YMMV / Star Wars Battlefront II (2017)

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Is Iden's Heel–Face Turn unearned? Given she's a woman who served on two Death Stars and participated in the destruction of Alderaan, does her choice to turn against the Empire marks her as a Hypocrite who only cares when the victims are her people? Or did it require seeing the A Million Is a Statistic victims up close to realize what was going on?
• Angst? What Angst?: After Iden and Del defect from the Empire they show (beyond a token line in the first fight) few signs of sadness over having to fight their former comrades who still wear the Empire's colors while having abandoned whatever ideals it stood for. While their personal relationship with Hask and Admiral Versio does get acknowledged, on Naboo Iden explains her defection as "we were fighting on the wrong side" rather than "this is not the Empire we signed on with" and the devastation of Jakku's starship graveyard (with most ships there being Imperial) is treated with a hopeful "end of the war" tone lacking any sadness over seeing the remains of the Empire these characters were so loyal to not a year ago.
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Crait map that was released as part of the The Last Jedi season was very well received by many in the player base, who praised the map’s balanced design, striking visuals, variety of potential playstyles, and epic scale. Days after release, some were already calling it the best map in the game.
  • Pick any Starfighter Assault map. Any of them. Most fans agree that Criterion Games managed to knock the entire game mode out of the park and gave a feeling reminiscent of older starfighter games like TIE Fighter and Rogue Squadron, as there is always a furball somewhere on the map, complemented with a lot of cover and setpieces for creative plays; having competent bots helps, too. D'Qar in particular stands out for its innovative magnetic fields mechanic, adding wholesale chaos and throwing even veteran pilots for a loop.
• Cliché Storm: Part of the reason fan reaction to the protagonists defecting to the Rebellion has been rather tepid is because that's happened in pretty much every major story centered on the Empire in both the Legends continuity and the new continuity^note Two notable exceptions being the fan-favorite Tie Fighter and, ironically, the original 2005 Star Wars: Battlefront II, and that's not even including how overused it is in fanworks as well. Many had hoped the game would kick that trend and let the player remain a Villain Protagonist, if for no other reason than to do something different.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Assault players are more inclined to use their Vanguard shotguns than their actual blasters, given it's able to kill most troopers in one hit at a fairly decent range. It's not unheard of for Vanguard users to singlehandedly down Heroes through sustained fire, either. Even without taking its killing potential into account, most players also use the Vanguard shotgun for its speed boost, allowing them to reach objectives faster than any other unit in the game short of the Aerial.
  • If you've spent any time playing the Heavy class at all, you'll know that you can get a lot of mileage out of two modified Sentry Star Cards, more than the rest of the cards; specifically, Supercharged Sentry, which adds explosive blasts to each bullet (and being a Sentry, you will spew a lot of bullets), and Explosive Sentry, which each shot having a massive splash area and dealing enough damage to oneshot most trooper classes.
  • Any Officer main worth their salt will gravitate towards using the Blurrg-1120 for its burst capability and high time-to-kill, easily outstripping most trooper weapons in the process.
  • In Heroes vs. Villains, Chewbacca is essentially the meta, given all he needs to do is throw his Shock Grenade to stun the target, then unload his Furious Bowcaster on the poor sap that's staying paralyzed for a couple of seconds (which is usually enough given Furious Bowcaster's high damage output).
  • The most common way Leia is played is to stand as far back as one can and shoot her alt-fire at distant enemies. Since her shot is homing and can be a one-hit kill, and she has a shield to regenerate any scratch damage, it’s practically impossible to stop a Leia using this strategy unless an opposing player treks all the way to her without being spotted to attack her at close range. And that’s no guarantee either as Leia has plenty of close range combat options.
• Contested Sequel: Opinions on this game's quality compared to 2015's reboot are divided at best. One one side, Battlefront II is praised for a massive increase in map and unit variety (as well as performance-based access to them), improved visuals and a much faster pace in matches. On the other hand, a questionable progression system (one marred in the microtransactions controversy), persistent gameplay bugs and a shoddy single player campaign greatly undermine what normally would pass off as a Surprisingly Improved Sequel to the 2015 reboot (which was panned for not using Star Wars's assets to their fullest), although the progression system was mercifully overhauled to be more forgiving and fair to the player, leaving fewer flaws to contend over.
• Critic-Proof: The game initially suffered from disappointing sales with launch sales at 50% of the first Battlefront game and EA losing $3 billion in share value. However, an official Sony blog post revealed that Battlefront II was the most downloaded game on PSN for December 2017 ^note Bear in mind that downloaded games are more profitable to the publisher than retailed games. and the EA quarterly call shown that the game still sold 7 million units even if that was short of their 8 million target. Furthermore, EA's share value rebounded and even surpassed its original value. So while the game didn't make as much money as EA hoped, it was still fairly profitable.
