Star Wars: Battlefront II

The Good
This is, in my honest opinion, the greatest Star Wars game ever made. You play as infantry depending on faction and era such as the Republic Clone Troopers or the Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS for short) during the Clone Wars era, or the Rebels or the Empire during the Galactic Civil War era. Each faction has infantry classes that are available to play as with two classes that you need to earn points for to play as to play them during instant action games. If you earn enough points performing actions, such as capturing command posts in conquest games or killing enough enemy infantry units, you are able to unlock the ability to play as a hero or villain depending on map and faction you selected. When playing as heroes or villains, you have a timer indicated by the time meter that looks like a lit up lightsaber below the available abilities for the hero or villain. The time meter depletes over time while using the hero or villain. You can gain more time to play as the hero or villain by killing enemy units to play as the hero or villain longer. If you take damage while playing as the hero or villain, you lose time on the time meter. If your time meter depletes completely, the hero or villain is defeated and you have to wait to play as the hero or villain after a while until you are given the chance to play as the hero or villain again. When playing instant action games, you have the option to enable heroes or villains during gameplay, and if heroes are enabled, you have the option to reduce the wait timer to play as heroes or villains, even having the option to have heroes and villains set to always to infinitely respawn as the heroes and villains. This game also has a campaign mode "Rise of the Empire", which sees you playing as the 501st clone troopers during the Clone Wars era playing missions with objectives that will lead to, as the title says, the rise of the Empire such as executing Order 66 on the Jedi temple on Coruscant that will end the Old Republic and the 501st clone troopers becoming Stormtroopers working for Emperor Palpatine's Empire. You then play as the Empire waging war against the Rebels. That is all I will say about the campaign as to let you discover what happens during the campaign. Now, there are more game modes for instant action such as conquest, which sees you capturing command posts from the enemy for your faction. Command posts under your control will allow you to respawn at them if you are defeated. You can change what class type you can play as for different strategies to defeat your opponent. When playing conquest games, you have a certain amount of infantry units available. If you manage to capture all command posts and none are captured by the enemy during the timer after you capture them all, or if you deplete your enemies infantry units to zero, you win the game. There is one flag capture the flag, where you fight over one flag to bring to the enemies goal point to score points. If you reach the maximum score against the enemy, you win the game. There is also two flag capture the flag, similar to one flag capture the flag, but you capture the enemies flag to bring to your goal point while defending your own goal point. There is also hunt, where you play as different indigenous species depending on maps and some maps as one of the factions such as the Rebels against Wampas, where you kill enemies to score points. If you reach the max score during hunt mode, you win. Then there is assault, a game mode that take place in space in space battles, where you sabotage the enemies capitol ships and defeat enemies in star fighters. Playing space combat dog fighting in ships feels very epic with tight controls that Pandemic Studios was able to pull off. If you are able to land certain ships in a enemy hanger, you can spawn infantry units within the enemy hanger and even respawn from the ship if you are defeated. If you reach the max score during space battle assault, you win the game. Then there is one of the best game modes in instant action to play, and that game mode is hero assault mode. Hero assault mode is a game mode where you can play as any hero or villain, with every hero or villain at your disposal to play as. Hero assault mode uses the same scoring system as space battle assault, but this time, to score points, you defeat your enemies to score one point each. Heroes and villains have health bars instead of time meters. Like space battle assault, if you reach the max score limit, you win the game. To play hero assault mode with both eras of the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War, you have to select all modes in the instant action screen, highlight the option assault that says "heroes and villains clash sabers and exchange fire in the ultimate duel of the fates" and select it, then select all eras. It will automatically select hero assault on Mos Eisley, Tatooine to then select launch. Then there is Galactic Conquest, a game mode that plays like a form of the board game Risk which has you playing a faction to conquer all planets on the planet chart to win. That is all of the different game modes you can play in this game. Now comes the graphics. The graphics is definitely not current gen graphics, but they are still very good looking for the original Xbox, and looks way better than the PlayStation 2 version does. Unlike the PlayStation 2 version, the original Xbox version has widescreen support to play in widescreen. The PlayStation 2 version can only play in full screen. This widescreen format for the original Xbox is very useful if playing on a old CRT TV with widescreen support if it has one, which I do have a CRT TV with widescreen support to take advantage of the widescreen format for this game. For the AI of the original Xbox port, if playing instant action games aside for hero assault mode, if heroes and villains are enabled, the AI controlled enemy can use heroes and villains to fight against you as you can use heroes and villains to fight against the AI. Compare that to the PlayStation 2 port, there is a glitch for the PlayStation 2 port that resulted in the AI being unable to use heroes and villains outside of hero assault mode and campaign missions. Even the Windows PC version has this glitch, as well on an unmodified installed copy. There is one more good thing about this game to mention. This 2005 original Pandemic Studios masterpiece is way better than Electronic Art's Star Wars Battlefront 2 from 2017 due to the beta having horrendous randomized loot boxes that if allowed to be released with the full game on day one, it would have been rendered a pay to win game in a $60 game. I never bought EA Games Star Wars Battlefront games, and I never will as this is the superior game to EA's Battlefront games. This port can have up to four players simultaneously with four controllers on the original Xbox. The PlayStation 2 version can only have two players playing at a time. That is all there is to say that is good about this game.

