I started to play "Star Wars Battlefront 2" a long time after its release in 2017, when it was made available as one of the free games on Playstation Plus. I wouldn't have engaged with any microtransactions anyway, but this was long enough after the furore had dampened down that it wasn't a factor for me. I enjoyed the game, but not as much as it's predecessor.
There is a single player campaign to Battlefront this time, one which sees players take control of Iden Versio (Janina Gavankar) leader of the Inferno Squad Imperial special forces unit, who has her faith in the Empire shaken by the fall of the second Death Star and subsequent decisions taken in the aftermath. The multiplayer modes return, most commonly played is the large scale 80 player capture the flag skirmishes, in which success can see either force launch an attack on the others strategic base. Other modes allow dogfight only battles or situation that focus on battles involving the hero and villain characters, from across the Star Wars franchise.
The single player campaign is quite good and allows you to explore a lot of the galaxy. It shifts up the gameplay quite a lot too, either by allowing Versio to take control of an AT-AT or Tie Fighter, or by shifting to a section of the story that lets you play as one of the other heroes, that either Versio or another member of her team interacts with. Occasionally though, it does get a little bogged down with choke points, which can get frustrating and if you're with a computer-controlled character to assist you they are virtually useless.
Though I played the skirmish multiplayer mode a lot this time and I really liked it if I got involved in a balanced game, where assaults on the star ships were repelled and the ground skirmish continues, it never gripped me in the same way that Walker Assault, from the original game did. There the objectives felt much more dynamic than in this game. The battle revolves around five base positions on each map, two of which are close the initial spawn points for each team, and a fifth in a central location. I didn't feel like all of the maps were quite a balanced as they should be, I often played games that involved one of the teams being entirely penned in to their spawn point, unable to get out. The most disappointing thing though was the change in the implementation of the hero characters into this game mode. Rather than being used to balance games, they are instead used like rewards for earning points in the game, which means that the often have entirely the opposite effect and just further unbalance a game (particularly if a couple of these players can get on the same page, and work as a team).
You can't argue with the depth of the game though, the base character classes have dozens of skin variations, as well as guns to modify and loadouts to manipulate.
Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Battlefront 2 and have played it for multiple hours. I just wish that the focus of the multiplayer games was more on creating a fun experiences and less on rewarding the best players.