• Demonic Spiders: The single player campaign is chock full Heavy troopers that take a lot of damage to down, and can retaliate by toasting you in just about two seconds of sustained gunfire.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Major Shriv, the rebel commander who becomes Iden and Del's wingmate after they defect was well loved thanks to his Knight in Sour Armor attitude and frequent humorous quips. Within a day of the game's release, there were already posts calling him the best character in the game.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • Some people believe that the Clone Trooper announcer for the Assault on Theed map is Captain Rex due to the intonation of his voice. To further support the theory, the announcer ends his introduction to the map by saying "Fight with honor!", something Rex said at the Second Battle of Geonosis.
  • Similarly, the Starfighter Assault trailer revealed a Battle of Ryloth space map, with the voices of two pilots superimposed against the footage. The female pilot saying "Bank hard! Incoming!" is believed to be Ahsoka, while the male pilot that spoke before her is Anakin. It may be worth noting that the both of them did participate in the Space Battle of Ryloth in the show itself, but the anachronism of the single player maps (also shown in the trailer with Maul with the Scimitar at Kamino and Vader at Fondor Shipyards, where in both cases the characters should be dead/MIA) may counter this point. Possibly jossed, as gameplay footage of Starfighter Assault contains NPC pilots crying out the same thing.
  • The epilogue mission has created tons of these, as it allegedly ties into The Last Jedi and contains cliffhangers for the upcoming “Resurrection” update:
    • Iden Versio and Del Meeko being Rey's parents. Kylo Ren mentions they have a daughter three decades after the Battle of Jakku. They also know about Lor San Tekka and the map to Luke Skywalker, indicating they've been on Jakku. Of course, many fans mocked this theory, irritated that any mention of the word “daughter” seems to be enough to create Rey speculation. It's then flat-out jossed by both the DLC campaign and The Last Jedi, with the introduction of Iden and Del's daughter, Zay, in the game, and the movie revelation that Rey's parents are nobodies...or, rather, she's a Palpatine in the next movie.
    • Project Resurrection, The First Order’s mysterious operation on Pillio, has created tons of speculation. Theories range from the boring and mundane, such as simply rebuilding the Empire, to this outlandish, such as reviving Palpatine or creating a new body for Snoke. It's later cleanly stated in the DLC campaign that it is the enlistment of Child Soldiers and resources mining for the First Order, leading to the clearly mundane side of theories.
    • The fact that Pillio seems to be dying has also created a lot of speculation as to what may be draining the planet of life. Just like the above, it's just the First Order pilfering planets for their natural resources.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Well, "Fan" Nickname may be overstating it, but the game as a whole was given the appellation "Gamblefront 2" by Jim Sterling or "Storefront 2" by RabbidLuigi, which, even well after the microtransactions were removed, is still something that people who aren't fans of the game will call it.
  • When Anakin Skywalker was first released in February 2019, he was so powerful that fans gave him the moniker "The Broken One".
• Friendly Fandoms: With 2012's Spec Ops: The Line, due to both games' campaign stories being written by Walt Williams. In fact, thanks to Battlefront II, some mainstream gamers took an interest in Spec Ops, which had previously been a commercial flop and subsequent cult hit.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Rey in stands out from the large roster of heroes in Galactic Assault due to one of her abilities allowing her entire team to see the enemy team through walls and obstacles, giving them a massive advantage. At least two of her abilities help maintain the free team radar, making it even more useful. Also, her mind-trick ability is crippling, and if she does it to you while you're already fighting others, you're screwed.
  • As stated in this video, Finn is a kill streak machine thanks to his Dead Eye ability. For reference, Dead Eye basically grants him perfect accuracy on an enemy no matter where he's firing at. On top of that, if one enemy is killed with Dead Eye, the other enemies will be affected by Dead Eye as well. Oh, and there are star cards that can make the ability better, which all turn Finn into a proverbial meat grinder.
  • Palpatine, post-patch 1.1. Able to hit opponents with his lighting through walls, possessing Star Cards that greatly augmented his Chain Lightning to the point where he could easily sustain himself in tight environments, it's telling when most small Galactic Assault maps ended up being little more than a blood bath as the Palpatine player racked up kills. It got to the point that EA had to render him unplayable.
  • The Heavy's DC-15LE, following Patch 1.2, got its Exploding Shot attachment bugged, effectively eliminating said attachment's increased heat buildup and allowing players to fire the gun for extended periods of time, which in turn gives Heavy users what is essentially a win button given the splash damage eliminates the need to be accurate and outright ignores lightsaber blocks, meaning those Heroes will fall just as easily as any other trooper.
