Star Wars Battlefront II

A visually stunning game especially on Xbox One X, with a very solid and frantic multiplayer gameplay and finally introducing a satisfying - albeit short - single player campaign. Other than the campaign length, some problems of power-up balancing and rough animations keep it from shining to the max.

Star Wars Battlefront II features a much greater variety of content than its first release. Both multiplayer and offline content can provide us many hours of entertainment. Technically, the game works very smoothly and fulfills everything we demand of it. However, some aspects of the game need to be improved and the microtransaction system is confusing and makes progression difficult.

Bigger and better but not perfect. Its campaign is too linear and predictable, and that hampers the experience. Besides that, its multiplayer face is almost flawless, despite the micropayment controversy.

This may well not be a perfect game, but it’s certainly a great one, it’s energetic, thrilling and engaging.

Star Wars Battlefront II’s progression system may indeed be piss poor and too loot box centered, but that doesn’t stop it from being a mighty fine way to spend your time. You don’t need to spend any extra real money to have fun or progress, you just simply need to play. And that’s not a problem when you’re addicted to deep space dogfights or all-out conflicts on Naboo.

A great Star Wars game that shines in multiplayer and feels good even in single-player, but that doesn't pay attention to users with its unpleasant business model.

Having flirted with the dark side in the run up to launch, Star Wars Battlefront II has had its reputation sullied by its underlying business model and how that is tied to character progression. That distracts from how much it improves on the first game though, with much better variety in Galactic and Starfighter Assault, character classes and team play being gently encouraged, and a broader and deeper player progression. Perhaps the greatest irony is that fear, anger and hate were Star Wars Battlefront II’s path back towards the light.

Star Wars Battlefront II is a solid shooter true to the Star Wars universe, able to replicate the most famous battles in Lucas’ universe.

Star Wars Battlefront II is a good video game, it delivers a fun campaign that allows you to act out pretty much all your Star Wars fantasies.

Star Wars Battlefront II offers a sizable improvement over the first game in almost every way.

Battlefront II is a great game that has been tainted by the dark side. Core gameplay is very good, graphics and sound design are superb. But the progression system is tied to microtransactions and is broken.

Star Wars Battlefront II stumbles out of the gate with its progression system. I hope it gets ironed out because the underlying multiplayer is extremely fun. The campaign is short and sweet, but a little too fan-servic-y for me. As it stands this is a solid sequel with some highly noticeable blemishes. I will continue to play because of my love for Star Wars, but I do hope it gets ironed out before players lose interest.

Star Wars Battlefront II is a good game wrapped in an odd upgrade system and a very volatile economy. It has a breadth of modes that play very well and can provide many memorable moments. The gameplay is solid, and the title gives players a better chance at playing with more powerful characters. However, the progression system feels unnecessarily stunted, and the grinding nature of buying characters and loot crates can be frustrating. At least the use of real money to purchase crates has been removed for the time being. There's a good game in here that evokes the desire to play one more game, but players have to be fine with the progression and payment mechanics.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a very cool game at the beginning, but the progression system overshadows all the fun. That is too bad for a game that really shows how awesome Star Wars really is.

Even with a lackluster story and a barebones arcade mode, Star Wars Battlefront II would be one of the year's best games if — and it's a big, almost tragic i" — it didn't involve pay-to-win tactics. These microtransactions are disabled at time of writing, but they are promised to return in some form. Even if they never return, they've already gifted early adopting big spenders with a shortcut to success that other people can't or won't access. In so many ways, Battlefront II is exactly what fans want it to be. It finally feels like the games so many cherished from many years ago. It's hard to ignore the problems caused by purchased Star Cards, but if the creators can find a way to fix the system so that it is fair for everyone, what will remain is one of the year's best video games and a Star Wars experience for the ages... but again, that's a big if.

A sequel that delivers a glut of content, but locks too much of it away, Star Wars Battlefront II is nonetheless a clear labour of love and a robust multiplayer shooter, sadly buried in an over-complicated progression system. To try or to try not, then? If you're prepared to put in the time and effort, then Star Wars Battlefront II can be enormously fun and rewarding, even if it might not necessarily be the game you were looking for.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is one of the most enjoyable multiplayer games of 2017, especially if you like Star Wars. It's also more flawed than it should be. Battlefront 2 doesn't deserve to be wholly defined by loot boxes, but it's inescapable given the impact they have on some of the core modes. This is why you don't tie gameplay to microtransactions.

Battlefront 2 does a lot of things right, offering a Star Wars experience that’s stunning to look at and wonderfully faithful to the source material, but it stumbles hard on the delivery. The campaign is amusing but scatterbrained, and worse, in multiplayer the randomized progression systems are downright hostile toward its players. EA has already made two big adjustments to this system in the week leading up to launch alone, and we can only hope that more significant changes are on the way. But right now, the Star Cards system’s frustrating progression is actively driving me away from the multiplayer battles.

