I would like to state from the get go that this review is only a reflection of the single player campaign. I have zero interest in playing the multiplayer part of this game.
When it comes to the Star Wars universe I'm a traveler. I come and I go with different entries in the cinematic and video game world. I've seen the essential movies and skipped the others. I know who the characters are and the general plot of what has happened. That being said, I was hoping Star Wars Battlefront 2 might get me back on the hype train to revisit the series. While the game does some good it also has a lot of questionable gameplay flaws that get in the way of having fun.
This game looks incredible, as I expected. The details in the world and character designs are excellent. The cutscenes are beautifully rendered with great motion capture. It left me wanting to explore more of these set pieces but unfortunately if you stray too far the objective it tells you to get back to the mission in 10 seconds or game over. This leaves no reason to leave the path, and that path isn't as exciting as one would hope.
During the campaign you play as Iden Versio, a soldier of the Empire and daughter of an Empire general. The story is good, not great, and has some fun moments, but by the end the poor and repeated mission design wore me out and I wanted it to be over. The missions are split up between playing as Iden or a hero from the star wars universe a la Luke, Leia, etc. While these missions seemed like a fun little break from the normal game they happened too frequently during the already short campaign. I wanted to spend more time with Iden but instead about half of my time was playing as someone else. During these missions you spent time essentially doing the same objective over a different skin. Protect this person, reach this spot, kill a whole lot of Stormtroopers to name a couple, but none of them felt rewarding.
When you're on the ground the game gives you the option of playing it as either as a first or third person shooter, well it does half the time. If you're any character besides Iden it's a mandatory 3rd person camera and it doesn't feel great. You're stuck with one weapon for each hero. Luke has his lightsaber and most of the others are pistols. However, when you're Iden you can change your weapon after each death which is a nice perk. You can also apply boosters, select grenade types or other perks. The way this game is designed it seems like it was to be a cover shooter, but it's also not good at that. Cover often doesn't work well and you're getting hit anyways. Your character can only take a few shots, even Luke and company, before the game over screen pops up and can lead to some really frustrating moments. This is furthered by the terrible check point system.
When flying the ships gameplay shifts into a dog fight. You're often times tasked with destroying certain enemy ships or defending one of yours. Flying around in space is great, unless you run into anything and it's a one hit kill, which then causes you to have to wait for the game to reload. The dog fighting is fine, but getting the controls and feel down at first can be a chore.
Overall, I came into this game with little to no expectations and it let me down still. The game looks phenomenal but plays terribly. If you're a fan of Star Wars you might find some fun in it. I did for about 2 hours of the 6ish hour campaign and quickly became more and more apprehensive to play it.
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