  • The Chosen One update introduced Anakin Skywalker to the game in early 2019. It quickly became apparent that he was designed to be overpowered. He's the only hero in the entire game with four abilities, two of which can clear entire rooms in seconds. Not even lightsaber-wielding villains stood much of a chance when he was first released; Not only can Anakin break his opponent's block, he was also able to leave villains completely helpless just by using his abilities in quick succession. As if that weren’t enough, he could also buff his health to 1000 hp with the right Starcards. Although he has been greatly nerfed multiple times since then, he still is considered game-breaking by the gaming community. He’s even been turned into a Memetic Badass in some circles.
• Gameplay Derailment: Because all players are rewarded roughly the same amount of post-match credits regardless of performance, more than a few players have taken to using rubber bands or homemade machines on their controllers to prevent themselves from being kicked out of games for not being active. This allows for a 24/7 stream of credits without needing to play themselves. DICE fortunately caught on to the problem and buffed the credits earned for actually performing well in a match.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • When choosing the LAAT on Clone Wars-era maps, there's a low chance that the game will eject you out of it for no good reason, and some versions of this bug even let you walk around the map while at high altitude, making for some airborne shenanigans.
  • The in-game challenge milestones occasionally bug out, with multiple cases reporting that they filled the requirements for obtaining the challenge' reward, yet became unable to click on said reward. Sometimes, the milestone's progression won't even budge, causing frustration for players who legitimately completed those challenges. This is an issue that DICE doesn't seem to have a clear solution for, even with multiple patches. Patch 1.2 eventually came around and fixed the problem for good.
  • A visual bug in the loading screen sometimes incorrectly displays the map you're loading into. For example, the loading screen shows you an image of Starkiller Base, while the flavor text labels it as Takodana, and ultimately loads you into Jakku. Naturally, this led to hilarious jokes.
  • In true DICE fashion, one bug fix leads to another bug. Patch 1.2 applied a couple of visual glitches fixes and several Hero units balancing, but mistakenly affected the formula for weapons with the Exploding Shot attachment, giving the attachment's benefits without the heat buildup and fire rate penalties. This in turn leads to the Heavy's DC-15LE becoming a straight-up Game-Breaker when using the Exploding Shot attachment, as you can simply fire away in an opponent's general direction and not worry much about your accuracy.
  • The First Order AT-ST spawn in Galactic Assault Jakku can sometimes be located out of boundaries, leading players to try and get back within the map's border in a hurry, or else they just wasted their Battle Points.
  • The Y-Wing in the Galactic Assault version of Mos Eisley doesn't cost any battle points and can even be picked as the game starts. If the Empire loses several tickets before any Rebel would even be able to engage them, you'll know why.
• Growing the Beard:
  • While the game was met with shaky reception when first released, the overall consensus seems to be that the game has improved immensely throughout the following two years.
  • To wit, besides many balance changes, there have been multiple new heroes added in on both the heros and the villains with fan favorites like General Grievous and Obi Wan Kenobi with their own unique feel to them.
  • In addition, there have been multiple new maps and game modes added, as well as new vehicles and classes, all to the joy of the fanbase.
  • The addition of Clone Commandos and Droidekas were met with near universal approval, as were the ARC Troopers and Commando Droids.
• He Really Can Act:
  • Matthew Mercer initially drew some skepticism for being cast as Luke Skywalker, but after the campaign mission which focused on him and his compassionate personality, fans grew to love his portrayal of the mature Jedi warrior Luke has become post-Endor.
  • Misty Lee and John Armstrong didn't really get to voice Leia and Han much respectively in the previous game due to its multiplayer-only nature, but here they get to shine in their respective missions – Misty for capturing Leia's headstrong persona and John for replicating Han's sass.
  • Matt Sloan was criticized in 2015's Battlefront for voicing Darth Vader in a manner that's reminiscent of David Prowse's early attempts in A New Hope (which is to say, fairly weak next to James Earl Jones), with fans commenting that he could've been more convincing if the sound editing turned his lines one pitch lower. In this game, "Chad" Vader comes back with a vengeance, harkening back to his stellar performance in The Force Unleashed.
  • Matthew Wood gets to voice the masked Kylo Ren in lieu of Adam Driver, and does a fantastic job at portraying the snarling, intimidating villain. In contrast, Roger Craig Smith's performance as the unmasked Kylo Ren drew mixed reception.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • On the high end of the overpowered units, we have the Wookie Warrior, simply because of how superior its arsenal is compared to other Enforcers and as a result can go toe-to-toe with Hero units; indeed, one well-placed bolt takes off a considerable amount of health, the Overload ability is powerful enough to hold off an entire hallway, and the Thermal Imploder can easily mop up a bunch of tightly grouped enemies. What's worse, it's available for all Light side factions, meaning you'll be seeing them in all matches ^note The exceptions being modes that don't include Enforcer units one way or the other. Because of this, the Wookie Warrior is hated by the fandom for being too powerful compared to Dark side Enforcers. They have been thankfully nerfed in Patch 1.1.
