Star Wars: Battlefront, the franchise.

[Nadya Iwakura]

I remember the original Battlefront from 2004, it was fun. I especially loved the original Battlefront II from 2005, especially Galactic Conquest. The cancelled Battlefront III would have been amazing, but sadly we were left with only portable Battlefront games for the rest of LucasArts' lifespan, one spinoff and one that put lots of the cancelled Battlefront III into a playable form. The latter was good, in my opinion, but it would have been so much better as a console title like it was meant to be, with splitscreen and Galactic Conquest and such. There were some plans for a Battlefront IV back when the cancelled Battlefront III was still in production, things with "what if" scenarios like alignment changes of heroes, and that seems really weird and something out of a Star Wars: Infinities comic, but that was before there was any concrete implementation of such things so it could have been just a strange idea they had.

Some years later, Disney buys Lucasfilm, LucasArts shuts down, EA is given the sole rights for making Star Wars licensed games, and DICE's Battlefront from 2015 was really lacking in planets at launch, with only four, and only Galactic Civil War era factions. A free DLC is given out after around a month which adds a new planet, Jakku, but the gameplay is very repetitive with the few maps and most players get burnt out. Over the next year, DLC and free content updates are added which add much more content and makes it feel more like a fully fledged Battlefront game. Oh, somewhere around here, they also add microtransactions to bypass most non-cosmetic progression, but they hid it so well that nobody noticed.

EA/DICE's Battlefront II adds Clone Wars era content, sequel content, a lot more planets at launch, a short but kind of not good campaign, but the main game mode felt very repetitive, and probably most of all, there was an outrage of loot boxes that could be bought via microtransactions being main mode of progression and characters being locked by ingame currency like a MOBA in a $60 (or more with deluxe edition) AAA game. So, the launch was quite silent, and the devs were quiet until around April, when they hired a good community manager finally, and they added more content, modes, some minor things, until finally giving new planets, heroes, reinforcements and vehicles, and a mode similar to Conquest of the original Battlefront games. But then now they're also stopping support and we're left with a good game but with so much potential it could have had. At least we got droidekas, though.

EA's Battlefront II is free on Playstation Plus this month, and it's worth playing it this way since you can do it without giving EA money. But honestly, the original Battlefront II on PC with some mods, or on console in splitscreen Galactic Conquest is still the best way to play Battlefront, at least for me. Hopefully whatever future Battlefront game that comes out will have a good Galactic Conquest. That's really all I want.

[Bird Shorten]

I loved the original Battlefront, it was tons of fun despite not having a lot of content compared to the other games.