Star Wars Battlefront vs Battlefront 2: Which Is Better?

Battlefront II, and this is the one category the catalogue settles outright. Game-Scout's stored completion times put its solo story at roughly 4.5 hours rushed and just under 8 hours at a normal pace, following Iden Versio, an elite Imperial special forces soldier, across thirty years of the timeline. Battlefront 2015 has no stored completion time at all, because there is nothing to finish: two of the five recurring complaints in its stored player reviews are the missing solo story and the thin single-player content generally. That is the difference between a shooter with a front door and one that drops you straight into matchmaking. Whether Iden's story is any good is a separate argument, and the honest read from the r/StarWarsBattlefront threads is that it is short and uneven. It exists, which is more than the 2015 game manages.

Battlefront II, and the subreddit is unusually consistent about it. The recurring line in r/StarWarsBattlefront threads comparing the two is that both the shooting and the lightsaber work feel better in the 2017 game, with hero fights reading as actual duels instead of two people trading swings. Battlefront II also carries the deeper set of systems in Game-Scout's stored mechanics: a loot system and a currency system sit on top of the class and leveling structure the 2015 game shares, so what you unlock changes how a class plays rather than just changing the gun. The counterargument in those same threads is real and worth stating, because a steady minority calls the 2017 game more washed out and closer to a generic shooter. On feel, the weight of the threads still goes one way.

Battlefront II, on what is actually in the box. Game-Scout's stored description for the 2015 game lists a Season Pass with four expansion packs sold on top of the base game, and that paywall is what r/StarWarsBattlefront threads blame for splitting the 2015 player base across modes nobody could reliably fill. EA went the other way for Battlefront II and confirmed before launch that all post-launch content would be free with no season pass, which is how its map list ended up spanning all three film trilogies instead of the original trilogy alone. Add the solo story mode and Battlefront II is the larger purchase at the same price. This is where the older game's age costs it most, because the expansions it still wants you to buy feed modes that are now thinly populated.

Battlefront II online, with one loss that will matter more than the win to some readers. Both games cap at 40 players online in Game-Scout's stored multiplayer data, so the ceiling is identical and population decides it: the 2015 game's stored player complaints open on an online mode that is largely inactive, while Battlefront II's open on hackers, which is the complaint of a game people still queue into. The loss is split screen. Game-Scout's stored co-op data has the 2015 game supporting it and Battlefront II not, and the r/StarWarsBattlefront answer to anyone shopping for a couch game is blunt about picking the first one for exactly that reason. Battlefront II's co-op missions are online only. If two people on one sofa is the use case, the newer game cannot do it at all.

Battlefront 2015, and this is the clearest thing the 2017 game gave up. The map threads on r/StarWarsBattlefront keep landing in the same place: the 2015 maps were better shaped and did not funnel you, while the 2017 game leans on more linear modes that push everyone down the same corridor. Hoth and Endor in the older game get named repeatedly as places worth moving around in rather than lanes to run down. Battlefront II answers with breadth instead, and the breadth is real, since it draws maps from all three trilogies against the original trilogy alone. Breadth is not the same as craft. On the narrower question of whether the ground under you is interesting to fight across, the 2015 game still holds up better, and its higher Game-Scout rating of 4.45 from 170,404 players is partly this.

Battlefront 2015, nine years on, which is not the usual result in a sequel comparison. The top stored praise in Game-Scout's player sentiment for the 2015 game is its graphics, and the r/StarWarsBattlefront threads that put the two side by side keep naming texture resolution, sound design and explosion work as things the 2017 game walked back. Those same threads do split on lighting, where a real share of posters prefer the Battlefront II system, so treat this as contested rather than settled. What is not contested is that the 2015 game was built as a showpiece and still reads as one. Battlefront II is the newer renderer carrying far more content, and content budgets are usually where fidelity goes.