  • Conversely, buffing Emperor Palpatine prior to The Last Jedi DLC is considered to be a mistake upon realizing that he now becomes a silly Galactic Assault killstreak machine in the hands of any decent player with the right Star Cards (specifically, the ones that amp up his Shock and Awe power).
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The single-player campaign ends with Iden fighting her way across the hull of a Star Destroyer during the climactic final battle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. Two years later, The Rise of Skywalker's climax has the exact same scenario as part of its final battle.
  • In cross-era dialogue, Rey comments on Palpatine ("That shriveled old man, he burns with power..."), which is suitably appropriate as of The Rise of Skywalker, where it turns out he's still alive by then and that he's her grandfather.
• I Knew It!:
  • While Sequel Trilogy content was a given, Prequel Trilogy content was not. Some fans believed that the title would skip out on the Prequels, while others held out hope that they would be a part of the game. The latter group were proven right.
  • That Inferno Squad is actually a Battlefront II novel and is a prequel to the single-player campaign, which would revolve around Inferno Squad.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: One of the complaints for single-player mode is that about half of it isn't even about Inferno Squad, so some feel that they're underdeveloped, especially since only half of the screentime they do get is about them serving the Empire before defecting to the Alliance for the second half. In addition, on a normal difficulty, the campaign only runs for about four hours.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • As far as Heroes go, Captain Phasma is in the bottom tier due to confusing design choices and a harsh learning curve; her primary blaster is ostensibly the worst Hero weapon in the game, paling in comparison to every other Hero firearm, and sports a horrendous spread, making it struggle even against regular trooper guns. Then there's the hilariously slow swing time and poor hitscan of her Staff Strikes, an ability that not even Star Cards can reliably boost (and some of them even have steep requirements for triggering). It says something when her only saving graces are a decent health pool (coupled with an ability that temporarily buffs said health pool) and the deployable droid that can stun and shoot people (effectively making her a good territory control Hero). Patch 1.2 fixed her blaster's bizarre firing pattern, at the very least.
  • Iden is also bottom tier for much of the game's lifespan, given her low health pool and fairly impractical abilities; her Droid Stun lacks range, her droid shield is marginally better than the Specialist's, and her Pulse Cannon won't win any ranged confrontation due to a painfully long charge time. Common consensus is that she doesn't have much in the way of uniqueness to set her apart from regular troopers, especially when even when her main blaster is accessible for seasoned Heavy players. Patch 1.2 increased the effectiveness of her Droid Stun, making her an actual threat to enemy heroes and tightly grouped troopers.
  • Leia has struggled for relevance owing to her strong blaster but unimpressive abilities. Her blaster pistol is very powerful thanks to its secondary mode that fires a homing shot capable of one-hit-killing most troopers and increasing in damage with travel distance. However, all of her abilities are underwhelming in comparison. Her E-11 blaster ability is useless thanks to its poor accuracy and low damage. Her squad shield and stun grenades aren't more effective than the ones used by the Officer class. Her squad shield is particularly useless against lightsaber users who can just walk into the shield to fight in close quarters. For many, Leia is just too situational and her abilities that wouldn't justify picking her over a force-user or regular trooper. DICE had to rework her ability with a February 2020 update that replaced her stun grenades with thermal detonators and allowed herself and friendly allies to regenerate health inside her shield.
  • After Patch 1.1, Boba Fett has become the butt of many jokes, with repeated nerfs hampering his already average killing power; his only saving grace, the wrist rockets, got their blast radius and damage severely reduced, making it harder for him to rack up multikills.
  • Much of the problems with the above heroes tie into the balancing issues affecting blaster heroes. While blaster-based heroes were initially competitive during the game's first few months, they gradually fell out thanks to power creep and the shifting popularity of certain modes. The introduction of new reinforcement units like the Clone Commando and Commando Droids made the blaster heroes redundant since they offer similar shooting combat and can fulfill many of the same roles with lower battle point cost. In hero-centric modes, blaster heroes almost always lose against lightsaber heroes, who can deflect their fire and have superior mobility/defense. For many players, blaster heroes suffer from having neither the unique gameplay of lightsaber hero or the accessibility of a reinforcement.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "That's the point, sergeant." is becoming just as memetic as "Are we blind? DEPLOY THE GARRISON!"
