February 2021
Solo game is ok
Fairly straight forward and generic story/campaign
Post story, the game itself is barebones with very limited play selections.
Two basic modes:
5 v 5 dogfight. No AI. Online only.
5 v 5 fleet battles. Online/Offline modes with both Solo/Co-op modes. Capital Ships and larger attacking vessels are always AI controlled and follow obvious patterns. Since these are the objectives, it becomes repetitive.
There are five playable ships per side, no boss ships or special ships of any kind. All ships require rudimentary resource management. Alliance has shields on ALL ships while the Empire has shields on two of five and of those one is rarely played. So it feels like the Empire has a choice of four ships, only one with shields.
By my own estimations Alliance and Empire Ship Hull Strength is fairly equal, so the Alliance has an automatic survivability advantage in all play modes as well as slightly better loadout options.
Overall the Alliance ships seem more powerful, with shields and more loadout options available to them.
Verdict: Ships are not well balanced.
Game design: Boing, not visually stunning and extremely repetitive. A typical fight feels like this:
Fly in circles continually cycling targets, follow a red arrow (target indicator) until a white box (target) is in front of you, fire at center of white box hoping you are actually hitting target, white box may or may not turn green, if so fire ordinance if equipped and watch it miss. Rinse. Repeat. You rarely get to see what your actually shooting at, you are literally shooting a white box, over and over and over. It begins to feel very repetitive very fast. When attacking capital ships it is a repetitive strafing run, weaving left and right to avoid ridiculously accurate AI turret fire, while firing your own ordinance hoping it does something but never really knowing because the games feedback system is lacking.
Multiplayer Review:
As most gamers do, we tend to game solo. We typically do no have 5+ friends online at any given time all wanting to or being able to play the same games. As such we are penalized while playing SW:Squadrons. EA and Motive believe most gamers have 4 other folks at-the-ready to play when they are, which even in pandemic times is a stretch. Personally I keep a modest friends list, and only one other plays SW:Squad. So I guess based off that I should not have even purchased the game.
By design this is really a strategy game masked in a space flight sim. It assumes you will, at the very least, be using voice chat to coordinate with your 4 other teammates. In a perfect world, with 5 mature and coordinated folks all playing toward the same goal this is great. In reality, if they even have voice chat turned on, all to often you have:
1) Open mic gamer who is simultaneously using voice chat while having a conversation with someone in their room
2) Open mic gamer who never talks but has a loud tv and a dog barking in the background
3) Gamer who is constantly afk to 'smoke a bowl' or 'grab a beer'
4) 13 year old gamer who gets excited and screams "guys help me, help me, help meeeeeeee!" every time they are targeted,
5) Lone gamer (usually me) that is trying to actually play the game and communicate goals/strategies within this circus
This usually translates to a loss, or at the least a very painful and frustrating win. At present with a modest 9 hours played time in Ranked Fleet Battles, I currently sit at a demoralizing .37 win rate. 63% of the time I am on a losing team through no fault of my own. I frequently come in the top 3, often 1st or 2nd. I always play the objective, defend when necessary, attack when necessary and use the appropriate ship/loadouts that the situation calls for.
I had such high hopes and am thoroughly disappointed. So seriously, can I have my money back?
Solved! Go to Solution.
February 2021
Update since posting:
4 matches played.
2 Fleet Battles. Both losses, both imperial side, both slaughters.
2 Dogfights. Both losses. One I was put into a match just as it ended, got a death with nothing else. Second match I was plopped in the middle of a losing match this time where all 5 opposing players were sitting idle in a circle like stationary turrets just shooting as you approached and actually winning with this strategy. Wow, just wow.
Introducing! Star Wars: Turrets
Seriously, this game is a travesty that I wasted $40 and 7 days of free time on. I just uninstalled the game and threw out the software after marring it up so nobody else would be subjected to this piece of garbage, of course.
