I can recommend Battlefront 2 if you get it on sale for 5$ like I did- but only at 5$, because even 7 damn years later EA is still finding ways to make you second-guess your decision. I don't even need to say it really, but it bears repeating: Battlefront "2" is a great game that has a terminal case of EA Games. The actual game part of Battlefront is nothing but positives; it's everything built around and inside of it that leaves a bitter aftertaste. As such, I am ultimately giving this a thumbs up, but only because there isn't a "meh" option. Really, the rest of this review is less about the actual game and more about the other stuff you'll have to put up with whilst playing said game; that way you can assess for yourself if this game is worth 5$ + the mountain of annoying BS you have to try and ignore whilst playing. PROS: ----------------------------------------------------------- + The game itself is great fun. Nothing complicated, not breaking any new ground, but who cares? It's a really well polished, good looking shooter with everyone's favorite Sci-fi as a coat of paint. Hell, I don't even particularly like Star Wars and I still enjoy this because it skips out on all the dumb stuff to get right down to the actual "war" part of Star Wars. + It is honestly impressive how good looking this game is even now considering this thing is almost 7 years old. + Goes without saying that the performance, for the most part, runs very smoothly in 2024. + Way better than the ""original"" Battlefront, offering loads upon loads of additional content and ways to play the game. + You can extensively edit and modify the parameters of instant action games. Sick and tired of that little green dog turd doing weaboo flips all over your ass? Set the hero capacity for any given match to 0! +If you are like me and buying this edition for 5$ in 2024, then congratulations! Patience is a virtue, and as such we get to not only circumvent the single biggest cancer that was grafted on to this game, but we get all the stuff others had to bend over ass backwards to unlock. +It's just plain fun to dress up as a Clone/Storm trooper and shoot stuff. As I said, the positives are all very real and very easy to recommend. Kudos to DICE's hard work there. The issue is that, even now, EA's cold, icy talons exert a noxious influence on your experience trying to play the nice game for nice people. CONS: ----------------------------------------------------------- - The balance between certain heroes is glaring, to say the least. You ultimately dodge the vast majority of game imbalances that were a product of it's controversial lootbox BS, but you will still experience faint echoes of that now. - Look at those four nasty glowing yellow boxes next to you. This game requires: 3rd-party DRM, 3rd-party account, 3rd-party EULA, EA subscription agreements and further Terms & Conditions. This game will saddle you with a lot of slimy corporate baggage just to get to some fun mindless shootbangs. - All those shiny extra cosmetics and goodies you got for pennies by waiting 6 years to play BF2? If your connection to EA's servers flickers for even a moment, you'll lose your access to them until you reboot the game with a fresh connection to the servers. Even if you saved all those to your loadout, if you play while "offline", you'll revert back to basics. It's largely cosmetic, granted, but inexplicably Jedi heroes like Obi-Wan, Anakin and Grievous get locked off from you. - The game will perpetually nag you if it considers you offline, too. The silver lining here is that you ultimately still get to play, but you can tell it quietly resents you for doing so. - Did I make it clear how crappy EA's post-Origins servers are? Because they're awful. Be prepared to play "offline" a lot. - Also I should clarify the Celebration Edition contains all DLC goodies *up to* 2019. Anything that got released after this time is not granted, so be aware of that: you're not actually getting everything. - All 3rd party EA launcher BS and service agreements you have to sign off on allow it to data-mine the shit out of your PC, and not just for basic data analysis. The terms explicitly state they -will- sell your data to advertisers or hell, anybody really. Best of all, if someone breaches their data server security and steals your data and/or hacks your account, steals credit card info, etc, EA gets to absolve itself of any responsibility and shifts the blame to you. I know this sort of crap isn't strictly unique to EA, and in fact is just another nightmarish reality of modern gaming that we've just accepted, but jesus. TL;DR ------------------------------------------------------------- I ultimately recommend BF2 if you can get it on sale for a sum in the single digits, but only just. At 5$ you can probably put up with all the invasive nonsense the game still tosses at you and still have a blast once you're actually popping rounds off. As it stands, Battlefront 2 is a great game that still manages to leave a bitter aftertaste even 6 years on and well after the most offensive aspects like the loot boxes sloughed off. If putting up with that in return for only paying a measly 5$ seems like a fair trade, then go for it: you do get a lot of bang for your buck, and certainly more than many who came before us. Otherwise, I implore you think it through because you're paying a lot more for this game than just 5$. Stay classy, EA.
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