EA brings the Star Wars franchise back to flight simulation in Star Wars: Squadrons. Acting as a standalone title focusing on the many pilots of the Rebel Alliance and Sith Empire the game has you facing off against other players in the vast emptiness of space during dog fights for victory. The only problem with the game is there isn’t much else to do in it besides this.

Star Wars: Squadrons is a 2020 flight simulator combat game, it is developed by EA Motive and published by EA. It is currently available on PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One.

Editor’s Note: Near complete to complete spoilers for the story campaign of Star Wars: Squadrons may be present within this review.

Join the Rebels or the Empire in Star Wars: Squadrons.

In a continued effort of releasing good Star Wars games EA follows ‘Jedi Fallen Order’ with flight simulator Star Wars: Squadrons. Inspired by the “Rogue Squadron” series before it the new ‘Squadrons’ focuses on first-person space combat and realistic simulation of air vehicle controls. While there is a story present the game is more invested into its multiplayer mode with a total of ten players per game being present. Even with it’s core focus on multiplayer Star Wars: Squadron suffers from a lack of content on both the single player and multiplayer fronts.

Star Wars: Squadrons story campaign acts more as a tutorial for players while covering some of the game’s world building.

THE GOOD: Star Wars: Squadrons is a fun dog fighter that escapes the military theme & skin. Granted this is a galactic war taking place in space. but it still feels fresh to the over done militant air combat simulator. The player has to check support for speed, weaponry, and shields using the d-pad. This is viewed from a first-person perspective and the HUD is excellently designed. In VR this is a whole other beast entirely. Playing Star Wars: Squadrons with a VR helmet and flight controller is one of the most unreal, immersive experiences you’ll probably ever have playing a video game. It’s pretty wild seeing how far VR has come from a revived gimmicky relic of the past to short gameplay experiences to full on AAA gaming sessions in just a few years since it’s comeback. And if there was ever a reason to invest into the genre ‘Squadrons’ is definitely one from a software point.

Enter the Squadrons battlefield with your created character.

The story is a bit typical for non-film/TV Star Wars media which is a bit disappointing when you consider how far the lore can be branched out from the whole “bad guy turns good” thing it’s known for in such cases. That being said the voice acting is really good for a game of it’s budget and the actors put a ton of soul into their performances for the material they were given. It follows former Imperial Captain Lindon Javes who defects to the Resistance after refusing to be apart of an operation that would have killed several innocent people. Now a commander of the New Republic having gained their trust Javes helped the Republic fight back the Imperial forces with his vast knowledge of their tech and other bits of info which leads to them creating a project known as Starhawk; the Republic’s version of a Star Destroyer. Meanwhile his former protege now Imperial Captain Terisa Keril is obsessed with finding and killing her former teacher for revenge against his betrayal. Her obsession leads the two into what is implied as a final battle while attempting to protect/destroy the Starhawk.

A solid, but lacking Star Wars game.

THE BAD: I’ve mentioned it a couple of times already, but Star Wars: Squadrons is a very, very, very barren game. In fact it only has three modes in total as of this writing; story, dogfight, and fleet battles. If ‘Squadrons’ had received the same level of support that Star Wars: Battlefront II did following it’s controversy it really would been a contender for “best modern Star Wars game”, but as it currently stands it leaves a bit of a middle ground feeling in the back of your mind. The story is solid for what this game is, but it feels very repetitive. Someone from the Empire doesn’t like what the Empire is doing so they defect, etc, etc. The strongest issue Squadrons has is the aforementioned lack of content which by all accounts will remain as such as EA Motive has apparently already moved on from the game.

Star Wars: Squadrons is a “so close, yet still so far away” effort of the Star Wars series from EA.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: EA is doing a solid job with the Star Wars license for now, but they clearly need much more of a push to give us that one perfect game while they still have dominance over the license. Free content support for Battlefront II, Jedi Fallen Order’s overall presentation, and the amount of quality as little as what was put into it for Star Wars: Squadrons is all great. However, I can’t help but feel that there’ something holding these EA teams back from making the perfect Star Wars experience. Although we aren’t that far off from the looks of things. It’s a shame EA immediately stopped development support for Squadrons upon release as it still has a ton of potential, but Motive has moved on to another project leaving the game shelved in it’s current out of box state.