Reviewed in Canada on December 5, 2017
By now, you all heard about how much of a disaster was the "week prior to lauch" of this game. Let's put the publishing work aside for a minute...
Dice and Criterion did an AWESOME job with the game. Is it perfect? No! Is it closer to it's early 2000's versions? Hell no! The main thread of this review will be about "good ideas, "ok" execution"
Single Player
Let's get the obvious out of the way: the game looks AMAZING and sounds even better. HDR is blasted in your face within the first minute of the game. Visuals are stunning, through the whole game. Sound is crazy good, just like the previous BF: explosions are loud, immersion is intense, laser bolts are as sharp as ever, etc
While this is a Star Wars story, I would say this is a contemporary Star Wars story : the story telling is up to date with the standards of today. The story pans from the mid of The Return of the Jedi to the events that lead up to The Force Awakens. Even though it dabbles into a movie that was written in the 80's, it doesn't feel like a 80's story. As an example, the story telling is closer to Rogue One than "Return of the Jedi". I don't know how to explain it better than this: Play Golden Eye 64 today, on the original console... it's awful. Update Golden Eye to today's standards (controls, visuals, sound, multiplayer) and the game would still be a master piece!
So the story spreads on about 20 years, with little character development. This is where things could've been better: gaps in the story only serve the gameplay checklist and not the story. Even though you mostly follow the evolution of Iden Versio, you don't feel her evolution as they would like you to feel, you don't care as much as they would want you to care. I won't go into the plot, simply because you can read about this on Wiki ;)
They threw some "guest appearances" in there, but again, it's done in a way that you don't care, like they were only going through a checklist of things for you to do. With all that being said, if you're a Star Wars fan and you're looking for Canon Lore, this should be part of your wishlist of things to play, watch on youtube or read somewhere.
The missions are mostly all different, standing on their own, with some exploration involved. The battle of Jakku mission was pretty good, but could've been SO MUCH MORE! You arrive in your X-Wing, the battle is already raging and you have some objectives to accomplish. Once you're done, you're given a way point to reach, where you land and accomplish another objective, but on foot. Once completed, you go back in the air for more dog fight action, and so on. I wish they would've done this part "a la" Uncharted 4, where you're driving in the jeep, exploring the land and getting out whenever you want to start exploring on foot and do missions. This would've given an amazing organic feeling, of being part of a battle on a HUGE scale, fighting on multiple fronts.
On the opposite of this, you get your mandatory "escort and protect" mission, which was visually stunning, but a total waste of opportunity character development (even though there is a little involved) and gameplay with a Jedi.
Mutli Player
I enjoyed how they decided to go simple: in BF1, you had about 12 different game modes, while in BF2, you have 5... It's enough, it's "balanced" and well rounded. You have your 20vs20 big scale assault, your 12vs12 space dogfight (Criterion knocked this one out of the park), 4vs4 hero battle (where all players are heroes), 8vs8 smaller and quicker "capture the flag" type mode and finally, your regular 10vs10 team deathmatch. They play good, they feel good.
I'm still not sure why the players are so unbalanced in games though the top 3 players on each teams are always FAR beyond the other players, ALWAYS. Modern Warfare 2 was criticized harshly on how they handled the perk system: once you reach a certain amount of points, you can spend them on powerups. The problem came from the fact that people would spam those powerups, gain more points with them and continue spamming the powerups, leading in an exponential spamming and create this gap between the 3-4 top players and the rest of the group. The problem is that in BF2, those powerups are not time bound, but limited to the total in play: only 2 heroes can be in play at one time. So if ther're taken, you can't take them until they die. However, if they die, and the player has enough points, he can respawn right away as that same Hero, preventing other players to play as a Hero. Every match ends up with 4 players, hogging heroes, or ships... It would be nice for the power ups to be limited by time or just like MW3, you don't stack as much points when using power ups, so unless you really kick ass, you wouldn't be able to spam the heroes. This is a 2010 issue!!
The other downer is that you're not guaranteed to be in the same squad as your friends: every time you die, you're placed in a new squad, waiting to spawn. Once time is up or the squad is full, you spawn. They try to entice you to play with your squads by giving you points when you're in proximity of said squad. However, if you're in a party chat with friends, you won't talk to your newly assigned squad and you will most likely squatter in the map, making it useless to be in said squad. Why not do like Bad Company 2 or any previous battle field: stick to 1 squad, you can spawn on the leader if he's not in danger or at 2 fix points? It's frustrating to play with friends, without being able to actively play with them! Again, this is a 2010 issue...
By now, you know how EA messed up the whole game, with their pay walls and all that F2P type crap. There is no need to talk more about that. The only thing worth mentioning is that Dice and Criterion made a good game, with room for improvement and EA messed it all up to an "OK" game at best. They "addressed" the issue, but it was too little too late and we all know it's temporary and they will find another way to get into your wallet...
Bottom line is: the game is good, it's worth playing. Is it worth full price? Hell no! Wait for a deal or get a used copy. While it's probably not the game "you're looking for" (see what I did there?) it's definitely worth giving a shot. Maybe one day, they'll give us the BattleFront everyone is asking for. In the mean time, it's as good as it gets.
