I jumped upon the free offer for Star Wars Battlefront II, and at first, there was a honeymoon period I had with it that lasted for about a week. I thought, “Man, this brings back memories of the OG BF2. But now it really looks like the movies, and the emphasis on shooting makes me feel like I always have influence over the match’s outcome no matter which class I choose.”
But eventually, the game’s charm faded away as Overwatch did awhile ago, but my interest in BF2 dropped like a rock while my interest in Overwatch slowly died over the years. There are many annoyances I have with Overwatch (such as booping), but oh man, BF2’s Heroes vs Villains battles is just a boop-fest. You get bounced around like a pinball and can quickly die after a single force push/pull. Using force push is so powerful, that some areas just have people camp around the edges of the map and the entire match has no one using their lightsaber, as they spam force push/pull to get the insta-kills.
Another thing with regular matches is with the dynamic between Heroes and regular troopers. I get that Luke Skywalker should be better than a Joe Shmoe Stormtrooper, but there were times where I’d walk around a map, and Luke flies up from out of nowhere and kills me with a single slash. I know Overwatch has insta-kills, but Overwatch characters have some kind of risk they put themselves in when they do those moves, such as Reinhardt’s charge. But with Luke, he didn’t have to risk anything or have any substantial level of skill with his aim to one shot a Stormtrooper.
I respect any opinions of others that prefer BF2’s design over Overwatch, but the experience I had during my time in BF2 felt less dynamic given the similarity among non-Heroes, and the extremely annoying mechanics the Heroes have. You have turrets, shields, and healing abilities in BF2, but the abilities feel extremely limited in comparison to Overwatch to the point where it often feels like these team supporting abilities are worthless. Even though I still think tanks feel fragile in Overwatch, I feel they perform the role of a tank much better than any class in BF2. Healing in BF2 is worse, where you can give allies in the immediate vicinity temporary extra health or activate a constant self-healing ability that lasts for a few seconds, but there’s no class compared to Overwatch where a character’s kit is prioritized on healing team members with getting elims being secondary.
I may take breaks from OW, but it holds my interest more so than any other online shooter has. I don’t know how long I’d stick with BF2, but I can’t see myself playing it anywhere near as long as I did on Overwatch. There’s a ton of frustrations with OW, with highs and lows throughout the year, but I still believe that overall, the gameplay hasn’t gotten stale. It’s definitely worn me down, but I feel after some time away, I can enjoy the playstyle of damage characters, then play support when I get bored with that, then play tank when I get bored with that, and so on and so forth…