Overview
Expanded review of Star Wars Squadrons with detailed analysis of all its aspects.
Introduction
EA Games!
Episode IV
Talentless Hope
After cooperation with Respawn Entertainment and after successful release of The Fallen Order EA decided to continue its work on the games of Star Wars universe. But now EA decided to come back to the concept of multiplayer game and cooperated with Motive Studios, which worked on the Battlefront II together with DICE.
After the incident with lootboxes, EA abandoned the idea of microtransactions. Now all the skins you can buy with the in-game currency, which you can get by level upping, completing daily quests and finishing the ranked season.
Does Squadrons have good story, gameplay, atmosphere or graphics?
Graphics
I’ve seen lots of reviews, where were said about lags, freezes, crashes on high-leveled computers with RTX 2080 and Core i7. But the joke is that I have i5 9300H and GTX 1650 and I played this game in Ultra video settings in FullHd, and had no any lags, freezes and crashes even in the most “epic” fights. There are two things we can get from this: or the game has the fantastic optimization, or it just has bad graphics. If we take into an account the reviews of people with RTX 2080 and their freezes, so the answer is that Squadrons just have bad graphics. Even in the Elite Dangerous, the game of the 2014, the graphics is MUCH better.
Story Mode
The radical Liberal parties of Europe and the USA payed EA for propaganda of radical Liberal ideas in the game. Rebels are Good, tolerance is good, women are strong, white cisgender men are Evil and weak. The story itself is primitive, like it was written by seven-year-old: again, there is a traitor in the Empire, who becomes a commander of rebel squadrons, who rises from the dead when everyone thought he was really dead. Nothing new.
The nature of the characters is not revealed at all. We do not know much about them; EA introduced a lot of characters and even after completing the story you will learn nothing about them. Nothing to tell about the protagonist – you are a random person from the Empire/Rebels.
I’ve completed the story mode in 8 hours, and I was counting on at least two endings, but EA decided to say that Good always wins. And we cannot name ending which we have in the game an “ending” actually, they just retold us things we’d done in the end of the game…
Atmosphere
NO! Lots of Black and Asian people on a high positions in Empire (black woman commands the Empire army…it’s just a great stupidity…) and Republic. There are a few White men, but they are evil, like Imperial Colonel who oppress our Asian-woman commander. It’s reversed racism: all Blacks and Asians are good, but white men are Bad, except Wedge Antilles, who was added to this game only for the reference to the original story.
Specifically, about Wedge Antilles: his appearance in this game is a Bone Dance, it’s just a spit directly to the real fans of the SW. Here he fights for criminals, for contrabandists, for killers not for freedom and democracy.
About women in this game: there are no attractive women, even mirialans who always drawn as very good-looking women are also spoilt in this game. Of course, there are no beautiful women in the world exists, thanks to radical Feminists!
What also destroys the atmosphere of the game is the emotions of the characters. When they are furious – they have neutral faces, when they are happy – they smile, when their friend, their commander, “died” – they smile as well! Also the manners of out Imperial commander, I do not mind to have Asian-woman commander, her appearance really suits to this position, but her manners…I thought that there are strict rules in the Empire, but when the commander gives us orders with a smile on her face – it’s really ruins the whole atmosphere!
The locations are good but not impressive, you won’t find something specific there.
The conclusion on the atmosphere: it’s killed by a great amount of Blacks and Asians on the high positions, inappropriate emotions. Also, Rebels – a great Good, Empire – a great Evil, despite the fact that Rebel Squadrons consist of killers, bandits and contrabandists…
Gameplay
Many people say that it’s very arcade and it’s not a space flight simulator. On the first sight it’s true, but it suits to the concept of the game. Dogfights, missions: destroy fighters to win. It does not differ from the concept of the Star Wars. I understand that this gameplay is not for all people but there always will be lovers of this. And I’ll be neutral with this point.
Multiplayer
As this game is presented like online game, I should talk on this topic too. There we see 5×5 battles… It makes Deathmatch boring; it is compensated by small maps. But “small maps” is a minus as well. We have ranked fleet battles. You must play there using teamplay, but as I’ve seen it’s just an another deathmatch, all players fight on their own, your teammates do not help you, the do not complete objectives. I’ve played 10 initial battles, 8 I’ve won, and always got 1-2 places in a team. In every game I made greatest impact of all players in the games (more then 100K damage to heavy spaceships in each game). And after completing these battles I’ve got…the lowest rank in the game… If everyone receives the lowest rank, for what these initial matches are needed?
I’ve spent 8 hours in the multiplayer and I got bored… And for the great amount of people only 30 mins will be enough to get bored of such primitive game modes.
About the skins and lobby: no one will notice your skin especially in the battle. And you won’t see your skin as well, as you play from the first person of view. Emotions which you can use in the lobby are useless, and they are made really bad! Emotion of crying is real cringe, rubbing face with neutral mimics…
So, Multiplayer in this game is boring and worthless for playing.
Bugs and AI
I have not seen many bugs: only when I saw Imperial frigate passing through textures, and also, I have not received an achievement after completing the story mode on “Veteran”.
AI: it’s really stupid: in fleet battles it always crashes, in story mode your squadron teammates won’t help you with destroying enemies.
Conclusion
The game does not worth of buying, it does not cost 40$ it does not cost even 10$. Bad graphics, the worst story, bad multiplayer, imposition of radical Liberal ideas. I understand why EA made such a bad graphics for 2020 year. This game does not have microtransactions, so they decided to earn money by expanding the area of players. This game is 3 of 10, 2 points is for gameplay, and 1 point is for Asian character of Titan Squadron (he looks like Genghis Khan).