Played for a bit with this and really not sure about it. For context, I played the shit out of the first one. I am a firm believer in single player modes being the 'main' attraction and yet loved the last one. It had faults sure, but I felt these were overplayed. This feels like a worse game so far. I was super hyped but this kind of brought it back down to earth. I'll be getting it regardless as my daughter loves star wars and played a lot of split screen on the last one. Plus Darth Maul, man, Darth Fucking Maul.
The game looks amazing, kudos to the devs on yet another stellar presentation. I think the gameplay however is a fair bit below however.
Few criticisms:
- I play a lot of Battlefield 1, Battlefront 1 and TF2, so I am thinking this may be a UK and EA issue as I now see it here too (lag). I get a lot of random jittering lag, I'll be running and then I skip back a step. Very jarring. Or I hit a guy in the head with multiple shots but doesn't seem to register them all. I actually switched to the heavy class to compensate for this. Very frustrating. I get like 16 ping and have great bandwidth and obviously that doesn't seem like client lag to me. I think there are a lot of frame drops too, I'm not a frames purist and usually never notice that stuff but definitely seems bad at times (using PS4 Pro). That could be server lag again but in general the performance can be very frustrating. One minute I'm doing very well and getting a 5 man kill streak, next it feels like I'm shooting spit balls. I've looked into this a few times and do find others complaining about this in the UK, didn't used to be too bad but gradually worse like a month or two after battlefield 1 was released. So more of a regional EA server complaint.
- Maybe its the game modes available but the spawn system and lack of map is really jarring. It seems to put you half way across the map and you have no feel for the fact you are half way across the map. So you start careful, get bored and rush... then rush into enemies and die. I would much prefer the squad/map system of battlefield 1, it gives you a little bit more strategy control as well. I would keep the 'auto-squad' feature, not let you switch but you can create a fresh squad and invite others. Or if they are on your friends list, they get an auto-join prompt. With a map shown pre-spawn so you can at least orientate a little.
- Not a fan of the maps, lots of large open spaces with no cover along with total choke points where it becomes a grenade, effects can't see shit so wildly fire in the general direction affair.
- Heroes seem really hard to get when you're playing well, I was doing the best in our team, built up my points... but we did too well so as soon as I spawn as Rey it is game over with a victory. Victory should feel good, but I felt completely robbed. Almost encourages you to do worse.
- The balance of the game modes is pretty crap to put it mildly. Galactic assault if you are vaguely competent as a team defending can destroy the escort vehicle pretty quickly. If they get passed the first round, then its almost nailed on they go on to win it seems. The first few games I don't think many understood the process of getting the ion gun and like a mini-walker assault can start destroying the tank. Once people knew, that seemed to be that. So got a bit boring. Then played Strike... defending is pretty much an easy win. You'd have to be pretty bad to mess it up. The fact the artefact resets means you can just sit from afar and all shoot whoever tries and picks it up. Didn't win a game as the attack, didn't lose a game as the defence.
- The guns and roles are mostly pretty meh, basically kept playing as the heavy. Which I noticed a lot of others were too. Not enjoyed the others at all really. I might enjoy assault more if the performance was better.
- The objectives and pop up notification stuff takes up so much damn screen space and as I see others mention, some roles and maps make seeing things a lot harder. So to have a giant bit of writing overlay things so you can't see the enemy is pretty poor. make it smaller and move to the top, with an audio announcement instead. Then you've got moving droids and falling leaves which at the corner of your eye makes you twitch turn. Everyone looks paranoid as shit.
Anyway, a lot of this can be fixed I think barring the spawning system which I can't see them changing. Looking forward to the single player campaign unless it is another mary sue.