Battlefront 2 is one of the most, if not the most, anticipated games of 2017. The long-running Star Wars universe has always been well suited for first-person shooter games and fans’ prayers were answered in the 2000s with the original Battlefront 1 and 2. Those games were downright legendary. It is a testament to the quality of the game that some people still play Battlefront 2 to this very day.

Fast forward to 2015 and EA drops a massive doozie on fans in the form of the dumpster fire known as Battlefront 1 (2015). The game was so pathetic that most people wished to return it days after purchasing it. The game was seriously lacking in variety, particularly in maps and weapons which gave experienced players no incentive to continue playing. It had terrible mechanics that were suited for casual, low skilled, players but were annoying for the pros. Worst of all, EA basically insulted our intelligence by selling more maps than were even included in the game as paid DLC exclusives.

Thankfully the gaming community did not respond to the game with enthusiasm, and it ended up being a major flop. This year, along with the new Star Wars movie comes a new Star Wars game. EA and DICE have lost their voices trying to convince us that it is totally not like the last game. Unfortunately for everyone, the facts so far suggest that Battlefront 2 is going to be an even bigger disappointment than Battlefront 1.

15 Weapons Are Seriously Unbalanced

Balancing is a major problem in the game. Some weapons are laughably underpowered, almost to the point of being useless. These include the starting pistol available to the officer class which is almost as effective in the game as throwing stones at a tank is in real life. If you are facing off against an Assault or Heavy with this weapon, you are going to lose 9 out of 10 times.

Another nearly equally useless weapon is the starting sniper rifle for the scout class. You can get five shots in before the weapon will need to be cooled down. Keep in mind that it takes four shots from this rifle to kill someone. This means that you can only kill one person before needing to cool down the rifle unless you land four bullets in a row on peoples’ heads, in which case you’ll get two kills.

14 Crates Can Be Bought With Money Letting People Pay To Win

It could not be an EA game if it did not try to entice us to give it, even more, money somehow. As if the aforementioned crates system wasn’t garbage enough, DICE and EA have one-upped themselves and found a way to make it even worse. They will be selling in-game currency to players which you can use to buy crates. This means that you can pay to unlock better things immediately and you would not have to wait for them to unlock naturally. This would make it possible for rich players to dump a lot of money into the game and unlock everything as soon as they start playing which would give them a serious advantage on the field.

I don’t want to sound like a communist but this is clearly rewarding rich players for being rich and completely goes against the spirit of gaming.

13 Spotting Enemies Is Way Harder Than It Needs To Be

Spotting certain types of enemies in some maps is way more hard than it needs to be. What’s worse is that some enemies are way easier to spot than others, causing serious balancing issues. For example, on pretty much every map available in the beta the clones are far easier to spot and distinguish from the background than the droids or other factions. This punishes whichever side is playing as the clones with an unfair disadvantage because it is harder for them to see their enemies than it is for their enemies to see them.

This issue is even more obvious when playing Galactic Assault in the beta. The sand-colored buildings of Theed do an excellent job in camouflaging the beige colored, slender-bodied droids.

12 The Squad System Is Totally Useless

The squad system is one of the best things about the Battlefield games and is really the game mechanic that sets it apart from other games. The squad system makes teamwork and cooperation possible and can be amazingly useful and devastatingly effective if players take advantage of it and stay in communication with other squad members.

Unfortunately, no such things exist in Battlefront. In place of Battlefield style squads, we get some strange grouping mechanism which forces you to join a squad with the three players who decided to spawn at around the same time as you. This system makes it impossible to choose where to spawn or to spawn near your friends, effectively rendering any cooperation hard to pull off. This contributes greatly to the reputation of Battlefront 2 just being a casual, toned-down, version of a Battlefield game.

11 No One Plays The Objective

Perhaps the first thing players who haven’t played a DICE game before will notice is that they don’t know what the heck they are supposed to do. In the recently concluded beta, this was exactly the case, with not just amateurs but even Battlefront 1 veterans struggling to figure out what exactly they were supposed to do, especially in Galactic Assault. Until the MTT reaches the palace, the clones are supposed to use the Ion rockets and target the MTT while the droids are supposed to prevent them from doing so.

Unfortunately, the players are not intuitively informed about this which results in very few people playing the objective, making an already unbalanced game even more unbalanced. I have played many rounds in which the MTT managed to reach the palace without taking a single hit from an ion rocket.

10 Maps Are Not Designed Very Well

Brace yourself to hear the word “balancing” a lot because this game is terrible at it. Most things in this game are very unbalanced and the maps themselves are no exception.

Those who played the beta must surely have felt that it is much easier to win Galactic Assault while playing as a clone trooper than as a droid. This is because the clones can not only kill you for points, they can also use the ion rockets to deal damage to the MTT. The droids, on the other hand, can only prevent themselves from getting killed and wait for the MTT to march forward. This means that on many occasions, by the time the droids make it to the castle, they have already run out of tickets and are quickly finished off by the clones.

9 Crates Suck And Have Basically Replaced Normal Progression

In most video games out there, you start with basic equipment, and as you play, you get rewarded for your skill with points which you can choose to spend on important new unlocks. Forget all that for this game as you’ll unlock far more far quicker with crates than through normal progression.

I noticed this the hard way. I played the beta for three days and only managed to get enough points to unlock two new guns. On the fourth day, while exploring the menus, I came upon the crates section. I found out that the game has a second currency which I had accrued a lot of and with which I could buy crates. I spend 30 minutes opening all the packs and unlocking nearly everything that could be unlocked in the beta. What sucked was that I couldn’t select what I wanted to unlock. The game decides for you.

