Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection Review (Switch)

Having not played a single minute of any Star Wars Battlefront game, I was excited to get into the series that I have heard so much about. Star Wars Battlefront (BF) and Star Wars Battlefront 2 (BF2), especially BF2, are sought be classic and revered Star Wars games. It’s easy to see the impact of these classic games in respect to the time they were released, but being “remastered” in 2024 without improvements to dated controls, a plethora of performance issues and infuriating gameplay systems left me with a middling experience. If you grew up playing these expect to play the games how you remember them. If you didn’t, prepare to be transported to a different age of gaming.

Both games involve playing through various key battles from the movies that because of the remaster look spectacular. Prequel era famous locations make appearances like Naboo, Geonosis, Felucia and Mustafar, as well as Original Trilogy legendary sites like the Yavin 4, the Deathstar, and Hoth! As a Star Wars fan, seeing all of these in action is genuinely pleasant. Furthermore, Temuera Morrison voices the whole army of clone troopers, which makes the experience feel like a classic Star Wars romp.

As a clone trooper, he’ll narrate the perspective of the 501st Legion from the Battle of Geonosis of all way to the Battle of Hoth. This gives the players an interesting angle to look at the story points through their helmets. Combating in battles that are hinted to or not even seen in the movies while being beautifully appealing adds to the sense of adventure of being in a galaxy far far away.

Unless you’re playing for nostalgia purposes this is going to be a rough play through, especially for BF1. This game drops you into matches without telling you about the purposes for each role, dropping you into a very clunky game and unless you just like to shoot enemies that’s the entirety of the gameplay. Starting a match, the game tells you to capture points (CP), but it’s a lot easier said than done. There are numbers displayed at the top of the HUD, but it doesn’t tell you if it’s related to time or if it’s your team’s overall number of lives or scores? Regardless, these matches are long. So when you fail you have to replay the whole mission over again.

Playing long missions where the controls are clearly dated make for a frustrating experience. Accidentally pressing the crouch button will put you in a punishing delay to your movement which is agonizing. Jumping is even worse it does nothing to your benefit, even though when you see enemies jump they will move like it’s the Matrix to dodge blaster fire. To add, there’s no option to run leaving you to slowly walk to each CP on these sprawling maps. It’s things like these especially that I thought would be added to the game to make it more modern, but as it currently stands these controls out right make me not want play.

Lastly, There’s no variety in game modes or objectives. All the campaign modes are capture the points and you win. Capture this point, destroy these enemies, capture that point, but this time you’re the Empire! Given that these are the only options to win and play these games, the fun runs out quickly. By my third campaign mission I had had my fill from Star Wars Battlefront.

“Help me, Battlefront 2, you’re my only hope!”

Now Star Wars Battlefront 2 is where the bulk of fun is to be had, but that’s not to say it’s sustainable without the feelings of nostalgia. Battlefront 2 adds great quality of life improvements like a tutorial, gameplay modes alternative to capture the point, and being able to play as Jedi favorites! The tutorial shows you why it’s important to pick the other roles other than just the basic kited Storm/clone trooper. Before this, I was wondering what the point of each of these roles were.

The campaign of BF2 has a similar structure to BF1 but with multiple objectives for each mission. These varied objectives include defending areas from wild animals, delivering holocrons, and even boss battles. In between the grounded missions are flight missions where you fly tie fighters/gunships and kick ass in space. These gameplay sequences were a highlight for me, it’s a shame there’s only a few total.

To put the cherry on top, all grounded missions give you the option to play as Jedi favorites like Yoda, Darth Vader, Obi Wan! Playing these characters truly gives you the full power of a jedi in battle. You can run at super speeds, leap in the air like an acrobat, and enemies die with one swipe from the saber (as it should be when getting hit by a plasma sword.) The vast improvements to the quality of life make playing BF2 a blast compared to BF1. On top of that, the quality of life improvements make a big stride to distract from the numerous performance issues.

Unfortunately, both of these games are riddled with performance issues. It’s a long list of issues, but the main culprits are frame drops, audio outbursts, pixel breaks in cutscenes, and overall defects. Frame drops happen constantly when there’s too many enemies on screen or when a big explosion goes off — this happens constantly. Pixel breaks happen during every cutscene. I’m talking about cutscenes that are clips taken straight from the movies! Audio outbursts are sudden and happen from time to time, but not as frequent as the aforementioned. Jank is just infested everywhere in both titles.

Objective points and enemies will twitch. Sometimes they will be invisible, making it hard to complete missions that have no checkpoints. To add to that, teammate AI just doesn’t work, leaving you to do all the work! Capture all the points, kill all the enemies, deliver all of the items. Grenades will be thrown only for me to wait only for it to never go off. All of these issues mixed with the vivid aging of the controls and gameplay make BF1 and BF2 both a slog to get through.

Star Wars Battlefront 2 online play is quite decent to play online, but at the end of the day, it plays equally as rocky as the campaign. If you are able to connect to a server, expect a decently functioning online capture the point match. I will admit it is more fun to play the campaign, and I can see playing online being even more fun playing with a group of friends where getting the most out of each role will be the most effective.

Playing the force user will go into rotation as they get eliminated, but it’s not guaranteed you will get the chance to play as Yoda, Leia, or Darth Maul. Again, the game runs with glitches and such, but it runs well enough to have a good old Battlefront 2 match. Personally, I was satisfied enough from playing a few matches, but those who played the original releases are probably thriving. More power — or force — to them.

As a big Star Wars fan, I couldn’t wait to experience the praises of the original Star Wars Battlefronts, but as a gamer, I am let down by a mediocre effort made by Aspyr.

Certainly the games have its charms in setting its missions based on epic moments from the Star Wars Saga, looking aesthetically great, and being able to play as fan favorite Jedi. However, these wonderful things are quickly bogged down by a myriad of performance issues, outdated shooter gameplay and overall jank. Aspyr should have made the effort to make this 20 year old classic collection as modernized, as it is graphically enhanced. Unless you have a nostalgic yearning for this, I cannot recommend this game, not even to the biggest of Star Wars fans.