I picked this up as I had the urge for Battlefront and didn't want to burn myself out on the Pandemic ones in the leadup to the Classic Collection. I avoided the DICE Battlefronts since I always heard about their awful monetization, but strangely enough abandoning this game seemed to be the best thing EA ever did. You get just about everything the game has to offer in an edition that regularly sells for about nothing. If there's anything that doesn't come from regular reasonably spaced unlocks or the Celebration Edition, I haven't been able to find it.
While I still hang onto the 2005 game being superior overall, this functions as much less of a clusterfuck when it comes to the pure multiplayer experience. There's a clear flow to games that mostly falls apart in favor of wrist rocket madness in 2005, the gunplay is far more satisfying, and there's a much-needed sense of progression in weapon and modifier unlocks. Supremacy (what I usually play, aka the mode that plays like Battlefield) has the wonderful push and pull you always want from these games, plus it includes the brilliant addition of the winner automatically boarding the enemy team's ship and needing to push through and blow that up within a time limit to close out the game. If they can't, it returns to the standard Battlefield mode again. This can lead to monstrously long matches where each team wins and boards multiple times only to be pushed back, providing a natural drama to matches as well as compelling stakes.
I played this on PS5 backwards compat first and had to move to PC partially because I am ass at shooters with a controller and partially because the maps were so gorgeous I needed to see them maxed out. Look past the barely functional AA and messy reflections and you'll see the most lovingly recreated Star Wars locations you'll get in a video game. The sheer sense of scale and war-torn tragedy on a map like Geonosis is astonishing. Serious props to the artists, I've been pretty jaded when it comes to Star Wars after Episode 9 and the flood of TV shows and this still manages to make me feel like a little kid immersed in this world again.
I have no doubt this was once a terrible game, but if you haven't tried it in years and care about Star Wars and/or Battlefield-like games, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot. I'll do a separate review for the campaign when I get to that.
While I still hang onto the 2005 game being superior overall, this functions as much less of a clusterfuck when it comes to the pure multiplayer experience. There's a clear flow to games that mostly falls apart in favor of wrist rocket madness in 2005, the gunplay is far more satisfying, and there's a much-needed sense of progression in weapon and modifier unlocks. Supremacy (what I usually play, aka the mode that plays like Battlefield) has the wonderful push and pull you always want from these games, plus it includes the brilliant addition of the winner automatically boarding the enemy team's ship and needing to push through and blow that up within a time limit to close out the game. If they can't, it returns to the standard Battlefield mode again. This can lead to monstrously long matches where each team wins and boards multiple times only to be pushed back, providing a natural drama to matches as well as compelling stakes.
I played this on PS5 backwards compat first and had to move to PC partially because I am ass at shooters with a controller and partially because the maps were so gorgeous I needed to see them maxed out. Look past the barely functional AA and messy reflections and you'll see the most lovingly recreated Star Wars locations you'll get in a video game. The sheer sense of scale and war-torn tragedy on a map like Geonosis is astonishing. Serious props to the artists, I've been pretty jaded when it comes to Star Wars after Episode 9 and the flood of TV shows and this still manages to make me feel like a little kid immersed in this world again.
I have no doubt this was once a terrible game, but if you haven't tried it in years and care about Star Wars and/or Battlefield-like games, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot. I'll do a separate review for the campaign when I get to that.