While I dive into the newest entry in EA’s Star Wars catalogue I thought I should at least share a few thoughts on Star Wars Squadrons during my time on the Xbox One version. I’ll post more later but for the time being I’ll keep it brief. 🙂

What I like

• If you’ve played X-Wing or TIE Fighter, you’ll be right at home as they’ve nailed the look and feel. It’s not totally the same and the cockpits for the ships have changed a lot but it’s still familiar enough to work for veterans of the series.
• The presentation is excellent and gives you the Star Wars experience right from the start. A great deal of effort has gone into making the locations feel unique and stand out and it’s really appreciated. The interactions between NPCs between missions add some colour to the story even though you play the silent protagonist and have little interaction apart from starting the conversations.
• HOTAS support is there out of the box. As a control method I’m finding it a much better fit for me than the default controller setup which reminds me a lot of Battlefield and I never quite got the grasp of that over the years.

What I don’t like

• Combat in the multiplayer modes will be punishing to start with. Expect to die a lot… I’ll have to get used to that!
• Wish there were more co-op modes beyond Fleet Battles versus AI.
• The ship selections could be more asymmetrical to reflect how each faction operated as it feels like it’s been balanced far too much.
• I miss ships from the other games like B-Wings, Assault Gunboats and TIE Defenders.

So far I’m really enjoying Star Wars Squadrons and I’m relieved to see that it sticks closely enough to what worked in the past to make it feel like EA’s first true successor to LucasArts’ games. Will see how I feel after finishing the campaign and getting a better feel for multiplayer but it’s off to a good start. 🙂

Star Wars Squadrons is out now on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.