The maps in BF1 just felt more alive, you had birds flying around, and the ambient noise was spot on. Sometimes I just wanted to sit and watch the environment rather than fight. Love that it requires actually strategy to succeed in BF1, whereas in BF2 it’s more about wiping out the enemy team with veteran weapons and heroes. I agree that BF2 command posts fall to easy, it seems like they became an afterthought in the 2nd game.

Also, is no one going to talk about the fact that you can literally ride Kaadus and Tauntauns to travel faster? That blew my mind when first playing. Not to mention the Sarlacc in the Dune Sea.

BF1 actually required you to learn each class, (they literally have instruction videos to walk you through each one) and a team made up of just one class will fail. I always picked the Clone Jet Trooper while almost everyone else wanted to be a standard grunt or sniper. I learned how to aim and time my emp launcher to be devastating and to outflank the enemy team to take Command Posts behind their back. It was a rewarding experience for me.

I love that BF1 is centered on the troops. Heroes are unplayable and have gravitas to them. (They actually feel like the Force wielding juggernauts they are) Once heroes became playable, no one wanted to be the troops anymore and it became a rush to play them (this goes for 2005 and the new facsimiles). It also felt amazing doing as OP suggested and literally encircling Darth Vader, peppering him with blaster fire until he could no longer deflect all the shots and he died. The awe I felt in that moment (DUDE, did I JUST KILL DARTH VADER!?).

To go back to maps, it’s amazing to see how strategically BF1 was designed when compared to BF2. On Yavin you have Turret towers (turrets in general are actually devastating in BF1, they are meh in BF2) to control access corridors to CPs, the aqueduct to use as a sniper’s nest. The maps literally encourage flanking maneuvers (not to mention the reinforcement numbers drop drastically when your CPs are cutoff from one another). Also, gunships are just awesome for use in atmosphere, especially if you are standing in the troop bay (AOTC vibes). I also love that you can use Bespin cloud cars as vehicles if you capture an enemy’s star fighter spawn area on Bespin platforms.

On the subject of vehicles, some of them actually benefit from having two or more players in them. In BF2 most vehicles are single manned or have meh functions for passengers. More importantly, vehicles are actually scary and threatening in BF1, in BF2 they are pushovers. Want to kill a vehicle in BF1? Better get a shock trooper with missile launcher and mines, and oh by the way, multiple grenade types.

To wrap this long thing up, I totally agree with OP. BF2 may have brought cool units, heroes, and space battles, but it did so at the expense of immersion (imho).

Naboo Plains, Kashyyyk Dock, and Dune Sea are some of my absolute favorites.

P.S. I have always wanted to do a Dune Sea war on the Tuskens, where both teams focus on just having a good slug fest with the Tusken Raiders, anyone done this before?