Star Wars Battlefront II (PS2) Review - It has aged a fair bit.

By Sam Coles:

With the recent announcement of Star Wars Battlefront II from EA games and DICE I thought I would look back on the original Battlefront II that was released all the way back in 2005 on the PS2, Xbox and PC. People have said that this game is superior to the new game that came out in 2015 and yes that is true in some regards but honestly it has aged poorly in some areas and no I’m not just talking about the graphics. Let’s get into it.

Star Wars Battlefront has a campaign but it’s not as good as people like to make it out to be not to say the story is not interesting it’s in its execution where it falls short. The game is about a platoon of clone soldiers who are a part of the 501^st legion where you see them progress from the Clone Wars to the Galactic Civil War that is an interesting concept. However it is how it plays out that is the disappointment which is what a lot of people forget, the campaign missions are glorified bot matches and nothing else except cutscenes bookending each chapter and people forget that that’s all the Battlefront campaigns were, bot matches.

There is a lot in this game I’m not saying it’s a bad game but I’m just trying to address the fact the campaign was not as great as people like to make it out to be. You have instant action which is a lot of fun it’s like a virtual version of playing with your Star Wars toys where you can play in the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy so you can play as Stormtroopers, Clone Troopers and even Darth Maul which is a lot of fun.

You have Galactic Conquest where you fight over several planets to dominate the galaxy, what is unique about this mode is that every planet you take over you gain a perk for your army which give you the upper hand in the next battle. This mode is a lot of fun with a friend as it becomes a virtual game of tug of war and it can get incredibly tense with huge battles.

My favourite game mode in this game is the hero battles where you throw all strategy out the window for all out chaos with different heroes and villains with lightning, lightsabres and lasers flying everywhere and it is stupid fun.

Visually the game has not aged well with horrendous frame rate issues on the PS2 version which I do believe the frame rate is more stable on the Original Xbox version, but if you really want the most stable frame rate grab the PC version. However there are some levels that look great like the city of Theed and Endor.  The character models look polygonal with choppy animation, maybe I’m being a bit harsh on a game on the PS2 from 2005 but Resident Evil 4 and God of War came out the same year with excellent graphics and animation.

Can I recommend the original Battlefront II? On the PS2 no as it has a lot of technical issues. how about on the PC? Maybe but the campaign is repetitive and lacklustre because the missions are glorified bot matches and are not that interesting. You can still play this game online on PC as far I’m aware so jump in if you want to play some Star Wars battles online.