Star Wars Battlefront II: The game that will live forever

Earlier today, I was reading @jezsmith720's post about physical vs. digital copies of games, and it reminded me of a time in college where I let one of my friends borrow a physical game DVD I had of Star Wars Battlefront (2004). This quickly led to me launching Steam and firing up its sequel, Star Wars Battlefront II. Not to be confused with the upcoming sequel to EA's reboot of the franchise, Battlefront II was and is a fantastic first person shooter set in the Star Wars Universe. 

The game offers a campaign, where you play as a member of the 501st division of clone troopers. You follow them on their journey through the main Star Wars movies, from the beginning of the Clone Wars, to the end of Return of the Jedi. It's a fun campaign that can be tough, but is ultimately tons of fun to replay. 

However, once you're through the campaign, or even before you've played through it, you can check out my favorite game mode, Galactic Conquest. 

You have the choice of playing as the Republic, the CIS, the Rebel Alliance, or the Empire. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as unique units to choose from. In Galactic conquest mode, you begin in control of several planets out of a total of 12 in the map of the galaxy. 

From here, you command your fleet to move across the galaxy. The goal is to conquer all of the enemy's planets. You do this by moving to a planet and invading, where you'll be dropped into a map containing several capture points. You may spawn as any of your team's currently unlocked units and proceed to the field of play. The maps vary in size and features, but they replicate various locations in the Star Wars universe. Here's the spawn in menu, as well as a view once you've picked your unit: 

On land maps, you also have the option of controlling vehicles, which will vary by your team and the map. For example, in the Geonosis map, if you're the Republic, you can control an AT-TE, and if you're the CIS, you may control a Spider Walker or a Hailfire Droid. Each vehicle also has strengths and weaknesses, and may have multiple weapons to control, which can be accessed by scrolling the mouse wheel. 

There's a set unit count for each team, and your goal is to deplete the enemy's unit count before yours is depleted. If you successfully invade a planet or defend one that you already hold, you receive victory points, which may be used to gain advantages through bonuses or to unlock new units. The bonuses vary from sabotaging enemy vehicles, to extra combat shielding for your troops or increased blaster damage and even being able to play as a "hero." Many of the heroes can be fun, and they include several famous Star Wars characters such as Boba Fett, General Grievous, Darth Vader, the Emperor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke Skywalker, and more. 

Battlefront II also introduced space combat. In Galactic Conquest mode, if your fleet encounters the enemy fleet over a planet, a space battle will occur. You will have the choice of spawning as a pilot or a marine (if you've unlocked the unit), and you'll be set down in a hangar with a variety of spacecraft to choose from. 

There are bombers, fighters, and a gunship class ship that can be flown into the hangar of the opposing team, creating a spawn point on their ship. The goal is to inflict damage points on the opposing team by destroying their fighters ship to ship or by damaging certain areas on their flagship, such as the bridge, engines, life support, and communications array. Before being able to damage these, however, you must deal enough damage to the shields of the flagship to bring them down. This may also be accomplished by infiltrating the opposing team's hangar with your pilots or marines and doing damage internally to all of these systems. I've found that it's lots of fun to try a mix of both- damage some systems internally and fly around taking out individual fighters. 

Continue invading and defending planets until you've got control of them all, and you've won Galactic Conquest mode! You can also adjust the level of difficulty if you really want a challenge. At one point, there was online multiplayer for this game, however it has gone the way of the dinosaur now that it's over 10 years old. There's still plenty of fun to be had in this game. I'll bring it up every so often and play it for a few hours, and it's still just as entertaining as it was the last time. I haven't even scratched the surface with the amount of map diversity and playable classes, heroes, vehicles, etc. so if you have the game, fire it up and play, and if you've never played, I suggest getting it ASAP. The game is usually fairly cheap during Steam sales, and the regular price on Steam is $9.99. 

So whether you like Star Wars, or just like a classic FPS, this game is for you. You'll have countless hours of fun defending command posts, flying through space, and blowing the heads off of battle droids until the victory is won. 

I think I most enjoy being able to step into the shoes of Star Wars characters and feel like you're fighting a battle in their universe. It's so much fun to capture areas, try different classes of units, drive the vehicles, and get the satisfaction of defending your planets. It's a classic game that has stood the test of time, and I'm sure I'll be playing it for many years to come. 

All of the above images are screenshots captured during my own gameplay. Despite the game being from 2006, it does support 1080p resolution, and looks great in the process. 

The screenshot of text at the beginning of the post is from Wikipedia

There's so much more I could talk about in this game, but the best way for you to find out about it is just to play it yourself! I hope you've enjoyed my review and best wishes if you decide to play!

Final note: When I reach 100 followers on my blog, I'll be doing some Steam key game giveaways, so if you haven't followed me already, check out my blog. I'd love to get your feedback on my other content!