At EA Play I had the chance to sit down and spend about an hour with Star Wars Battlefront 2, and I was beyond impressed. Like most fans of the series, Star Wars Battlefront was a disappointment in more ways than one, and I was left with a bitter taste in my mouth back in 2015. Star Wars Battlefront 2 finally feels like a Battlefield game with Star Wars charm. Gone are the upgrade tokens, useless cosmetics, and wimpy weapons in favor of class based load outs, kill streak like bonus's, and much quicker game modes.
The menus, loadout screens, and respawn points in Battlefront 2 feel extremely intuitive and streamlined so well that games like Titanfall 2 and Battlefield One feel incredibly clunky and slow by comparison.
The gunplay is where Battlefront 2 really shines. Every single weapon I had the chance to mess around with felt comfortable and worthwhile. In the previous game I tended to stick with the starting blaster and never felt the need to deviate from that because everything was so similar—this was definitely not the case in Battlefront 2
In Battlefront 2 you earn points based on your actions. This can be anything from kills, body shots, and even assisting your teammates, and unlike the previous game, you can use these points to respawn as a special character, such as Darth Maul or a Jedi Star Fighter. This is a massive improvement over the token system from the previous game.
The gameplay type I demoed was an assault mode that had a dynamic feel to it as the game progressed. We started out in a courtyard facing an enemy tank while hundreds of NPC civillians were fleeing from the battle. From there on, as usual my team was dominated and pushed back into the interior of a palace. At this point the game turned from an open objective based battle with the occasional dog fight into a close quarters team deathmatch. After losing that bit the respawn points were located outside a small throne room and the game turned into a meat grinder featuring the occasional jedi battle in the middle of it.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 looks extremely promising at this point and I personally cant wait to see more of this game as well as that single player campaign.
Star Wars Battlefront 2 comes to the PS4/PC/Xbox one later this year and will feature free content updates in the near future.