With the failure of a game that was Star Wars Battlefront, I was skeptical yet hopeful that Star Wars Battlefront II would be better. Is it better? Yes, absolutely. EA Dice, the company that licenced the Battlefront games, listened to the feedback of the gaming community and made Battlefront II miles and miles ahead of the first battlefront game. Not only did they make a good game but they also listened to the community and made the dlc’s for the game free.

Thankfully EA has realized that the best part of the game is destroying people as the heroes that you can get in the game like Yoda, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, etc., referred to as heroes. With the new battle point system that has been introduced into the game, everything you do gives you points, which you can use to become an x-wing, get a jet pack, or once in a blue moon become a Hero. You still rarely get to play as the heroes, but they feel obtainable and it’s a smart way to make the players feel more involved with the game because the best way to get the battle points is to play the objectives. Unfortunately, EA hasn’t realized that people don’t really care about playing objectives even with the added incentives of playing as the characters. Most people would rather just fight instead of sit in front of a control panel and hold down the button and hope that they don’t get shot.

Some shooters feel good on a controller; Battlefront II is not one of those games. The aiming is too slow up close and to imprecise far away. Trying to drive vehicles with a mouse and keyboard is a nightmare. The best way to play the game is a mouse and keyboard on the ground and switch to a controller in the vehicles.

The progression system in Battlefront II is slow compared to other games. It’s like EA made the progression system as slow as it is so that way people would just get frustrated and buy the loot boxes. In other games like the COD of battlefield franchises, you would progress quickly and the rewards you got for progress made you seem like you unlocked something cool without explicitly making you better than people who were just getting into the game. The Battlefield II progression system is very black and white, either you have the star cards (abilities, and perks for your character) that make you win or you don’t and have no chance at winning. The cards literally make you better at the game. There is a card that makes your grenade better. There is a card that lets you become Yoda faster, ect. This pay to win system ticked off the gaming community so much that EA retracted the ability to buy your upgrades. In a pole of 40 students at BJHS, 70% of them were gamers and the majority of them did not like microtransactions. A freshman named Ryan Langston said, “They are the worst thing ever and it is killing games” and a sophomore named Holly Bradshaw said, “microtransactions are stupid; you should already get a full game that you bought”

I actually had fun playing the game– all that they need to do is fix the loot boxes, fix the progression system, make the objectives fun, and the game would be a treasure.