The dark side courses through Star Wars Battlefront II, playing mind tricks on gamers to spend more money to become stronger. By the time you read this review, there’s a chance EA may change how the Star Cards or loot crates work, but at this point in time, this predatory microtransaction model Force-chokes Battlefront II’s experience. It’s a shame to see a game with such clear greatness get pulled down to these depths. Star Wars deserves better. We deserve better.

A stunning audio and visual presentation doesn't cover the cracks at the core. [Jan 2018, p.75]

Battlefront II is fan service and little else; much respect to the craft, the attention to detail and the wealth of content, but sadly it just isn't enough. It's starting to feel as if Star Wars simply isn't a franchise suitable for this type of sprawling, large-scale multiplayer experience. It doesn't have it in its bones, and if DICE can't find a way to make it work, we're fearful nobody can. [Issue#195, p.72]

There's no escaping the awful loot boxes and ham-fisted progression system here. The much-anticipated single-player mode has its moments but it's not as strong as expected, leaving the online play to serve as the core of the experience. Though there are some smart tweaks and changes that could have potentially improved the game over Battlefront 2015, funnelling all your upgrades and levelling through random boxes massively misses the mark. The production values are sky high and in the moment it can be amazing, but Battlefront II's economy keeps me from wanting to jump back in.

Great graphics don’t make a great game. Even if we ignore the loot box controversy, Star Wars Battlefront 2 is still just an “OK” shooter that fails to leave a lasting impression. The single player campaign starts out strong, but quickly becomes a more generic Star Wars tale and makes protagonist Iden Versio far less interesting in the process.

The fast-paced combat is fluid and smooth, the visuals are a spectacle to behold and the sound effects can make you feel like someone just crashed a TIE-fighter into the side of your house. But with very little in the way of change when compared to the first Star Wars Battlefront and a story that falls flat once you look past the protagonist, Star Wars Battlefront II is a major disappointment, and a poor effort from a studio who have become renowned for making top quality shooters.

A good core game of cool Star Wars battles on fun and interesting maps is bogged down by clumsy, convoluted progression systems, and the single player is interesting but unfinished.

Despite the removal of the microtransactions, player progression is still largely tied to the randomized loot boxes--mitigating player agency and choice in multiplayer.

Star Wars Battlefront II is the epitome of taking a step forward, shooting yourself in the foot and then falling backwards in pain. It goes to great lengths to rectify the mistakes of the previous game but ends up opening a new can of worms. We finally got a single player campaign, but the story is lackluster and Iden never gets a chance to shine. There’s more content and depth, but the game is severely hampered by the lack of a progression system. What really stands out about Star Wars Battlefront II is just how terrible its Loot Crate system is, because it permeates so much of the game. DICE has stripped away an actual progression system and hidden away its contents behind overpriced microtransactions. With Credits and Crafting Parts doled out at such a low rate, Star Wars Battlefront II puts players in no-win situations in the hopes of making a quick buck. The sad thing is, there’s a lot of fun that could be had in Star Wars Battlefront II. Galactic and Starfighter Assault are fun, the game runs well, and servers are holding up, but there’s nothing rewarding to keep coming back for more. It really is a shame DICE took Star Wars Battlefront II to the Dark Side.

The dark side wins out here, as good as Star Wars: Battlefront 2 is in so many areas it just can't overcome the aggressive, anti-consumer practices that are on display in their most egregious form to date in a $60 game.

A mostly good adventure, then, but not without some major foibles. There’s no doubt Battlefront 2 is better than its predecessor but we do miss some the latter’s purity – guns, for example, still feel excellent to fire, but there’s so many of them now that you feel like you’re in Call of Duty shooter territory. Amidst a forcible loot system it creates a slight sense of soullessness that could see DICE’s latest effort risks fading into the background as another decent shooter that misses its mark. This is Star Wars, though, so there’s no doubt they’ll get another shot.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a great game spoiled by a terrible business model. DICE and EA are going to be under a huge amount of pressure not just to tweak, but completely overhaul the metagame or face an even bigger fan backlash than they have already. Underneath the terrible progression system, cheap payouts and more-than-gentle hand in the back towards paying for loot crates is the same excellent core, now across so much more content with the promise of more free maps and heroes to come.

If you buy this game, you'll have an insane amount of fun, whether you buy loot crates or not, but after spending dozens of hours playing my Heavy, it's apparent to me that EA has designed progression to become a struggle for those who don't want to buy crates. If there's a line to cross, EA didn't just step over it, they blew it up with the Death Star.

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 will go down as one of the biggest screw ups in video game history. EA and DICE had the easiest job in the world and completely ruined it with the absolutely ridiculous and downright unacceptable progression system for multiplayer. Combine that with the incredibly boring, lazy, and cliche story campaign and you easily have the biggest disappointment of 2017.