History YMMV / StarWarsBattlefrontII

** V-Wings in space battles if you play as the CIS. While they pose little threat in a dogfight, taking them down can be a genuine challenge. Not only do they have high health due to their status as a bomber, but they're speed, agility, and small size compared to the other bombers make them frustratingly hard targets. So it takes a lot of firepower to put them down, and even landing enough hits to do so is a chore.

* GoddamnedBats: Geonosians if you're playing as the Republic. They fight for the CIS and, unlike in the first game, they now have unlimited reinforcements, meaning that while they're fairly weak, there's no way to get them completely off your back while hunting down straggling enemies or trying to hold down command posts. Oh, and they can pilot vehicles and use turrets. These traits also apply to the Wookiees on Kashyyyk, who side with the heroic faction and basically gives them a big numbers advantage over the Empire and CIS, though they're less aggravating due to the map design making them less able to drag out the game and because they can't fly.

** The campaign narration on Felucia. He states the entire time they were on the planet was a nightmare, and the 501st only made it through thanks to the leadership of Aayla Secura. When they were rotated out she told them they were the finest she had ever served with, and the narrator states that knowing about the inevitability of Order 66, [[YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame none of the clones could bare to look her in the eye]].

* PortingDisaster: In contrast, the PC port of the game suffers from an immensely downgraded pre-game UI that runs on a fixed resolution and lacks all of the graphical and thematic work done for the console UI.

** Y-Wings in space battles. Unlike other starfighters, which only have FixedForwardFacingWeapons, the Y-Wing has a swivel-mounted chaingun turret, meaning that they can shoot back at you even while you're tailing them. This means they can force the player to break off pursuit, at which point the Y-Wing can then turn around and nail you with its main gun to finish you off.

** Wampas on Hoth. [[LightningBruiser They are fast and can kill you in one swipe, and they can take a lot of punishment in turn.]] When you play Hunt on Hoth in Instant Action, you'll have to fight an entire colony of them!

** Really, the Transport ships in general. They have the toughest armor of all the starfighter classes and their weaponry can take out enemy starfighters and frigates. Not only that, but they can be used as a spawn point if landed in an enemy capital ship. Their only real drawback is their lack of speed.

* GoddamnedBats: Geonosians if you're playing as the Republic. They fight for the CIS and, unlike in the first game, they now have unlimited reinforcements, meaning that while they're fairly weak, there's no way to get them completely off your back while hunting down straggling enemies or trying to hold down command posts. Oh, and they can pilot vehicles and use turrets. These traits also apply to the Wookiees on Kashyyyk, who side with the heroic faction and basically gives them a big numbers advantage over the Empire and CIS.

** Geonosis is this for the Republic. The Separatists are aided by the Geonosians, giving them a virtually unlimited amount of reinforcements (especially as Geonosian kills don't detract from the Separatist unit numbers) and the Republic's vehicles are reduced from the first game, giving them only one AT-TE to go up against the Separatists multiple tanks.

** {{Downplayed|Trope}} for [[EliteMooks Super Battle Droids]] -- mostly due to their wrist rockets. Every other faction's standard trooper has grenades which have limited range, are thrown in an arc, and take a second to explode after landing. The rockets? They fire in a straight line for as long as you please, and explode on impact. It's notably easier to play as the Separatists than the Republic...

** Geonosis is this for the Republic. The Separatists are aided by the Geonosians, giving them a virtually unlimited amount of reinforcements (especially as Geonosian kills don't detract from the Separatist unit numbers) and the Republics vehicles are reduced from the first game, giving them only one AT-TE to go up against the Separatists multiple tanks.

** Dagobah is hated for its inbalanced command post placement that gives the advantage to the Empire/CIS side, especially when playing with bots.

