I’ve played a version of this game before, on DS. As with Lethal Alliance, I figured the PSP version as the lead platform would give a better experience. Turns out that unlike Lethal Alliance there are pros and cons to both, and I ended up preferring the DS version! Note I left the multiplayer component—ostensibly these games’ selling point—completely untouched and just judged the campaign.

On PSP the game is more like a “proper” Battlefront game, a third/first-person shooter, and has customisable loadouts, fully 3D spaceship fights, and of course voiceover. This doesn’t automatically make it good, however, as the PSP’s single joystick results in awkward control a lot of the time. Different weapon sets also feel too situational. The scope is ambitious, with medium-sized battlefields to roam around, vehicles, and levels that transition between land and space; but the game never completely delivers on its goals, partly due to limitations of the hardware. You also get lots of samey-feeling levels in the campaign; almost every one has you starting or ending by invading a Star Destroyer.

This gives me the feeling the game was rushed. Apart from the repetition, it really drops the ball on the plot. The DS version had nice artwork in between missions, with dialogue that introduced characters and explained their motivations and conflicts. This version sees fit to slap a brief voiceover on top of vaguely-related footage from the movies, and tries to make up the rest with dialogue during gameplay (unsuccessfully). This aspect is important to me and is a big reason I ended up preferring the game on DS; I need to feel connected to the characters I interact with.

I replayed the DS version alongside this one to match up and compare directly, and was surprised just how different the story’s progression actually was. The major points are the same, but there are so many tweaks and changes that it kept me puzzling over how development went down. PSP has Bespin in Act III, DS has Geonosis in Act II. PSP has the penultimate level on Vjun with special Vader droids, DS has it on Dathomir with Nightsisters and a Rancor. And many more smaller differences in each level. (The Wookieepedia biography on main character X2 is a complete mess for this reason.) Comparing the two was pretty interesting to me because I obsess over details like that, but it also made me appreciate more the simple fun of the DS’s gameplay and greater usefulness of its loadouts.

Overall I wouldn’t say the gameplay is anything truly special, but I do still enjoy the story. I’m glad that Rebellion Developments (or more so n-Space) could salvage the characters and concepts from Free Radical’s cancelled Battlefront III, because I think it’s a great EU story that spans almost the whole timeline of the movies and beyond into the New Republic days, with both fanservice and new material at every step. Now let’s blow this thing and go home.

(Screenshot from The Video Games Museum.)