I guess the one good thing about the game is the sounds were spot on.
They would never give a refund of the full price, who are you kidding? They got their money out of me, seriously what does EA, Motive, or any game company/developer care for that matter? Quality rarely goes into games anymore. They are all mostly rehashed garbage copying the FOTM format. Most Star Wars games are looking only to capitalize on the franchise and could care less about quality. Even the movies for the last 20 years have sucked. George Lucas sold out this franchise long ago and folks like EA and Motive and others have sucked it dry.
I got suckered in, again.
Lesson learned.
February 2021
Almost forgot, in what Star Wars universe does an Alliance U-Wing on its best day ever out maneuver an Imperial Interceptor on its worst day?
Just saying. That one really got to me.
February 2021 - last edited February 2021
Deleted
February 2021
Update since posting:
4 matches played.
2 Fleet Battles. Both losses, both imperial side, both slaughters.
2 Dogfights. Both losses. One I was put into a match just as it ended, got a death with nothing else. Second match I was plopped in the middle of a losing match this time where all 5 opposing players were sitting idle in a circle like stationary turrets just shooting as you approached and actually winning with this strategy. Wow, just wow.
Introducing! Star Wars: Turrets
Seriously, this game is a travesty that I wasted $40 and 7 days of free time on. I just uninstalled the game and threw out the software after marring it up so nobody else would be subjected to this piece of garbage, of course.
I guess the one good thing about the game is the sounds were spot on.
They would never give a refund of the full price, who are you kidding? They got their money out of me, seriously what does EA, Motive, or any game company/developer care for that matter? Quality rarely goes into games anymore. They are all mostly rehashed garbage copying the FOTM format. Most Star Wars games are looking only to capitalize on the franchise and could care less about quality. Even the movies for the last 20 years have sucked. George Lucas sold out this franchise long ago and folks like EA and Motive and others have sucked it dry.
I got suckered in, again.
Lesson learned.
February 2021
Wow, Just wow.
February 2021
February 2021
The flaw of this game is that it is mainly oriented to competitive online gaming.
A simulator feeds on your missions and campaigns mainly single player or cooperative, a mission editor is crucial for a flight simulator.
February 2021 - last edited February 2021
I disagree. I quite enjoy this game. My biggest problem with it are the lack of bigger player modes.
The game has flaws, but no offense, you really do not know what you are talking about on a few issues you have. A lot of these issues seem to stem from lack of experience.
1. Empire ships without shields no doubt have stronger hulls, that's not up for debate. If whatever estimation you used suggested otherwise, then you really haven't played the game long enough, or just haven't been paying close attention.
2. As a person who has played other games in which dog fighting is involved, yes the most basic of tactics is to simply turn, turn and turn, until somehow the enemy shows up on your screen. Very boring, and also a sign that you really don't know better tactics, the better tactic in this game would be better utilization of boost drifting. Firing ordinance up close and to have it miss, especially those with homing capabilities, is practically standard and is a characteristic I have seen in plenty of games that have dogfighting because the missile travels faster than it can maneuver, thus overshooting the target. This is partially why I only use barrage missiles.
3. Your 37% win rate is definitely an indication of how much value you add to your team. I play solo, and with VOIP muted so I don't have to hear other people's non-sense in the background that you experienced, and my win rate is 20% higher. You distancing yourself from your losses, and admitting no fault really comes off the wrong way when it's clear to me that you haven't played the game long enough to have a more informed opinion on its mechanics.
4. The U-Wing is not more maneuverable than the interceptor lol. Again, this seems like another complaint due to lack of experience.
February 2021
You sound like an utterly insufferable git.
Your "issues" stem from your own lack of looking into the game (Since June we've had tons of information as to EXACTLY what is to be expected from this game, which I might add is nearly half the price point of your standard triple A title) and further, your inability to grasp the flight/combat mechanics and loadout possibilities.
You don't deserve a refund in the least.
February 2021