The Bad
Now comes the bad. Really, there is not much bad for me to say about this game. The only thing that can be bad is the official GameSpy servers being shut down and is no longer able to connect to the online multiplayer servers to play online on the original Xbox. The same goes for the PlayStation 2 port and the Windows PC port as GameSpy was shut down years ago. The only way to play this game online is to buy a digital Windows PC copy from Steam and GOG to play on the new online servers that the Walt Disney Company was able to have restored. I did bought the GOG version of this game as all GOG games sold on GOG's website is DRM free and contains no DRM of any kind. That is all that I can think of for what could be a negative for this game.

The Bottom Line
Star Wars Battlefront 2 by Pandemic Studios from 2005 is still one of, if not the greatest Star Wars video game of all time. There is so much replay value and ways to play in the galaxy far, far, away to defeat your opponents. All of the game modes and different classes to play as as well as heroes and villains really add up to this classic Star Wars game. I have all of the ports of this game from the original 2005 Windows PC version plus my DRM free GOG copy to the PlayStation 2 version and the original Xbox version and played them countless times. The only port I do not have is the PlayStation Portable version, but I still do enjoy this game for what is worth. The original Xbox version does have the edge to the PlayStation 2 version as the AI can use heroes and villains in instant action game modes outside of hero assault mode and having improved graphics and makes this port the definitive console port of the game. If you are a Star Wars fan and have an original Xbox, I can't recommend this game enough. I give this game a full five out of five stars. Highly recommended.

The Good
To be honest, there wasn't much about this game that I liked. I'll preface that now, so that you can read the rest of this review with a grain of salt. I am not a big fan of online FPS games.

The graphics were quite good, though not quite top of the line, which is understandable given its target demographic of online players. A little less CPU intensive graphics would (hopefully) provide for a better game experience online. The sound, as with pretty much all Star Wars games I've played, was significantly better than average.

What I like about this game was a notion I had about it before I got it. I'd read with considerable interest that this game would include what amounts to a flight simulator mode.... essentially X-Wing or TIE Fighter! Wow! Even with that feature though, there wasn't enough about the game that intrigued me enough to get it when it first came out.

As a shooter game, there's really not much to be said about it. It has the genre standard game modes and weapons and classes, all with LucasArts' typical Star Wars veneer. Nothing exceptional, either good or bad.

The Bad
The disappointment upon finally getting into a spaceship. I was so eager... playing an FPS game in the vein of Jedi Knight and then running up to an X-Wing, getting in it and taking off... and finding myself flying a go-kart with wings. There was no sense of speed or power (or physics, a constant problem with the Star Wars universe... but I digress).

TIE Fighter is one of my personal favorite games of all time. I was basically hoping for that to have been transplanted here. Now, since it wasn't, maybe that's biasing my opinion of the rest of the game. But that feature was the sole reason I was even remotely interested in playing it. And discovering that it was an arcade implementation rather than a simulator implementation was definitely a let-down.

The Bottom Line
This is not the worst FPS game I've played and isn't even close to the best. When it came out and was discussed in the gaming media I was glad to see LucasArts try to expand the gameplay in the Star Wars universe with the mix of styles or genres in one game. But I was disappointed in the end result. (Same thing I'd say about the space combat in Star Wars Galaxies.)

Long story short - I played it a couple of times when I got it as a gift, haven't touched it in years, and would almost bet my left big toe that I'll never play it again. It's just not my thing.

The Good
First off, the game is actually part of Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith and I think that this is a good idea for Lucasarts getting on squeal of Star Wars Battlefront. The Insane Action is always putting you into the battlefield and taking care of Stormtroopers, Battle Droids, Heroes and Villains. The Galactic Conquest is about conquering the galaxy and be a leader like The Emperor. Campaign Mode is about the story of the legendary 501st.

The Bad
One part I don't like the most is the Coruscant battle where the 501st is trying to kill the Jedi and it's so hard to defend the Holo-books in the Library and It's impossible to kill the Jedi which they just run towards you and take you down with just one hit.

The Bottom Line
Now there is an updated version of Star Wars Battlefront 2 and it's awesome because you can be in different space battles and different planetary battles. Get this game on PC if you want to try the updated version.