched videos and other gameplay footage, and what I experienced vs what I saw were night and day. Game play footage made this game look fast, fun, fluid and packed with action. In reality, the game play is the complete opposite. Its very slow (Even with max speed and full engine power). The controls are super clunky and unresponsive. And the combat is just bad and very poorly designed.

    First things first, the story mode.... The story involves ANOTHER member of the Empire running away to join the Rebels. Gee, like we haven't seen that 8 billion times. Very predictable and uninteresting story. As for the missions themselves, they're super tedious and don't have any sort of direction whatsoever. For example, in the first Imperial mission, you're simply told to scan the ships cargo's. They don't tell you which ship to scan. They don't place any sort of marker on them or point you in the right direction. You're forced to just find it on you're own. There's at LEAST 20 ships, all spaced out. I spent a stupid amount of time searching for it, and I finally found it. After that, there was FINALLY some enemies to shoot, and experience combat. The combat was another disappointment.

    As far as the combat goes... Another massive disappointment. The enemy ships are always super far away. You have to spend at least 30 seconds flying within shooting distance of them. On top of that, the enemies move lightning fast, while your ship - regardless of what ship you're flying - is super slow and clunky. To make things worst, you can't aim your guns. You literally can not aim your guns on your ship like in Battlefront. The enemy HAS to be right in front of you to shoot them. Its extremely frustrating and not fun. And while you're trying to get that perfect aim to shoot enemies, like 3-4 enemies get behind you instantly and start shooting you down, killing you. Trying to shake enemies off your tail is super frustrating as well. The game does little to nothing to explain how to have a better gaming experience by teaching you how to do sharper turns or shake enemies off your tail or get better at combat. There's no tutorials. There's no lessons or parts of the game that teach you to be better. The controls are frustratingly stupid and difficult. Normally, I have fun trying to learn a new game, but in this instance, I kept getting frustrated due to the games very poorly designed controls.

    I was expecting this game to be an arcade style game. Something like Starfox 64 or Batttlefront 2 - just with Spaceships. But no. Some how, they took what made Battlefront 2 space battles fun, and made it a million times and more way complex. Battlefront 2 Space battles are super fast, fluid and fun. Where as Squadrons is super slow, tedious, and very clunky with terrible controls that are frustratingly stupid to maneuver and not fun to learn. Not only that, but the scanners in your cockpit that are meant to show you where enemies are, is extremely flawed and does not work very well. There is no real guide or explanation on how to read or use it to your advantage. This seems to be a common theme with this game. There is little to no explanation on how anything works, on where to go in the story mode or what to do. If the devs want people to enjoy their game, then they should have made an effort to explain it better, because everything in this game is super complex, does not make sense, and is frustratingly difficult to figure out. I don't like that one bit.

    I don't understand why everything in this game is so slow? The "dog fights" are slow. Getting from point A to B is slow. The Slowing things down did NOT improve the game play. It sucks, because I was really excited for this game. I wanted to like this game. I gave it a try. But the terrible controls and slow, awful game play disappointed me big time. Thank god for Steam's return policy. As if 2020 couldn't get more disappointing, Squadrons came out and failed my expectations. They could have just made a fun, simple flight combat game like Starfox 64 or improve upon what made Battlefront 2 space battles so much fun. But no. They made this terrible FPS Flight Simulator type game, that's painfully slow and difficult to maneuver. On the bright side... The graphics and visuals are really nice. But that's all they got going for them. Everything about this game is horrible. I did not enjoy it one bit. Save your $40. Thank god for Steams refund policy. What a disappointment.
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  9. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    This was the game that left me so disappointed that I was encouraged to make an account on Metacritic just to write this review.

    The game is advertised as being playable with a mouse and keyboard. It isn’t. Unlike the old classics like Tie Fighter and Descent Freespace, moving the mouse does not have a direct effect on the ship movement but repositions a cursor toward which the ship
    This was the game that left me so disappointed that I was encouraged to make an account on Metacritic just to write this review.

    The game is advertised as being playable with a mouse and keyboard. It isn’t. Unlike the old classics like Tie Fighter and Descent Freespace, moving the mouse does not have a direct effect on the ship movement but repositions a cursor toward which the ship turns (with a delay). This means that to stop turning, one has to reposition the cursor to the screen center. Doesn’t sound too bad, but since the game doesn’t draw the cursor, one has always to guess where it is and easily overshoots. The result is see-sawing back and forth all around where you really want to go. Now, a similar control scheme was used in the game House of the Dying Sun (which I think is a great game by the way), but it's only now that I realise how clever the developers of that game were in drawing a line between the cursor position and the ship heading. I guess they must’ve tested their game to realize that it made all the difference.

