Star Wars: Battlefront 2 – Leaders

Star Wars: Battlefront 2 was released on the same day as Episode III. This new installment of the popular series has several new features of game play. There are also some remakes of battle maps from the first Battlefront with updated graphics.

One of the newest and perhaps most popular feature is the inclusion of controllable Jedi and other leaders. Now you can play as Yoda, Luke Skywalker, or even Darth Vader and the Emperor. Each uses a light saber as their primary weapon, but they have different secondary powers. For most Force users, they throw their light saber for a ranged attack. But others have different ranged attacks. The Emperor shoots lightning from his fingers, and Yoda has a Force telekinesis attack that sends enemies flying.

In addition to playable Jedi leaders, there are also some non-Force users to control as well. Han Solo has an appearance on several maps. Now you can be the quick-witted smuggler with an attitude. His weapon is a blaster. Other non-Force users include Princess Leia and Boba Fett. Each one has a blaster as the primary weapon. Usually you can kill an enemy in one shot with these, if it is directed toward the head of the enemy. Their secondary weapons vary from grenades, to time bombs, to rockets.

Because these leaders are very powerful, the game creators had to make a way to counter that. One thing was that they have a limited life. As time passes in the game, they slowly lose life. Once their life bar reaches zero, the leader leaves the field and cannot return for 90 seconds. To increase the amount of life on the bar, the leader can kill enemies. However, killing friendlies causes the life bar to drop.

If used correctly, a leader can survive the entire duration of a battle. Wading into dozens of enemies isn’t necessarily a good thing. All that firepower will quickly drain your life bar. If they are all relatively close together though, using the running ability of Jedi characters, followed by slashing of the light saber once you reach the enemy, will kill several of them right away. Then just got to work hopping around and slicing the rest to ribbons.

For the ones with blasters, it’s usually best to hang back a bit and nail enemies from a distance. Let your friendlies charge in and take damage while you hang back and essentially snipe enemies.

These few tips will make your leader live longer, but still no guarantee. It’ll take some practice to become good with the leader. But once you do, you’ll be unstoppable by the AI opponents.