Star Wars Battlefront 2 gets its first major patch
Back to the front lines
Star Wars Battlefront 2 has no end of health problems, though at least it's now had some of its rougher edges patched up. The first official update, Patch 0.2, fixes save issues and spawn problems, as well as vehicle damage being calculated incorrectly and more. The devs also boast that they've made "major improvements" to the games stability and performance, so it might be worth checking to see how the game runs now if your computer was having problems before.
One of the fixes concerns players receiving high level Star Cards when they shouldn't have, which means that one of my gripes with the progression system was the result of a bug. Don't get too excited though - I've got plenty of other gripes.
You can read through the patch notes in full for yourself, or read on for the highlights.
Spawn times have been halved from 10 seconds to 5 in Strike mode, and spawn locations locations have been tweaked on Tatooine. Hopefully that'll reduce the time players spend sprinting to the front lines, which can take an especially long time on that map.
A bug that deleted your save data if you didn't have a controller plugged in has been squashed, and I'm pleased to see that an issue with objectives that refused to spawn in the single player has been fixed. I had a couple of problems with objective markers that the patch notes don't mention, mind. Same goes for my issue with not being able to combat roll in the single player.
The Star Card fix that I mentioned earlier might be the most interesting change. It states that they've "fixed an issue where some Star Cards would be available without their required Star Level being achieved". For some reason it's in the 'User Interface and HUD' section of the patch notes, which seems odd considering the impact that it should have on the game. From what I can tell, it means that the level three Star Cards I found in a loot crate should have been at level one - which is a bigger deal than it might sound like at first. EA put out a statement saying that the only way to get access to the higher level Star Cards would be by playing the game.
Except that's still nonsense, because the £69.99 deluxe edition of the game includes a pack that contains some of the most annoying max level (level four) Star Cards. As I highlighted in my review of the multiplayer, "one of those is a thermal detonator with an expanded blast radius, which is especially frustrating as there’s no way to know how powerful the explosive being chucked at you is."
More thoughts can be found in my Battlefront 2 singleplayer campaign review and the Battlefront 2 multiplayer review.
Should they not discourage you, you can pick the game up for £55 via Origin.