Everything was better in Battlefront II. That game will still be a notch above this one.
Let's be honest here, and take off our rose tinted glasses. Battlefront II was a great game. But it had a few shortcomings. First off, it was basically Battlefield with the StarWars theme painted on. Secondly the actual gameplay, I'm talking about shooting stuff, movement, you know, the basics, were pretty jank. Not well polished, and the only reason we put up with it was it's GODAMN STARWARS. Thirdly the balance was....... meh, some maps where awfully balanced if I remember correctly.
The theme carried that game, without the theme it would have been a less than stellar Battlefield clone with a few decent ideas. Those ideas being (and coincidently the best parts of the game for me): Galactic conquest, space battles, and heroes.
Yes I've played the new Battlefront beta and it's pretty good from what I've seen. The graphics and particle effects are spot on, it runs surprisingly smoothly (PC) given it's listed min requirements. The load times aren't nearly as bad as they were in BF4 and BF3. Sound design, is holyshit batman this is the best omg yesyesyesyesyes. Play this game with headphones and you'll not be disappointed, DICE makes incredible sound design and this is no exception. Running around on ground level while an AT-ST walks past blasting everything away and hearing a Tie Fighter screeching past, as you deploy a Squad Shield and listen to the laser blasts ping off the shield while everything gets muffled from outside the shield is, is, it's just the best ok. The shooting and movement is smooth as butter and the power up system for getting rockets and vehicles is interesting.
However, the leveling system is, well I don't care for it. The flying is a mixed bag IMO, and Hoth is, well it's a bit unbalanced. The leveling system is far too tedious, you have to reach a certain level, then spend an ingame currency to unlock it as well? That's far too finicky and annoying. Flying, oh boy flying. I'm a bit conflicted to be honest, as on PC it's basically mouse aim from Warthunder, with a weird amount of mouse acceleration (this is true for all vehicles/turrets) which I'm guessing was done to keep people from being ungodly accurate with vehicles (assumption on my part). Dogfights tend to boil down to numbers, and who gets on whose tail first (basically every battlefield/battlefront ever). I mean the maneuver buttons (F1,F2,F3) kinda help, but if someone's behind you, they typically just delay the inevitable, which is you dying (unless you're in a Tie Fighter). So all in all it's ok, I guess. The fact that, by default on PC, it's mouse aim, keeps the barrier to entry as low as possible for flying is definitely a plus, but it feels a bit jank due to the mouse acceleration (once you get used to it, you can still be quite accurate).
Hoth is weird. From my experience the Rebels will only win under 2 somewhat similar conditions. One is the the Empire team is stupid as balls or just plain bad. The other is if the Rebels spawn as fast as possible when the match first loads and take the first uplinks and dig in before the Imps spawn in, this typically paves the way for the rest of the match. If those 2 things don't happen then the Empire wins almost hands down. The Empire spawns too close to the first uplinks imo, and depending on when the bulk of your team spawns can heavily influence the rest of the match. The Rebels air pickups are more or less on the Imperial side of the map, and one has no cover around it, making them extremely difficult to get (and without air support the AT-ST's will wreck as people don't equip Ion Grenades or Shot). All the Imps pick ups are clearly on their side of the map making it easy for them to pickup so... just... wtf.
The other mode is basically KoTH. Meh.
At the end of the day it's not JUST Battlefield with a SW skin, and I'm ok with that.