** The campaign narration on Felucia. He states the entire time they were on the planet was a nightmare, and the 501st only made it through thanks to the leadership of Aayla Secura. When they were rotated out she told them they were the finest she had ever served with, and the narrator states that knowing about the inevitability of Order 66, none of the clones could bare to look her in the eye.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** Aerial combat was one of the least popular features in the first game, since most players found out that it's incredibly hard to have a meaningful effect on a land battle while piloting a starfighter; even if you can manage to hit enemy troops from the air [[FriendOrFoe without accidentally hitting your own]], you can't actually advance the battle by taking command posts, and aerial dogfights are incredibly limited (partly due to the low altitude and rough terrain, and partly because there are just a tiny handful of fighters on each side). Hence, this game nixed aerial combat entirely (save for on Hoth, where Snowspeeders still function like fighters) and moved all starfighters to space battles. Space battles proved to be much more popular, since the open field of space provides much more opportunity for fighter-on-fighter action, and the new space levels allow pilots to advance battles by targeting and destroying capital ships.
** In the first game, if you took out an [=AT-AT=] on Hoth using the Snowspeeder's tow-cable, the game's achievement system would only credit the gunner for the kill and not the pilot (who basically has the job of completing the kill with this method). This game fixes this by crediting both the pilot and gunner for the kill, acknowledging that taking out an [=AT-AT=] with tow-cable is supposed to be a team effort.

** Really, the Transport ships in general. They have the toughest armor of all the starships and their weaponry can take out enemy starfighters and frigates. Not only that, but they can be used as a spawn point if landed in an enemy capital ship. Their only real drawback is their lack of speed.

** The Bothan Spies. They have [[DeathRay incinerator weapons]], ''regenerate health, transmit the ability to regenerate health to others'', are equipped with {{time bomb}}s, and ''attack in numbers''. And they can do ''all this'' without you seeing them once, because they can turn invisible! It's almost guaranteed that once you see one, you will not stop until you've [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill sprayed the area with gunfire, emptied a magazine in the alien's general direction, thrown several grenades, and generally made sure that it is superlatively dead]]. Of course, they have such awful range and such low health that you can hand them their asses if you ever get in a fight where you can actually ''see'' one of them.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: Does the campaign truly the recollections of a clone trooper from the 501st, or is it Imperial propaganda? The clones would have been biologically around 70 years old by the time of the original trilogy. Setting aside their apparent longevity, many of the Clone Wars battles the campaign has them partake in occurred near simultaneously in distant parts of the galaxy. And while the clones were in one sense [[DoAnythingSoldier Do Anything Soldiers]], being key parts of every facet of the Republic's war machine, a single trooper would not be trained as both a starfighter pilot and infantryman. And it seems notable that the game ends with a major victory for the Empire. So what does the campaign represent? The memories of a single clone? The collective war diary of the 501st? Or a propaganda piece commissioned by the Empire?

** Really, the Lander-class ships in general. They have the toughest armor of all the starships and their weaponry can take out enemy starfighters and frigates. Not only that, but they can be used as a spawn point if landed in an enemy capital ship. Their only real drawback is their lack of speed.

*** The map has a pathfinding bug that causes bots on the heroic side to get stuck north of the upper left command post, in an area that originally had stairs to a sniper point but was blocked in this version. No one has managed to fix this.

** The Empire's Theta Shuttle is surprisingly powerful. Although it's slow and has trouble dodging enemy ships, it's immensely sturdy compared to most ships, capable of taking on all Rebel ships single-handedly with barely a scratch. It also has the Tri-Fighter's homing missiles.

** The opening narration to "Operation: Knightfall." The clones all knew what was coming and refused to say a word. Even with some of their misgivings about the Jedi Order, it is made clear that the Clone Troopers have no desire to kill the order down to the last child, but they feel that they have to. And keep in mind, this was before the [[WesternAnimation/StarWarsTheCloneWars biochip retcon]].

** The opening narration to "Operation: Knightfall." The clones all knew what was coming and refused to say a word. Even with some of their misgivings about the Jedi Order, it is made clear that the Clone Troopers have no desire to kill the order down to the last child, but they feel that they have to. And keep in mind, this was before the [[WesternAnimation/StarWarTheCloneWars biochip retcon]].

** The opening narration to "Operation: Knightfall." The clones all knew what was coming and refused to say a word. Even with some of their misgivings about the Jedi Order, it is made clear that the Clone Troopers have no desire to kill the order down to the last child, but they feel that they have to.

* TearJerker: The campaign narration on Felucia. He states the entire time they were on the planet was a nightmare, and the 501st only made it through thanks to the leadership of Aayla Secura. When they were rotated out she told them they were the finest she had ever served with, and the narrator states that knowing about the inevitability of Order 66, none of the clones could bare to look her in the eye.

* EvenBetterSequel: The original ''VideoGame/StarWarsBattlefront'' was an excellent mix of strategy combat and shooter game, blessed with complex but recognizable maps and splendid sound effects. This game took all that, and added an achivement system that actively rewarded players, as well as a much wider collection of maps, units and game modes. And playable Jedi.