Review: Star Wars: Squadrons

Take control of your starfighter and prepare for an adventure from another galaxy with Star Wars: Squadrons, the new creation born of the collaboration between Electronic Arts, Motive Studios, and Lucasfilm.

Star Wars: Squadrons is a first-person action game in which we handle different starfighters to face other players online or face a solo campaign that offers a lot of fun. With accessible controls but with great playable depth, this is a title that any player can enjoy, but that only the most dedicated will come to dominate, with players having tons of options at their disposal to be aware of. This is also enhanced thanks to how well-differentiated the available ships are, although we will talk about it later.

What we liked!

• A story worthy of Star Wars: The main story places us in a period near the end of the Galactic Civil War, where iconic leaders and other emerging New Republic and Empire leaders fight across the galaxy to make a difference. We live this argument from both sides of the war, thus knowing their points of view and ambitions. Don’t expect something too deep, but it’s very well narrated, its characters are charismatic and the rhythm it takes is quite good, not getting heavy at any time and interspersing some quite colorful video sequences. Of course, you will find some new characters and other old acquaintances of the franchise that will delight its followers.
• A good gaming experience: As soon as we start, and after making certain configurations, we have to create an imperial pilot and a rebel pilot who will represent us in the campaign, choosing their head, body, voice and name, these options being somewhat scarce. But don’t worry too much, since beyond a scene, you will hardly see them when everything unfolds in the first person. Then there are two types of experience: Standard, which is the one that comes by default and enables aids such as marking the current objective or the position of friends and enemies, among others; and Instruments, where a more complex experience is offered as our only source of information is the cockpit instruments.
• Game mechanics accessible to everyone: Its mechanics are simple to understand and after a few games you will be at its controls, offering a lot of depth within this accessibility. Here we use the left analog stick to accelerate, brake or turn the ship, while with the right, we steer and aim at the targets, which we can fix to track them and then shoot them. This is the simple part, but then it hides a more technical side that forces us to distribute the energy of the ship from the engines to the armament or the shields as required by each situation, having to wait for the weapons to cool to fire again; be aware of the state of the ship to recover it or use the radar correctly to locate the enemies, among other more technical aspects, which makes us feel at all times like real pilots by having to perform dangerous maneuvers to try to avoid our rivals and surprise them by switching between the weapons we have equipped.
• Very good recreation of ships: What I liked the most, without a doubt, is how well recreated each of its eight ships are and how different they feel from each other when we handle them. On the side of the Republic we have the T-65 ALA X Starfighter, the BTL ALA Y Bomber, the RZ-1 ALA A Interceptor and the UT-60D ALA-U Support Fighter, while for the Empire there is the TIE/Fighter, TIE/SA Bomber, TIE/IN Interceptor, and TIE/RP Reaper. They are also highly customizable by adding unique pieces and different weapons to suit the preferences and needs of each player.

Somewhere between

• An acceptable graphic and sound section: The graphic section is very good in general, with brilliantly designed ships with details in every corner both outside and inside, wide settings that make you feel small in the universe and very striking effects, such as shots, explosions or the arrival of the ships of the hyperspace jump. In addition, it works very stable and smooth so that the games are a delight.  The sound isn’t far behind either, with tons of melodies taken directly from the movies and completely new ones that perfectly match its universe.
• Few game modes: We reached the most important point of the game, the online multiplayer, its only divided into two modes, Skirmish and Fleet Battle, which have cross-platform play. In Skirmish, teams of 5 against 5, face in combat to the death trying to get thirty casualties and thus obtain victory, being able to choose a class of fighter and its weapons to adapt to our squad and its strategy. On the other hand, we have Fleet Battle, which is the most interesting of all. Here, two squadrons of five pilots face each other with the ultimate goal of destroying the gigantic enemy flagship, although this requires another series of tasks to be carried out. At the beginning we have to shoot down enemy ships to increase the morale bar that is at the top of the screen and reach a target point, then an allied corvette appears that takes us to the next enemy line and, if we achieve the same objective , we will move on to the flagship, which has turrets, rays and shields that we have to destroy to achieve the final objective. It’s a very enjoyable game that requires great cooperation from the players, so we recommend playing with acquaintances whenever possible.

What we disliked

• The maps are good but not so good: In total we have six different maps to fight: Yavin Prime, Esseles, The Shipyards of Nadiri, Sissubo, Galitan and Abismo Zaviano. They are quite varied among themselves, although we have missed more content in this sense and with another type of setting, since there are no battles on the surface of the planets, limited to space and with certain floating obstacles. By this, we don’t mean that the games are boring, but they do give the feeling that they could be more differentiated from each other.