Star Wars: Battlefront II review: Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope

Enlarge / The pull of the Force is strong with things like an impeccably rendered Millennium Falcon. (I mean, gosh, that's purty.) But Star Wars: Battlefront II can't paint over most of its failings. (credit: EA / DICE)

I've tried to give the new video game Star Wars: Battlefront II a fair shake, and I tried to do so through three types of fandom, at that. I really dig Star Wars-and I've generally appreciated when the series has expanded its universe in video game form. I'm a big fan of DICE as a creator of high-polish, massively multiplayer online shooters. And I thought 2015's reboot of the Star Wars: Battlefront game series was perfectly satisfactory as an accessible online action game.

I kept all of these optimistic angles in mind as I booted the new game-and as I used my lightsaber of fandom to try to carve through its confusing economies. But that has been Scarif-massacre levels of difficult. Battlefront II ultimately lands as an adequate-but-forgettable combination of polish, bombast, and been-there-done-that shooter tropes. Even after EA's last-minute about-face, little about the total package makes me eager to recommend it to anybody looking for a family-friendly blaster, a Star Wars-worthy story, or a month-after-month dive into online team combat.

One step forward, how many steps back?

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