When it first launched, Star Wars: Battlefront was a mess.
To be fair, it's not that EA and DICE's latest was a bad game — mechanically speaking, Battlefront worked well enough, and it's absolutely gorgeous, regardless of which platform you play on. However, back at launch, the weapon balance in Battlefront was a serious letdown.
Basically, anyone who'd played the game for long enough was at a huge advantage: high-level weapons would absolutely decimate new players, and the only way to counter it was to grind through lopsided matches. On top of that, anyone who preordered the game automatically unlocked the "DL-44" blaster — meaning that some players had already unlocked the most powerful gun in the game before the event started a match.
Battlefront's weapon balance has been tweaked several times since launch, but the DL-44, along with the Homing Launcher and Cycler Rifle, continued to dominate. Thankfully, EA and DICE included a new balance patch along with the recently-released DLC — and, for the first time since launch, Battlefront feels like it's worth playing.
Star Wars: Battlefront still has its fair share of problems. EA is still charging players an extra $50 for what feels like the second half of the game's content, and leveling up enough to use high-end weapons feels like a chore. It's still nearly impossible to play as a Hero character without camping the power-up spawn point, and several of the game's weapons feel like variations of the same gun.
That being said, Battlefront is no longer the infuriatingly unbalanced exercise in frustration that it used to be. Most matches are genuinely fun at any level, and it no longer feels like a single weapon is lording over the entire arsenal. In all honesty, I wasn't expecting my return to Battlefront to be as fun as it was. If you were one of the many players who ditched the game over balance issues at launch, give Battlefront another shot — you may be surprised by how much has changed.
Star Wars: Battlefront isn't a perfect game, but at least it's worth playing again.
