“A worthy continuation of the Star Wars: X-Wing series! Flying here is just as fun as it was in the good old days!” “A completely empty and monotonous game that will bore you even before the end of the campaign!”. Such diametrically opposed reviews can be found on the Web about Star Wars: Squadrons, the latest addition to the Star Wars universe. The most interesting thing is that both of these opinions are absolutely true.

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So, the Death Star has just dusted Alderaan and all its inhabitants. Somewhere on the other side of the galaxy, Obi-Wan Kenobi sensed a “significant fluctuation in the Force”. And TIE Fighter Squadron Leader Lyndon Javes was ordered to find and destroy rebel transports that had left Alderaan a few minutes before the Holocaust. But the death of an entire planet before his eyes shook the faith of the former exemplary officer in the Empire, and instead of shooting defenseless transports, the pilot began to cover their retreat, fighting with his former comrades.

Five years later, some time after the destruction of the second Death Star in orbit around the forested moon of Endor, the same Lyndon Javes, now as a respected leader of the rebels who have recently become the army of the New Republic, leads the Starhawk project, whose goal is to create the Republican analogue of the Death Star, a huge ship with a powerful tractor beam, literally tearing apart Imperial Star Destroyers that fell into it. And Javes is confronted by his former wingman, now the captain of his own Destroyer Teresa Kerill, commander of the Titan squadron. She still hasn’t forgiven the traitor, and while the broken but still undefeated Empire gathers strength to fight back against the New Republic, Kerill is preoccupied with her own vendetta.

The story of the turncoats, the protracted reckoning and the opportunity to look at the conflict from different angles is not so new in the canon … sorry, non-Star Wars canon. In the campaign of the same Star Wars Battlefront II , we played as Iden Versio, who was devoted to the emperor and the current order with all his heart, and hated the rebels who brought chaos. Like Lyndon Javes, Iden Versio ended up defecting to the Rebels, though not in the early game, but in the middle of the game.

The entire campaign of Star Wars: Squadrons, the prologue and 14 main missions that can be completed in 4-5 hours is dedicated to the confrontation between Lyndon Javes and Teresa Kerill, the only joke is that you are not playing for them, but for the voiceless ordinary pilots of the squadron Rebel Vanguard and Imperial Titan Squadron, respectively. At the same time, despite the fact that at the very beginning you will be asked to create a pilot and even give him a name, in all briefings and negotiations during the missions you will be called exclusively by the call sign: “Vanguard-5” or “Titan-3”.

You play alternately (alternating not through one mission, but a little more chaotic) for the rebels and the imperials, and between missions you can “wander” around your cruiser and “chat” with other squadron members and even commanders. That’s just both verbs in the previous sentence are not accidentally taken in quotation marks. You can’t wander or chat here. The movement of the hero is limited to jumps between control points, you will not be allowed to walk around the hangar. Why this is done, I will explain a little later, but in general, the restriction looks stupid and extremely destructive for immersion in the game.

As for “communication,” it somehow doesn’t work to call monologues of talking heads into which you can’t even insert words into communication. At the same time, if the texts that your AI comrades pronounce were at least original. It seems that the dialogues for the game were written by a schoolboy, moreover, guided by the old principle of the Kyrgyz akyns – “what I see, I sing about.” The characters, even talking about their own lives, speak exclusively in clichés and literally pour out platitudes. Well, or retell you the events in which you have just participated. At first I thought that the problem was in the translation, but no, the English text is just as bad as the Russian one.

In a word, the heroes of the game do not evoke any sympathy and empathy, there is simply no one to become attached to here. Moreover, there are no emotionally strong moments in the game, all the secondary characters and even the dog Tuzik will live to see the final credits, and the game will end … in the literal sense of the word, nothing. This is a “filler” – a completely meaningless and empty placeholder, artificially inserted between Star Wars episodes. Yes, even the “filler” can be made something significant if desired, see the magnificent Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , but Star Wars: Squadrons is clearly not the case.

But what are you all about the characters and the plot, you say, let’s fly! OK. They flew, they flew.

As soon as the game is transferred to the cockpit of the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, A-Wing, TIE Bomber and other ships familiar from films and games, it is transformed. And it really causes an acute attack of nostalgia for the good old days and the Star Wars: X-Wing quadrology, the last part of which, X-Wing Alliance, was released already in 1999.

All devices are placed on the cockpit of the fighter and are located in its different zones, depending on the model of the ship. Most of it is occupied by the windshield and a view of space. And he’s wonderful. There is an almost classic shield management here with moving the protection to different hemispheres and pumping energy into engines, weapons or protection. The weapon itself, placed in three slots, can be replaced with a slow homing laser or something faster, but less powerful. It’s the same with missiles. Plus, for bombers, there are also homing mines, stationary turrets and ion torpedoes that knock out enemy electronics.

For each of the parties in the game there are four types of devices that perform a particular function – a fighter, a bomber, an interceptor and a support ship that distributes additional ammunition or shields to partners. It is the latter that greatly facilitates the life of the Imperials, who do not have ships protected by shields or repair drones. Each combat vehicle flies a little differently and feels different in combat. However, in the campaign you will fly on those machines that are given out according to the plot, only in some missions you can choose a fighter from two or three options.

