Summary
TheStar Wars: Battlefront Classic Collectionshould have been an easy win for Aspyr when it launched in March this year, bringing two of Pandemic Studios' belovedStar Warstitles from the mid-2000s to modern platforms with achievements, improved resolutions, and more. Unfortunately, when it did launch, it was clear it was in no way in a state that was fit for release, and thebacklash from players was immense, resulting in it quickly plummeting to a “Mostly Negative” review score on Steam within its first day, andAspyr offering refunds.
Not only did theBattlefront Classic Collectiononly launch with three multiplayer servers that each only allowed up to 64 players, which was nowhere near enough to handle the nearly 10,000 players keen to jump in and play with their friends, but it was also riddled with bugs on all platforms that impacted cutscenes and more. To make matters worse, the games' file size was 10 times larger than the originals, needing between 62.87 GB and 72.58 GB of storage compared to the originals' combined 7.3 GB. This led to accusations that Aspyr had not optimized the remastered titles.Screen Rant’s own review of the game even addressed this, saying that the game suffered from “a rough start that not even nostalgia can mend.”
Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection - “A Rough Start That Not Even Nostalgia Can Mend”
Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection is the latest addition to Aspyr’s lineup of remastered classics, but nostalgia may be all it has to offer.
Aspyr Has Been Working To Resolve Many Of The Launch’s Issues
More Servers Have Been Added, And Patches Have Been Deployed Since Launch
Since then, Aspyr has added more servers - a fix that came very soon after launch - and followed it up with several patches to sort out the network infrastructure to reduce lag, crashes, and other errors players were experiencing when launching the game. While it can be argued that a game shouldn’t be allowed to be released in such a state to begin with, each patch was substantial and addressed several issues, both big and small.
These updates evenfixed some issues that existed in the original games. For example,Star Wars: Battlefront 2had an issue in its Death Star map where both Republic and Rebel factions lost two reinforcements instead of one every time one of them died, which PC players had used mods to fix over the past 19 years, but the fact that Aspyr finally officially resolved this across PC and consoles came as a pleasant surprise.
As of June 2024, Aspyr has released three major updatesfor the game, with several platform-specific fixes. The latest update launched on June 20 and while it included fewer changes on consoles, the Steam version has received plenty of fixes. The full list of fixes in Update 3 is displayed below, but notably, it includes fixes for issues where visuals, textures, and objectives were not displaying properly. It also resolved an issue for those on Valve’s handheld device, the Steam Deck, who previously could not see button prompts.
Nintendo Switch-Specific
Every Playable Character In Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, Ranked
The Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection features a legendary lineup of classic characters from multiple eras of the franchise’s storied history.
How Fixed Is The Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection?
There’s Still Work To Be Done, But It’s On The Right Track
With these updates,Star Wars: Battlefront’sClassic Collectionremaster is certainly in a far better state than it was at launch, but there’s still more work to be done.While the game still has a “Mostly Negative” score on Steam, recent reviews are coming in as “Mixed,” suggesting there are some happier players now than there were a few months ago.
For those on PC, one of the biggest takeaways from the recent reviews is that the game is dead on the platform, something that recent stats on SteamDb reflect, with only 29 players online at the time of writing and a 55-player peak in the last 24-hours, suggesting that the damage to the game has already been done, and it’s unlikely it will claw its way back from its launch state on the platform. This is likely due to the fact that PC players can still easily access the original versions of the game, which are far more active.
For those on consoles, however, this is the only way to play the game for those on PlayStation and Nintendo, as PS4 and PS5 don’t have the originals under their PS Classics, and the original games were never released on Nintendo’s console at the time, the GameCube, so these new updates certainly make it a far more enjoyable way to play on those platforms. While the original games are available through Xbox’s backwards compatibility scheme, its online servers shut down well over a decade ago, so while theClassic Collectionis the only way to play online multiplayer on that platform, the updates have certainly made this better now.
To answer the overarching question of whether theStar Wars: Battlefront Classic Collectionhas been “fixed,” the answer is technically yes.Both games are currently in a playable state across all platforms, and playing them is generally a far better experience than it was a few months ago, even if there are the occasional minor bugs that may get patched out in a future update as Aspyr continues to be dedicated to getting it fully back on track. Unfortunately, as indicated by the state of the active players on Steam - console player information is less readily accessible - the damage to the remaster’s reputation may already be too severe for it to make a full comeback.
