Hello Jedi Knights and Padawans alike, on Nov. 17 the game Star Wars Battlefront II came out, made by the gaming company EA Games with help from DICE, Motive Studios and Criterion Software. The Star Wars Battlefront series focuses on taking the game idea from the Battlefield series and putting a Star Wars twist on it.

This second installment of the Star Wars Battlefront expands with new characters and new customization abilities. Star Wars Battlefront II does rely on online connections for players to play with other players, but it offers something its predecessor does not: offline gameplay. Offline gameplay, to again help out non-gamers, is where the console, and thus the game, does not require an internet connection, nor have an online presence in some membership.

The Arcade mode allows players to have an offline battle arena where they face a custom number of bots (gaming AI’s) determined by the player, to train for online gameplay, or just for fun.

Unlike its predecessor, again, Star Wars Battlefront II has a story option for the players, where they play as the Imperial Special Forces Commander, Iden Versio, and the player is taken through a journey in the Star Wars Universe that is canon (the events of the game actually happen in the universe’s overall story). With the story of the characters in the game taking place in Star Wars continuity, the player’s actions have a sense of purpose in the Star Wars story overall. This idea is present in the Epilogue mission the player does as a tutorial mission to understand the controls in the game, in and outside of the campaign.

Overall, the story is decent, with an open ending for DLC (downloadable content) to finish up. Once the campaign is finished, what’s next for the player? Welcome to the world of multiplayer.

In Star Wars Battlefront II, there is more than just multiplayer, and multiplayer itself is bigger than before. The Multiplayer mode available to players has a number of different modes not available in the first Star Wars Battlefront, and they are even fun. The added multiplayer modes for Star Wars Battlefront II consists of a Starfighter Assault mode, where you fly in spaceships in space and fight one another, Heroes versus Villains, hero characters from different eras in the Star Wars universe fight each other, and Strike, a shrunken down version of the main option for online gameplay. The main mode in the multiplayer department is Galactic Assault where it is a 40 player game of two teams fighting each other for different objectives decided by the game, and it is my personal favorite. Each different mode is fun and has very good replayability value that players can keep at until the banthas come home.

In my opinion, the game is extremely fun and very enjoyable to play as a Star Wars fan and as a video game fan. The game has so many options for player entertainment and interactivity that it will take a long time to get a hundred percent of completion in it overall. The graphics are astounding, they convinced me at times that I was watching live action footage and not animation.

However, like any work of art, there will always be some flaws, and this game does not miss out on such a fact sadly. The campaign’s open ended finale leaves players feeling unsatisfied with the story they finally got to play in the Star Wars universe. With the gameplay, the game takes a long time to load up when multiplayer is involved in smaller game modes, and when one player leaves the game, it is paused until a new player joins.

Another problem with the game is the fact that the heroes and villains players can play as is limited and, if they want more, they have to play the game for a long time to build up enough in-game currency to purchase them. However, this wouldn’t be a problem if the currency in the game wasn’t such a massive problem to get without using the biggest problem in many games nowadays: microtransactions. Microtransactions are where the player exchanges real world money for in-game content or resources that can help push players up the ranking system.

Overall, I enjoyed the game and it felt like an actual Star Wars game that any fan of the culture icon could enjoy. My final rating of the game was close to enjoyable and perfect, but not quite there because of some gameplay bugs and mechanics that are less than pleasing. I strongly recommend for people to buy this game if they are a fan of the early 2000’s Star Wars Battlefront game series, or even the predecessor of this game that came out two years before it. And remember dear readers, may the force be with you.