Started as a successor to Eisenfaust's Realism Mod, this mod is set out to be the absolute pinnacle form of what Star Wars Battlefront could have been, and should be. I've always found the original Battlefront to be sluggish. Slow movement speed. Slow blaster fire that had almost no 'oomf' behind it. It was boring compared to the new shiny gameplay of the EA games. Now I've restored, at least in my opinion, Battlefront's essence- Huge intense battles, immersive sound effects and visuals, do anything you want, go anywhere you want. Fight the battle YOUR way.
After playing the mod for a while, the whole new difficulty is not really good. Somethings I have noticed:
-Teammate AI is not as good compared to the enemy AI. Seems there is something going on where the enemy AI always has some sort of edge against the real player's team (artificial difficulty of some sorts). For example, their lowest ranked player is 7-19, while mine is 0-25 (None of the enemy has 0 kills or anything below 7. My team has majority of kills ranging from 0-6 on average with large amounts of deaths). Even with me capturing command posts (or at-least trying) and getting around 170 kills, this was not enough to come close to a victory. However, after playing without the mod this seems to be a vanilla game issue. It would be great if the developers of the mod can try to fix this because with the new gameplay implemented, the game is more unbearable
-Turrets just kill people at all ranges easily (my team is too disabled to know how to use them like the other team it seems. This makes Bespin very difficult because when you spawn at the middle you get spawned killed, trying to get in a ship gets you gunned down by either the turrets, ship, or a sniper. Your only option is the push in the middle and hope a turret does not one tap you or get rushed by five solders while you team is in the back getting spawn killed)
-The the new crosshairs are too much
-Screenshake when near a blaster impact is as annoying as Battlefront 2 Ultimate Commander
-Teammates fairly often friendly fire causing you to fall down and stumble everytime you have friendly fire disabled or they end up killing themselves
-Teammates and enemies could sometimes not capture command posts (teammates stay outside of the enemy's command post areas while the enemies just stay and defend). They will only progress if there is very little from the opposition left (this also happened when the AI refuses to occupy vehicles)
-With all the fixes the mod provides, it would be nice if the sensitivity was improved in some way (it is way too fast even on 0 with 700 DPI)
-Idle animations look awkward with the new assets for humanoids (there are clear signs of deformations because of them. Perhaps port over the Battlefront II animations like some other mods have done or use some custom animations)
-Rebel soldiers could use assets in similar quality to the Storm Troopers (Rebels look out of place in terms of quality)
-Audio stutters often
-Would be nice if the hitboxes on the basic turret was adjusted like Battlefront 2 (seems you can barely hit them if the turret is facing you even though their head is sticking out)
-Grenades seem worthless towards vehicles/turrets
-I feel the AT-AT shoots too slow for it to be useful (combine that with the slow movement, probably only useful for AI)
-Most vanilla maps only have Wookies to fight in GCW
I re-reviewed/revised my previous review after I was able to play Battlefront 2 again. Both games have their pros and cons. What I will say is this mod does in-fact make the AI more of a threat than Battlefront 2's AI and majority of mods (most of it is likely because the AI behaves differently between the two games and the authors improved upon them). My main issue with this is the artifical difficulty Battlefront 1 has gets even worst where even if you do really good, you can still lose the game. Proof is just how poorly my teammates always perform in comparison to the enemy and how even with the enemy having one command post they still are keeping up with score (sometimes the enemy AI breaks and they just stand around their one post waiting for my team to run in and die). Another example of this is how the enemy team rushes to capture command posts and my team just gets distracted by seeing them and targets them without progressing that much. This issue is more noticeable with the mod installed. With all that said, I give the mod a 7 (originally a 5) because of the higher quality assets, fixes, some new sound effects (EA weapon firing sounds are very weak compared to the originals though), and improvements to AI. I cannot fully recommend this mod for everyone though because this new gameplay does not really work with the game's AI without overhauling how the AI behaves or removing the artificial difficulty (this new gameplay would fit better on a different game engine I would say, one that has features like leaning and sprinting since you need to peak and move in slight increments if you want to survive and AI that is equal). The weapons damage is good, but with the movement being fairly slow, teammates being braindead and the above, it does not play well with the fast time to kill.
With this mode, the difficulty level has increased and become more challenging, that's a good thing but there is a big problem that my team is much weaker than the opposing team, so even if I make 100 kills, my team loses every time. Even if I switch teams in the middle of the battle, my new team starts to lose. This is very annoying and takes away the fun of the game.
Edit: In my previous game -in kashhyk docks as rebels- i got 210 kills and 3 deaths but still i lost against the empire lol (difficulty=medium)
Great mod! Makes the game way better, didn't know that was even possible. It's a must-have for sure. Also, TomMassey crying in his review over a reshade filter you can turn off lol
There are several changes, this mod is really incredible without a doubt, the battles are much more exciting, more units, more explosions, a smarter AI that does not run towards the shots, but tries to protect itself, staying behind obstacles and etc. The best thing is that you can modify certain configurations, such as the number of bots, amount of respawns and among others, the mod is simply great, a new and improved way to play this classic, the only downside is that sometimes the AI can be "too smart" and ends up leaving certain games unbalanced, for example the classes that have what would be the rocket launcher now have a Heavy machine gun as a second weapon, and their bullets are infinite, but again, you can modify this in the files, me for example Sometimes I want to have a more vanilla gameplay, so I leave the original units (no new weapons, new damage, new skins) but I still manage to modify the number of bots and keep the characteristic that the AI are smarter, note 10 for this amazing mod.
This is the game you grew up playing, but better. This mod is outstanding in nearly every way. Some beefing up of the AT-AT may be worth considering, Hoth is extremely difficult as the Empire, but otherwise this absolutely makes SWBF 2004 the game it should be.
You have made this game great again. Battlefront 2004 is back baby! Playing with the boys online works great except for a few enhanced maps. Much love to the lads making this masterpiece!
Its very similar to stock battlefront 1 (no new units or vehicles), just with more reinforcements, a pretty ugly reshade filter, and less accurate weapons.
Amazing mod ! need to try it
A must have when playing Battlefront!