  • From the E3 2017 trailer:
    "Sector is clear!" [lightsaber wooshes around] "NOT CLEAR! NOT CLEAR!"^ExplanationThe line is said by a clone trooper right before Darth Maul arrives and kills his entire squad. It's since become popular to replace the clone and Maul with two other things, like Anakin and sand.
  • "The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for [tedious action that yields little reward]". ^ExplanationAfter EA's response to Darth Vader and several other iconic characters being locked behind a ridiculous luck-based paywall became the most downvoted comment in Reddit history, the post's opening sentence gets twisted into a wide variety of jokes.
  • This video lampooning EA (which was originally released in 2012) has gained a significant resurgence in popularity, with quite a few people stating that it's still relevant five years after its release.
  • "They're looking into it."^ExplanationAfter EA's disastrous initial attempt to address the paywall controversy mentioned above, DICE scheduled an AMA to address player concerns. By two and a half hours in, nearly all of the answers they provided were some variation of "We're looking into it and will make adjustments where necessary," the vagueness of which users took as a sign that they didn't actually want to answer anything. Jokes about EA and DICE literally looking at things exploded afterwards.
  • Given how well known the whole microtransaction controversy is, many have been making jokes about how there will be microtransactions for everything, no matter how small or insignificant it may be. Some have even made jokes about the refund button being hidden in loot boxes.
  • "Soon."^ExplanationOne of the biggest complaints about the game is the lack of transparency in regards to when updates and future content will arrive, with the most the devs ever say being that it's "coming soon." "Soon" in some cases can mean up to five months, such as in the case of trooper customization, and many have begun to joke about it. It's reached the point that prominent YouTuber and EA "Gamechanger" BattlefrontUpdates is selling merch based on it.
  • Pink Darth Vader.^ExplanationBlake Jorgensen's comments about how a white Darth Vader would look outlandish and would trample on canon (in a game where Darth Maul, a character who canonically didn't live to see the events of A New Hope, can fight Rey, a character who was born after Return of the Jedi) inspired a lot of love for a pink-colored hulking Sith Lord, bringing to mind similarly memetic pink recolors like Captain Falcon's.
  • Luke Skywalker fights some beetles ^Explanation A portion of Luke Skywalker's much hyped playable segment has him fight off a swarm of beetles with his lightsaber, which many fans were quick to make fun of
  • CLOSING THE GAP! / KEEP YOUR HEADS DOWN! ^ExplanationThe battle cries for Stormtroopers in the story campaign when they bust out their riot baton. Unfortunately, due to Artificial Stupidity, them dropping their otherwise effective blasters is a very suicidal move when fighting the player, who can simply run around and make a joke out of the riot troopers.
  • REMEMBER THE GENERAL'S WORDS! ^ExplanationOne of the the Resistance Officer's battle cries when using the Battle Command ability, referring to General Leia. Exactly what those words were is left to the player's imagination.
  • Bandaged arm Chewbacca! ^ExplanationAfter a drought of news update in early April 2018, DICE came up with new appearances for characters, and one of them is simply Chewbacca with a bandage on his arm (from The Force Awakens), with DICE citing that it was among the top choices in the community's wish list. Naturally, this has come under fire with lots of snark from fans who asked for cosmetics variety.
  • COWARDS!!! ^ExplanationOne of Kylo Ren's emotes, which has him throw a tantrum by wildly swinging his saber around and yelling "Cowards!". This wouldn't sound bad on a masked Kylo Ren, but Roger Craig Smith's impression as an unmasked Kylo oozes with hamminess, making this emote a favourite for emote spamming.
  • Droidekas = speeder bikes. ^ExplanationIn EA's apology for accidentally including a Droideka in a promotional image (which wasn't included in the game until Summer 2019), they claimed they initially mistook the droid (which was obvious to many what it was) for "a crashed speeder or enviromental clutter". Naturally, the internet quickly began mocking them for this mistake, including many photoshops and mods (for other games) featuring speeder bikes replaced by droidekas, and vice-versa.
  • "Respect the 1v1." ^Explanation In response to players who interfere (dogpiling) in Heroes vs. Villains Duels, this became a popular phrase among fans of the game-mode. It has become a fairly popular response to bad-sports in general, and players who don't want to play fairly.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Slave I is a playable spacecraft, and it comes armed with seismic charges. Just like in the movie, the sound briefly cuts off before they explode.
  • Many of the lightsaber sound effects, naturally. Especially Rey’s golden lightsaber added in the April 2020 update.
• Narm:
  • At several points during the Story Mode the camera tends lingers on Iden's face, particularly after heated arguments or events to try and show her feelings without her having to say it. However while the game visually is impressive, Iden's expression during many of these moments makes her look like she's either pouting, or seriously in need of needing to use a bathroom, resulting in many scenes being somewhat ruined just for how funny it looks.
