Here are my thoughts on the Battlefront II build at EA PLAY

Over the weekend, I was lucky enough to have EA fly me down to Los Angeles for EA PLAY.

One of the perks of the visit was that I got to spend a couple of hours trying out the pre-alpha build of Battlefront II. Below, I’ve written up a quick review on my thoughts of what we got to experience of the game so far.

To start, I really enjoyed the depth the gunplay offered over EA’s first Battlefront. Each weapon felt unique and their was a certain “oomph” when firing each shot.

I also enjoyed the revamped overheat mechanic. The new system allows you to manually reset your overheat bar before it overheats, which makes it almost like a reload mechanic. Once you overheat your gun, if you succeed at the mini-game, you’ll be able to fire at will for several seconds afterwards. YouTuber AZZATRU has a nice breakdown this new system over on his channel. All in all, this new system introduces a bit of a new skill gap and will allow for players to work on improving that aspect of their game.

The Battle Point system is something I’m super excited about. It offers players more control over how they want to play when compared to the old token method from the last game. It gave me the sense that I was progressing throughout the battle as I could start off as a B1 battle droid, work my way up to a B2 super battle droid and then use those points to become Darth Maul.

Moving onto heroes themselves, Maul was extremely pleasing to play has. He actually felt very similar to his original Battlefront II self in that his movement is fluid and fast. Rey was also interesting, although I didn’t spend as much time with her.

I’m also a fan of the reworked personal shield, which is currently only available to the heavy class and only provides protection to the front of the character. Similarly, limiting the jump pack to the clone trooper class so far is a smart choice. Wining one-on-one feels much more rewarding than

The new class system was nice and will hopefully allow for more strategic gameplay down the line. Personally, I don’t really care too much about classes, but I think that as a whole they’ll make the game more rewarding for more people.

I can’t say too much regarding vehicles. I only played each one once and the vehicular control still feels wonky to use (from my perspective) on a mouse and keyboard.

While I immensely enjoyed my play time, there are a few things I would like to see changed, however:

• The third-person camera view was far too zoomed in on normal infantry. The heroes and Reinforcement characters seemed to have a better field-of-view. It’s worth noting that associate design director Dennis Brannvall commented during BattlefrontUpdate’s livestream on Sunday that they’re still working on the third-person camera, so this should hopefully improve by the game’s final release.
• The cross-era heroes felt off to me. I can understand the reasoning behind allowing heroes throughout all maps and eras; it adds an extra level of depth to the gameplay. However, as a Star Wars fan, I found it strange to see Boba Fett taking out clone troopers (essentially his brothers) and it simply brought me out of the battle slightly. Like with the third-person camera, however, they’re still tinkering around with how to handle cross-era heroes, according to hero designer Guillaume Mroz. My hope is that we’ll see cross-era heroes in hero-specific modes (like Heroes vs Villains), but have the larger, more cinematic modes like Galactic Assault stay locked in the map’s particular era.
• The explosive spam was a bit much. This may have been due to the Star Cards available (such as the Thermal Detonator or the Barrage), but there was a bit too many explosions for my liking. This was especially prevalent once the battle turned into a close quarters affair by moving inside the palace.
• There was a lot of running without seeing opponents during the opening phase out on the streets of Theed. I assume this can be fixed by changing spawn points or map boundaries, but I would prefer to more-quickly get back into action. As the jump pack isn’t as prevalent, I definitely think something needs tweaking on the Theed map. Thankfully, Brannvall agrees that this section is “a little too spread out” and that they’ll “make adjustments to bring up the intensity.”

Finally, I do want to comment on how gorgeous Theed looked. It easily outstripped any map from the previous game, which is no easy feat. The indoors of the palace was especially incredible—the lighting bounced off the reflective marble in a very realistic way. I was also impressed by how smooth the frame-rate was for such an early build, although that could partially be due to EA PLAY having very beefy PCs.

Also on the topic of the general experience, I’m really happy to have the clones and droids sound like their The Clone Wars TV show versions. I’ve watched through the show several times and it did an amazing job at making the clones feel like real people with real problems. It’s great to see that honored in-game.

I’ll reiterate that this build was in pre-alpha. With that in mind, it’ll be interesting to see how it changes into the alpha, beta and final release. Regardless, I certainly think Battlefront II is moving in the right direction.

Battlefront II arrives November 17 on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC. Follow SWGO on Facebook and Twitter to stay up-to-date on all the Battlefront II news.