Actually, flying and shooting in Star Wars: Squadrons is really interesting, but there are a couple of significant “buts”. Firstly, the difficulty … It is not very high. Most of the enemy fighters are shot down literally with one burst or a torpedo, moreover, AI-pilots like to fly in tight formation and literally expose themselves to a shot, so multi-homing missiles can take them out in packs of four. It is a little more difficult to deal with enemy destroyers and cruisers, but with skillful shield management and constant energy transfer from system to system, this is also not a big problem. Well, the vaunted heavy ships, although they fire quite densely at you, are actually very vulnerable, especially if you take out the key systems first, and not drive all the torpedoes into a fairly strong carcass.

However, more than the low complexity, the monotony of the missions is frustrating. All of them eventually come down to… grind. Shoot ten fighters and get the right to shoot ten more fighters. Now 5 stormtroopers. Now two cruisers. Another portion of fighters. And, finally, fill up this battleship. And so from mission to mission, almost 14 times. There are literally two non-standard tasks, they are very strange and clearly copy the famous passage of Luke in Star Wars IV and Khan in Star Wars VI. No, seriously, how could you do such boring missions in space at the controls of a starfighter?

However, those who play Star Wars: Squadrons using VR headsets literally unanimously praise the game for its incredible presence and the ability to feel like in the cockpit of a real X-Wing and TIE Fighter. And they are not embarrassed by either monotonous missions, or wooden partners, or low complexity. A lot can be forgiven for a real feeling of flight. It is the owners of VR headsets who leave the most rave reviews in the discussion of the game, and it is the VR version that brought this game such high marks from the press on Metacritics. Actually, VR support explains the ban on walking around the hangar between missions and the reduced difficulty of the game. The only problem is that the vast majority of Star Wars fans will play Star Wars: Squadrons not in VR at all, but on quite traditional consoles and PCs.

We’ve paid a lot of attention to the Star Wars: Squadrons campaign, but the sad truth is that it’s primarily an online game. The campaign is needed here only to acquaint players with the technique and rules of combat, and the main emphasis is on multiplayer. And … everything is not very good in it either.

I don’t know how Motive Studios did it, but space multiplayer combat in Star Wars: Squadrons turned out to be worse than in Star Wars Battlefront II, released three years ago, although it was they who kind of inspired the development of Squadrons. In fact, there are only two modes here, Deathmatch 5v5 and Fleet Battles 5v5. But in the same Battlefront II, 24 pilots took part in space showdowns at once, they were larger, more diverse and simply more interesting. In the 5v5 mode, even with the participation of a certain number of AI pilots, the battles are shorter and … much more boring.

In fact, this is a kind of tug-of-war. First shoot N enemy fighters – and you get the right to attack two frigates, if you destroy the frigates – you can advance to the battleship (Star Destroyer or MC75 for the New Republic) and try your luck on it. But while you deal with the frigates, the opponents will have time to shoot their share of fighters and also get the right to attack. So one by one you will try to move forward. To be honest, I have not seen exceptions in a dozen fights, they all follow the same pattern and … get bored very quickly. And here it turns out that there is very little content in the game, which is declared as a game without loot boxes and DLC (yes, it is). After completing the campaign and 5-10 skirmishes in Fleet Battles, there is simply nothing to do here. It will take you no more than 10 hours to do everything about everything, if the game, of course, does not bother you earlier. It is sad.

And just a few words about the graphics. She’s not impressive by today’s standards. Yes, in space the game looks good overall, but this is not next-gen, rather the beginning of the current generation. The same already several times mentioned Battlefront II, as for me, looks better. Yes, the reason is again in VR and an attempt to save resources. At the same time, the game, which works quite tolerably even on the ancient GeForce GTX 1060, sometimes falls into a stupor, and on very simple and somewhat unexpected things. Perfectly calculating space battles, explosions and reflections from lasers, the game stutters on … cut scenes on the engine, and only on those in which imperial pilots participate. Moreover, fps drops from quite acceptable 40-50 to completely catastrophic 3-5. What? Why? No answer.

So, which of the statements mentioned at the beginning of the article more accurately characterizes Star Wars: Squadrons? Like I said, both. If you have a VR headset and a powerful PC, then Squadrons will be a great attraction for you at least for a few hours, a ticket to the world of Star Wars, and you will most likely forgive the game for all the shortcomings that I wrote about so much above. If you don’t have a VR headset, then the game, after a short honeymoon and a bout of nostalgia for Star Wars: X-Wing, is likely to disappoint you. There is too little content, too nondescript NPCs and a completely banal plot. And the network part is unlikely to delay you for a long time. Already now, a week after the release, it becomes problematic to gather 10 people for a full-fledged battle, and I’m afraid this trend will only intensify.

Alas, Squadrons is not X-Wing. And not even the Battlefront II X-Wing Edition.

PS I would like to say that it would be possible to fly in Star Wars Battlefront II multiplayer, but now there are also serious problems with the number of players there.