  • Hask's reaction to the destruction of the second Death Star is "Impossible!" Really, Hask? It's not exactly unprecedented.
  • In the "Resurrection" DLC's final mission, you can shoot Hask in the knees and he'll still keel over dead in the following cutscene; death by kneecapping, indeed.
• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • The loot box controversy has overshadowed much of the real discussion of the multiplayer gameplay (which has been well-received by most), even after microtransactions were removed at launch. Likewise, most discussion of the single-player story tends to focus on the controversial plot point of Iden and Del’s defection, with only marginal discussion of the rest of the campaign. Long after the game has stabilized itself and is garnering a playerbase as sizeable as it was at launch, the shadow of the lootbox fiasco still haunts it, if only because it spurred a lot more controversies on Electronic Arts' subsequent games, and suspicions towards games that explicitly mention not having microtransactions when they were announced (including the single-player game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order).
  • It is now certain that the sales of the game have been heavily impacted by all the controversies, as Battlefront II's physical sales are 60% lower than that of Battlefront I.
  • This ultimately led to multiple governments looking into whether the loot box system can be classified as gambling, possibly leading to legislation with massive implications for the entire video game industry. As a matter of fact, the backlash and negative publicity against EA was significant enough that the use of Loot Boxes in games trended downward significantly afterwards, making the controversy serious enough that it can qualify as a Trope Breaker, as many other companies wanted to avoid the same sort of negative press.
• Pandering to the Base:
  • DICE have made it abundantly clear that many of their creative decisions with the game have to do with fan input on the previous title, which might not be a bad thing considering that it was a Contested Sequel in and of itself.
  • After release, most of the requested content from fans was for more stuff from the Clone Wars. After the Solo content dropped, the vast majority of content was centered around the prequel era. New skins, heroes, units, maps and entire gamemodes were all made specifically to cater to fans of the prequels. Beyond balancing and a few new skins, the OT and ST barely got any attention. However, fans don't mind the emphasis on prequel era given how the previous game focused exclusively on OT content and the ST has become more polarizing in recent years.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The game is often lambasted for its overzealous use of microtransactions and the very sluggish, unbalanced progression system that was left behind when they were removed. It's often speculated that the Star Wars license, being one of the largest IP's in the world, may have been a factor behind EA's overconfidence in the microtransaction system, and may have also served as a means of exploiting the impulsiveness of kids (many of which love Star Wars) who play the game and end up racking up massive credit card bills for their parents. If anything, however, this backfired horribly on EA, since the massive popularity of Star Wars, especially with kids, simply made it into a bigger and more visible target, which brought the backlash against microtransactions and lootboxes in games, which had previously been limited to a small subset of gamers, to a wider audience. Not only did this make gamers and games media more critical and skeptical of lootboxes than ever before, it also grabbed the attention of mainstream news outlets and politicians, who have the power to do some serious damage to both EA and Star Wars' reputations, brands, and even profitability.
• Rooting for the Empire: It's not hard to see that the people working on the game clearly were when designing the campaign, and fans of the Empire are naturally ecstatic about the story because of this.
• The Scrappy: Ralsius Paldora, the Imperial defector Han meets during the Skirmish on Takodana. While having good intentions, he has a truly obnoxious, patronizing personality that could rival Jar Jar Binks for sheer annoyance, he never shuts up about whats going on around him, and he's as useless as a man's nipple during gameplay due to his complete lack of combat experience. Thankfully, his presence in-game is very brief and the other characters don't like him much either, but the few minutes you do spend with him will make you wish you could put a blaster bolt through his skull.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The post-match credits reward system mainly works on the time spent in the match, with little to no input from actual player performance. As you can imagine, this makes for top players getting only marginally better payout than the worst players.
  • The matchmaking balance, or lack thereof. Getting completely shut down in one match? Brace yourselves, because odds are the next match puts you in the exact same team, just from the opposite perspective of the previous match. Oh, and don't think that changing maps will solve things, because the game still keeps track of which faction you previously played, which enforces the aforementioned matchmaking if you're constantly in the same instance. Because of this, you can only hope the matchmaking decides to throw you into a new lobby.
  • Since most multiplayer game modes are reliant on teamplay, the lack of skill-based matchmaking has been criticized. After roughly a year, it became very common to see one team stacked with very high level players (100 to MAX), and the other team only having low level players. This is especially frustrating in Heroes vs Villains matches (where sticking together in one group is the best strategy), as the team with newer players never stand a chance. Rage Quit often ensues.
  • The multiplayer spawns in general. Unless you specifically choose a player to spawn next to (which you can't do in some matches), the default spawn you are sent to is ridiculously far away from the action. You may have to run the entire map to reach your allies, and by then it's too late. Some maps are worse than others in this regard.
