Star Wars: Squadrons

Star Wars: Squadrons is a very mixed bag and you should be very aware of what you want from this game before you buy it.

Squadrons obviously leans very heavily on the old Rogue Squadron and X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter games. You take the side of either Rebels or Imperials and fight it out in single- or multiplayer. I will comment on each separately.

From a technical standpoint this game is great. It looks amazing and runs fine on my older PC (GTX1060) in 1080p and controls fine with a controller. I can't comment on the problems people were having with VR or flight stick setups. You should be aware that this game is not a "simulator" game. You can control thrust, roll and steer, divert power to shields, engine and weapons and even control your front/back shield, but still this game does not have the complexity or depth that you would expect from a simulator. This game is Rogue Squadron with some additional mechanics.

Singleplayer
The game's story takes place after Episode 6. The rebels are trying to build some kind of super-battleship, and the Imperials are trying to stop that. You switch between Rebels and Imperials every few missions. The game tries to put some character to your superiors and squadmates, but sadly it fails massively in that regard. Everyone talks like they had a speech prepared days in advance and most interactions are just the characters dumping information about themselves. I wish game writers would understand that real people don't talk like this...

The missions are about what you would expect, it's basically destroy X, defend Y, shoot down fighters/bombers, you get the idea. Compared to the Rogue Squadron games it's really missing variety, you're just always in space fighting the same enemies.

The campaign is pretty short and takes only about 8 hours to finish. You can replay at higher difficulties or to earn medals (e.g. for finishing quickly or not dying), but it doesn't give you any real reward. Overall, the singleplayer is OK, but if you're buying this purely for the campaign, you will probably be disappointed.

Multiplayer
The game has 2 (two) 5v5 multiplayer modes. You have a choice between 5 ships, an allrounder (X-Wing/TIE), an interceptor (A-Wing/TIE-Interceptor), a bomber (Y-Wing/TIE-Bomber), a support ship (U-Wing/TIE-Reaper), and two special ships (B-Wing/TIE-Defender).

The first mode is Dogfight, which is Team Deathmatch, and plain awful. In principle it's pretty fun to chase your enemy around asteroids or space stations, but in practice this doesn't happen and fights just devolve into small chaotic clusters and the one who shoots faster in a head-on wins. If you've ever played War Thunder Arcade Mode, you know what I'm talking about.

The second, main mode is Fleet Battles. You try to destroy the other team's capital ship in back-and-forth assaults. This is a much better experience as with actual objectives the ships can play to their strengths and you can have much more varied gameplay.

As for progression, you gain unlock points by leveling up, and everything is unlockable from the start, so you can immediately start setting up your ships as you want. This means that higher-level players don't have that much of an advantage. There are no microtransactions and tons of cosmetics for your ship and cockpit that you can grind for if that's your thing.

However, this is it. Two modes, five ships each and a handful of maps. I haven't played much yet, but I can imagine that this might get old sooner or later. I can't really comment much on game balance yet, but in my limited experience the Rebels seem to win most of the time. Whether this is because they have some advantage or whether my teammates are just too stupid to find the Rebel flagship's shield generators, I'm not sure yet...

Overall, this is a game with limitations, but if you like Star Wars and are fine with arcade-y space shooters, you might like it.