    Now I’m not complaining that Star Wars Squadrons is a hard game. X-wing was a notoriously hard game and one of my all-time favourites. But, the difficulty was not introduced in having unresponsive controls. Possibly (although I am not sure) the developers of Squadrons were aware of their clumsy controls, which is why they put in autoaim and removed collision damage to compensate. The graphics are much better than the games of twenty years ago, but when I see a Tie-fighter collide directly with a Star Destroyer and simply bounce off the immersion is lost for me.

    I can appreciate that those with other controllers are having a much better experience. But, sorry, the game is sold as being compatible with a mouse and keyboard, so I think it’s fully fair to write a review based solely on this experience. In principle, one could train hard to be able to learn the least intuitive controls I can remember, but I feel it’s equivalent to making a real-time strategy game where you can’t see the cursor. If you were very committed, you could learn to live with it, but would it be fun?
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  10. Oct 3, 2020
    0
    Overall I'm all for a good star wars game. Something that draws me in and makes me want more. This... is not such a game.

    Pros: Dogfights, yay X-Wing Alliance, kind of Graphics and sound effects are great Cons: Re-mapping to a CH Flight sim yoke and pedals is absolute hell (more below) The woke is definitely there with this title The campaign is terrible, and has no soul The
    Overall I'm all for a good star wars game. Something that draws me in and makes me want more. This... is not such a game.

    Pros:
    Dogfights, yay
    X-Wing Alliance, kind of
    Graphics and sound effects are great

    Cons:
    Re-mapping to a CH Flight sim yoke and pedals is absolute hell (more below)
    The woke is definitely there with this title
    The campaign is terrible, and has no soul
    The deadzone for the yoke/pedals is huge and that's when it's turned all the way down. It's almost impossible to make tiny adjustments.

    I didn't even get to try multiplayer because I can't get this damn game to function.

    About what I experienced with the controls. I use a CH Products Flight Sim Yoke and Pedals. Re-mapping to the yoke is mostly ok. The real issue is the pedals. I ran into two issues. First, half the time when I attempt to map something to pedal input... the game will not detect it. This can be fixed by rebooting the game, which is dumb. The second issue is when I finally got it to accept a mapping (I tried mapping pedal input to roll and then yaw) and went to fly the ship would constantly spin, and I could not control it.

    I don't care how good a game *looks*. I don't care if it costs five bucks or sixty. It is nothing if you can't actually play it. It's a flight sim. I want to use my yoke and pedals. Fix it then maybe I'll buy it again in the future. For now I'm refunding and advise everyone to stay the hell away from this buggy mess.

    The best way to sum it up is to say that you get everything good from x-wing alliance and just trade it for a buggy version that looks pretty.
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  11. Oct 4, 2020
    0
    Advertised HARD to the PC community but mouse and keyboard controls are pure **** You can change EVERYTHING on the controller or hotas but the mouse setting are UNBINDABLE. I should not feel required to purchase additional hardware to play a generic arcade shooter.
    A and D should be YAW and mouse movement should be pitch and roll. The fact that you can change everything BUT THESE is
    Advertised HARD to the PC community but mouse and keyboard controls are pure **** You can change EVERYTHING on the controller or hotas but the mouse setting are UNBINDABLE. I should not feel required to purchase additional hardware to play a generic arcade shooter.
    A and D should be YAW and mouse movement should be pitch and roll. The fact that you can change everything BUT THESE is absolutely insulting.
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  12. Oct 4, 2020
    0
    Arcade space "simulator" set in the Star Wars universe. The game appears to be designed primarily for PvP play, with a lackluster single-player campaign tacked on. Campaign is rife with SJW agenda. Bigger sin is that this all-inclusiveness resulted in bland and boring characters with their "minority-ness" being the dominant trait.

    Game advertises itself as a VR / HOTAS space Sim, but has
    Arcade space "simulator" set in the Star Wars universe. The game appears to be designed primarily for PvP play, with a lackluster single-player campaign tacked on. Campaign is rife with SJW agenda. Bigger sin is that this all-inclusiveness resulted in bland and boring characters with their "minority-ness" being the dominant trait.