  • In this instance, it's more the lack of a mechanic. In the Campaign, unlike in the Multiplayer, the player is incapable of performing the Unnecessary Combat Roll. For players who've done the Multiplayer, where the combat roll is bound to get a lot of use when you're in the fray, this makes not getting killed by enemy blaster users, especially on hard mode, extremely difficult, as it limits you to attempting to sidestep blaster even against swarms on enemies.
  • While Duels are quite popular for allowing players to test their skills against others, the only option is 2 on 2, and wait times in lobbies can be very long for this reason. If one person leaves, everyone else has to wait until someone new joins in, or someone on the other team leaves as well. Also, if one of the players leave just before the round starts, the match starts even though its uneven. For this reason, it has become good etiquette for players to not double-team opponents, which has been called "respecting the one-on-one".
• Scrappy Weapon: None of the trooper class' default blasters have any attachments, so you really don't have a reason to use them over the unlockable ones aside from the looks, especially since each class has one that functions similarly to the default if not identically.
• So Okay, It's Average: The single-player mode has gotten flack for It's Short, So It Sucks! as described above, the alleged lack of innovation in its gameplay, and the Plot Twist being that Iden and Del defect to the Rebellion, which had let down many players who were Rooting for the Empire.
• Special Effect Failure: With the use of NVIDIA's Ansel screen capture, it becomes clear that players weren't meant to look at what's inside of the cockpit, as the pilots' character models, as well as the back of the cockpit, are blocky and reminiscent of an old, low-quality video game.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While this game had originally been a Contested Sequel upon release, constant updates the game proceeded to receive over the next two years greatly grabbed the attention of fans they had lost when it was first released. Now, while still viewed as flawed by fans and critics alike, the general consensus seems to be the game has evolved from being what it once was and its predecessor, especially in regards to its multiplayer, which have a skeleton crew.
• Tainted by the Preview: The aforementioned loot crate system has created a rather negative response from media outlets and fans since it was unveiled in the beta. This has in turn led to many fans canceling their pre-orders and waiting for review scores to come out.
• That One Achievement:
  • In Starfighter Assault, Tallie Lintra's milestone requiring 50 Savior kills is a daunting challenge, given that you have to look for a teammate that's being chased by the enemy amidst a massive furball. An easy way to topple this milestone is to have a partner pick the Millenium Falcon and attract enemy starfighters like moths to a flame, but even then, both of you would need to have gathered a large amount of Battle Points fast, least the other teammates pick Hero ships first.
  • Also in Starfighter Assault, any milestone requiring you to destroy enemy ships with 50 Concussion Missiles on Hero ships is long and tedious, given they're not weapons designed to kill in one salvo and you really need to bring your target's health down to critical before launching the missiles, which they can easily evade.
  • Phasma's "Commanding Officer" milestone, requiring you to kill 30 enemies with her staff's final strike. Given the hilariously slow swing time and poor hitbox that's responsible for her low tier Hero status, you'd be hard pressed to achieve at least one kill, let alone 30, and with the combo's final hit, no less!
  • Maul’s “Old Master” milestone will give you a Rebels-inspired outfit complete with his robotic legs that have become so iconic for the character, along with his salvaged Inquisitor lightsaber... but you need 5,000 kills as a Dark Side hero.
• That One Boss: The final dogfight against Gideon Hask can be infuriating, especially on higher difficulty levels. His main weapon can kill you in about a second if he gets on your tail, his missile weapon in almost a one hit kill, his ship is very quick and agile, and the airspace in which you fight him is mostly open, making it very easy for him to target you.
• That One Level:
  • Galactic Assault's Endor map is hard, to say the least. The concept itself is easy, but since the people are automatically shunted into a good or bad side, you could get one of two outcomes: Outcome #1 leads to the rebels being pinned down by hyper-competent Stormtroopers, who can't go past the first checkpoint, while outcome #2 leads to the hilariously inept Stormtroopers losing the checkpoints in a heartbeat and being unable to fire their missile launchers.
  • Similarly, the Death Star II on Galactic Assault is home to only 2 scenarios; either the Rebels get completely walled in the first section, or they steamroll through the entire map, with the Imperial side unable to do much due to the awfully far away respawn points.
  • The beginning portion of Hoth is widely hated by the Imperial side due to little to no cover while the AT-AT's advance at snail's pace, making the troopers easy pickings for up to four simultaneous Rebel starfighters.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • The trailers, combined with the fact that the game was confirmed to be canon, made it out to seem that Iden was going to transition from the Empire to the First Order so she could avenge the Emperor. Since the writer of story mode was announced to be the same writer behind Spec Ops: The Line, people believed that the story would be a deconstruction of undying patriotism at the expense of one's personal life. Instead, that's what happens to Hask, while Iden and Del join the rebels, with the duo's defection being derided for being yet another instance of Star Wars not allowing Imperial protagonists to say with the Empire.