8 They Seriously Need To Rethink The Costs Of Unlocking Heroes

The lack of balancing in this game even pervades the realm of the heroes. Rey and Darth Maul, the heroes with lightsabers, are extremely deadly and it is not uncommon for players to get kill streaks with 20 or more kills while using them. Keeping their lethality in mind, it makes sense that they cost 5000 points to unlock as they really are worth it.

Now let’s talk about Han Solo and Boba Fett. These guys, while still formidable in front of common enemies, are easy prey for either Darth Maul or Rey. Not only are they prone to being defeated in one-on-one battles with the Heroes equipped with sabers, but they are also much worse at killing regular troops than Rey or Darth Maul are. This disparity in capability makes it hard to ever select these two guys over the equally priced saber armed options.

7 Sometimes You Are Forced To Use The Bad Third-Person Camera

The implementation of the third-person camera system leaves a lot to be desired. First of all, your perspective is a little zoomed out than what it would be if you were in first-person mode, which makes the already hard to see enemies even harder. Not to mention, it is an unneeded disadvantage for players who prefer third-person over first-person.

Secondly, if you are in front of a wall or a rock or something similar, chances are you won’t be able to zoom in which can have fatal effects for you sometimes.

All of this wouldn’t normally be a problem since you can choose to play in either perspective. Unfortunately, sometimes when using certain weapons or playing as certain special characters (even the special clone troopers/droids!), you are forced to play in third-person mode.

6 Battlefront 1 Had A Better System Of Spawning Special Items

Spawning, like balancing, is another thing which seriously lets the game down. Special items like aircrafts, bombers, and the LAAT gunships are now selected in the respawn menu, and you use battle points you collect to unlock them. Though this may seem fair at first, remember that not many new players will get enough points to unlock the good options, or will not know how to do so even if they have the points. This may turn off players with low skill, or players who don’t want to invest time figuring out the game’s mechanics by trial and error.

I think Battlefront 1 (2015) handled this much better. It was much more intuitive and gave everyone, total noob or Sith Lord, an equal chance to use special items or the heroes.

5 The Classes Have Serious Disparity In Power

Any commentary about the various balancing issues present in the game would be incomplete without mentioning the classes. Though I appreciate the inclusion of classes in the game, something that was sorely missed in the previous Battlefront game, the sheer disparity between the capabilities of each class is seriously off-putting. It is undeniable that the Heavy class is overpowered (and dominates every other class in short and medium range engagements). In long-range duels, only a scout has any hope of emerging the victor.

Standard weapons aside, even the special abilities of the Heavy class are ridiculous. Both the basic Sentry Gun and the advanced grenade launcher version turn an average individual player into an unstoppable one-man army capable of getting 4-5 kills easy.

4 The Game Would Have Been Awesome With 64 Or 128 Players

Let’s be honest, the first time most of us heard about a DICE game was probably because of the large maps of their games which generally allow 64 player matches. Way back in the golden days of Battlefield 2 it was even possible to play in massive 128 player matches.

Given DICE’s unique background, it is puzzling, and frankly a little strange, that they have decided to limit the game to 40 player matches for some reason. The 40 player limit is only for the biggest game modes like Galactic Assault. Other (lesser) modes have even smaller player limits, such as Strike with its puny 8 vs. 8 matches.

DICE has squandered a golden opportunity they had with Star Wars —which is literally the perfect franchise for massive firefights— with their short-sighted decision to have only 40 player matches at most.

3 Battlefront 2 Is More Of The Same Of Battlefront 1

Battlefront 1 was a major disappointment for most people. Though I will admit that expectations were sky high and it would have been nearly impossible for DICE to have lived up to them, no one was expecting the game to suck as much as it ended up doing.

Fans complained about every aspect of the game, from the lack of ....pretty much everything, such as maps, weapons, modes, to the super casual vibe the game gave off. The game also could not rub off EA’s influence, and had more maps in paid DLC than in its original shipping state.

Unfortunately, the consensus so far is that other than more variety in maps, weapons, and modes the game is exactly the same as Battlefront 1. None of the other issues have been fixed. The game continues to be geared heavily towards casual players and remains soiled by EA’s dirty, greedy hands

2 Original Battlefront 2 (2005) Handled Vehicle Spawns Much Better

The original Battlefront 2 was released in 2005. It is actually quite shocking how much better that game was in every single way other than graphics. After Battlefront 1, most fans considered DICE too incompetent to deliver something which would live up to the legacy of the original Battlefront 2. These fans will be bittersweet to know that they were right.

One of the best things about the 2005 Battlefront 2 was its vehicle spawning mechanism. Vehicles would appear on the map, and the player would have to go to them and jump in. Not only is that more realistic and intuitive, but it also gives beginners a real chance to use vehicles. Furthermore, sometimes in the new Battlefront, you spend your hard earned points on a vehicle only for it to get destroyed instantly, this source of frustration doesn’t exist in the original as you didn’t spend points on vehicles.

1 The Campaign Is Nothing Special

With all this stinging criticism about the stale multiplayer, you would think at least the campaign mode would be good. Apparently, according to various video game reviewers, the campaign is only the last car of the train wreck that is Battlefront 2. Gamespot described the single-player campaign as “Unimaginative,” lacking variety, and clichéd. They are also concerned that EA’s money-grubbing will find its way into the campaign through the presence of microtransactions.

What’s especially worrying is that DICE, the developers of the game, have a terrible track record with single player modes. Battlefield 1 had a decent campaign, but it was absurdly short. Battlefront 1 did not even have a campaign. Battlefront 2 seems to be going along the same path with news coming in that its campaign only takes 5 hours to play through.