    Game advertises itself as a VR / HOTAS space Sim, but has significant issues with both aspects.
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  13. Oct 4, 2020
    0
    TECHNICALLY UNPLAYABLE

    The subreddit and EA answer forum is filled with complaints about how the game enforces a softcap of 60fps. Anything above 60fps and the game will become so stuttery it's unbearable. I'm so angry about getting hyped for another SW game...
  14. Oct 5, 2020
    0
    I preordered this because I loved the Idea. Big mistake, I knew that Ea has had a recent torent of bad games and glitches. after 27 min of trying every tip and fix to get this running on my pc, I finally gave up and got my money back in refund. after the series of issues and problems that EA has had lately, this was there one attempt to get gamers back to their company. Total fail in myI preordered this because I loved the Idea. Big mistake, I knew that Ea has had a recent torent of bad games and glitches. after 27 min of trying every tip and fix to get this running on my pc, I finally gave up and got my money back in refund. after the series of issues and problems that EA has had lately, this was there one attempt to get gamers back to their company. Total fail in my opinion. I wont be stupid enough to ever pre order or buy anything from EA ever again. Id have to be truly stupid to give them yet another chance. I'm done with their company and I"m very glad I dont have stock in them, cause its going to shoot into the lower realms with this their latest fiasco. Expand
  15. Oct 10, 2020
    0
    Played through prologue already mega bored.
    Crap story, rubbish like outdated gameplay.
    EA and Star wars (Disney) two shocking companies come together.
  16. Oct 14, 2020
    0
    Left trigger cannot be switched to scope or zoom, toggle wheel is terrible for FPS players. Open space against drone AI player hackers of three or more moving in tight formation computerized swarm ways was creepy and unbeatable when targeted as they knew when to get in the way of shots. Computer always knows where its parts are, and my pilot and ship are just visuals of ones and zeroLeft trigger cannot be switched to scope or zoom, toggle wheel is terrible for FPS players. Open space against drone AI player hackers of three or more moving in tight formation computerized swarm ways was creepy and unbeatable when targeted as they knew when to get in the way of shots. Computer always knows where its parts are, and my pilot and ship are just visuals of ones and zero cogs and wheels that is simply just avoids. Warning for flashing lights, red and blue left and right eye shifting of visuals for vertigo causing moments, and motion sickness. Oh yeah, and I didnt stay long enough to see, but don't forget the swarms of 30-50 year olds who throw tantrums if you are a newbie and talk adult talk in chats to troll your kids. Then there are the criminal groups who lobby for people who seem either scared or willing to keep their mouth shut for incorporation into their thugy groups. Also, hackers who learn how to take over systems and use our gamers as test subjects say they are white hat but they are just fooling themselves and not me and not you if you stay free to voice your opinions about abuses. Right or wrong, you have a voice. We don't have to agree. Expand
  17. Oct 19, 2020
    0
    This game is still in beta and should be marketed as such. Ranked system is broken, players are unlocking high tiered cosmetic thru a bug, and the frame rate stutters at anything over 60fps...
  18. Jul 18, 2022
    0
    this game pc port is so bad when u change settings u get black screen every time and controls are so bad u dont need to play this game i try 2 hours and so bad and nerd game
Metascore
79

Generally favorable reviews - based on 48 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 41 out of 48
  2. Negative: 0 out of 48
  1. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Jan 4, 2021
    80
    The one and only chance to be a space pilot in a galaxy far far away. Living and experiencing adrenaline filled dogfight is simply breathtaking. [Issue#307]
  2. CD-Action
    Dec 18, 2020
    70
    To put it simply, Star Wars: Squadrons is a low-budget X-Wing vs TIE Fighter II based off of Battlefront II’s space battles. I admit that I expected more, but after two decades we finally got a new Star Wars sim (leaning towards the arcade side, but still) and I did enjoy it. It looks and sounds like a Star Wars game should, and Motive’s successful effort to balance such dissimilar crafts as the X-Wing and the TIE Fighter is commendable. [12/2020, p.64]
  3. Nov 21, 2020
    60
    There’s a good concept at the core of Star Wars: Squadrons, as flying a space fighter and managing its systems can be a lot of fun, however, you have to be a very dedicated Star Wars fan to enjoy a drab campaign with just a handful of memorable moments and watered-down multiplayer modes from Battlefront 2.