  • After Leia accepts Iden and Del into the Rebellion, there's a Time Skip of a few months later, so we don't get to see how Inferno Squad adjusts to the rebels and the rebels adjusting to Inferno Squad. A similar complaint was made about Rebels regarding Kallus, who had a Heel–Face Turn and became The Mole during the six-month Time Skip between Season 2 & 3, with mistrust of him only being displayed a couple of times.
  • One of Iden's motivations is to capture her father and convince him see the error of the Empire's ways. This would have been a perfect opportunity to show how civil wars and differences in beliefs can tear families apart, but this is never expanded upon.
  • A prime example of how the game doesn’t put much focus into the promised "work for the Empire" selling point is when Iden and Inferno Squad see the second Death Star being destroyed while on Endor. Seeing the Empire's secret weapon, which they had put so much faith in, being destroyed should illicit powerful emotions and horror. Iden's response? She simply shrugs it off and continues to focus on the mission, telling the rest of her squad to react after they’re done.
  • The whole "Empire's perspective" angle the game seemed to be going for is underused in general. The first few levels show Iden and Inferno Squad's opinions on the Empire but not to degree that paints the Rebels as being the bad guys or tries to justify their actions, which isn't helped when the player has a level where they play as Luke. The protagonists defect to the Rebellion fairly early on and the game never once tries to show any sort of greyness to the conflict; the Rebellion is wholly good, the Empire is evil. This may not have been so noticeable if not for the fact that the game was released fairly soon after Rogue One, which got a lot of praise for showing that the Rebels aren't clear-cut good guys and that the war with the Empire is not wholly black and white.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: Although the quality of the game is rather contentious, everyone can agree that the voice actors gave some of their best performances for both the single player and multiplayer.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Nobody expected either BB-8 and BB-9E to show up as playable hero units in the Celebration Edition as many assumed that their non-humanoid soccer ball designs wouldn't fit in with the gameplay.
  • Then in February 2020 update, many were surprised with the addition of the Ewok Hunter as playable Reinforcement in the Rebellion era. While the community expected DICE to add new OT-era reinforcements, the Ewok was particularly surprising given how he uses a hunting bow instead of a blaster and was previously available only in Ewok Hunt mode.
• Vindicated by History: At launch Battlefront 2 got negative reviews and player feedback thanks to a lackluster campaign and the looming spectre of the microtransaction controversy, though the base gameplay was agreed to be a step above the 2015 game. With time and many updates, the game's multiplayer has been able to shine more thanks to the added free content, and several outlets even re-reviewed the game in 2019 after the Celebration Edition launched and found the package to be more fun than it was previously.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Similar to its predecessor, the graphics in the game are visually stunning. On PC, it's one of the best games for using NVIDIA's Ansel capture technology, such is the tremendous attention to graphical detail.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Come launch day, EA hastily removed all microtransactions from the game, citing the backlash as the main reason. This was seen as a big step in the right direction, but some found their press release's insistence that they'd be returned at a later date concerning. Others argued that the fact that EA DICE even considered putting such egregious microtransactions in the game in the first place has broken their trust of the companies regardless of any future decisions they make with regards to them. Needless to say, it's been a mixed bag from start to finish.
  • Update 2.0 completely revamped the questionable progression system to a more streamlined one that's not tied to microtransactions, along with fixes to some of the Good Bad Bugs that plagued the beginning of 2018, and general Hero and spawn points tweaking for a fairer experience. This emboldened the disillusioned fandom back into playing the game, and while there's definitely a lot of room for improvement, it's considered by most to be a step in the right direction.
  • Due to Battlefield V's subpar performance and failure to garner much praise amidst its own controversies, players have gone back to this game in time for the Geonosis update, which has surprisingly been met with praise. It helps that the Battle of Geonosis map for Galactic Assault features bar none the most hectic battlefield in the game.
  • By April 2018, it's become clear that Battlefront II retained a very solid playerbase thanks to all the gradual improvements, and got even some more with the critically appraised Capital Supremacy game mode; in fact, the developers revealed that the current amount of players is as high as it was on launch day, which is very impressive for a DICE title. Most people tend to agree that the game is now in a very good state compared to at launch, and hope that DICE keep maintaining the amazing comeback.
  • In the September 2019 update, offline Instant Action was added. The new mode harkens back to the original 2004 Battlefront, with command posts and reinforcement counts. Basically, everything that made the original two games so beloved.

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