Pityesz: Well definitelly not a Jedi Academy but it has some depth. The game however isn't balanced for that kind of play. The characters alone may perform better or worse than one another. It is a tactical shooter game nothing more. The balance goes for the entire team including the heroes. The maps also sometimes more or less suitable for the different classes: jetpack will have no use in small areas for example. The game's real depth is the many tactical options because of the way different classes.
Keep in mind I am referring to gameplay without the use of force attacks for both games.
Actually, it's better than Jedi Academy in terms of mechanics and overall competitive merit which can be defined as, "The degree to which a game facilitates a struggle between two players".
My reasoning for making such a bold statement? Well for starters let me get the cat out of the room by saying I have over 200 hours into Jedi Academy with a friend who has spent thousands of hours into both Jedi Academy (and the MB2 mod) and SWBF2 Hero Assault and he concedes that Hero Assault is more competitive.
Now, now I know what you're thinking... that isn't a very good reason as it's on the account of one person, so I will try to go into more depth below.
To kick things off, let me state that the video only shows the very bare bone mechanics of the mode, and in any game, the competitive merit is not judged solely by mechanics, but overall strategic viability.
What does Jedi Academy have going for it? It's an especially mechanically focused game, or so I've heard from that person I mentioned earlier, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is for competitive merit reasons. I've played against opponents on Jedi Academy with over 3 thousand hours, and can usually stalemate them just by playing ultra-defensively with the 'strong' style, which is obviously bad from a competitive merit standpoint. The main reason this is a problem is because reaction time is basically not a factor at all (this is especially the case in the base game, without MB2) and so it's really just a matter of who can execute better, as there is no strategy in the base Jedi Academy game, unless you want to make a case for switching styles, however, that method is largely irrelevant if you're playing passively with the 'strong' style. Either way, the switching styles argument is made null because you can change strategy in SWBF2 and it has a larger effect on engagements too.
What does SWBF2 have going for it? In contrast to Jedi Academy, the mechanics are not so relevant to gameplay in comparison to strategy - at the highest level of Hero Assault, the mechanics are almost made somewhat irrelevant as there's such an emphasis on outplaying your opponent through mind games and trickery. It contains elements of tennis and boxing, namely the ability to incorporate psychological profiling and as mentioned above, mind games. Notable examples being analyzing your opponent's dominant hand in order to judge which direction they might dodge to when pressed, or even seemingly arbitrary things like low confidence. One of the biggest advantages that I briefly touched on earlier is the sprinting/dashing mechanic that you can incorporate into more complex offensive attacks. Eventually, the most viable strategy (MVS) is to catch people off guard by dash attacking when it's not possible for them to react to it, which is a good thing, because it places emphasis on good offensive play, unlike Jedi Academy.
Note that I'm not coming at this from a biased perspective, I think both games are good, however, I do think SWBF2 is the better game, if only from a competitive merit standpoint.
Jedi Academy: a very large focus on changing styles to (as Kyle would say) to surprise your opponent. This would be a very good thing if reaction time actually mattered in Jedi Academy, but it doesn't really. Good movement and timing are key aspects, they're just not nearly as specific or in-depth as SWBF2. You can essentially stalemate anyone just by having a good movement game which is really lame for obvious reasons.
Gameplay: meticulously walking around at an agonizingly slow pace hoping to eventually get a hit through potshots as you continuously walk back and forth. In essence, it's all about superior execution.
SWBF2: a game that forces you to have great execution to the point where you aren't thinking about it, much like Jedi Academy, however, it's more complex (which I know isn't always a good thing, but it is here) and has an infinitely larger focus on prediction and mind games.
Gameplay: Outwitting your opponent through clever mind games or predictions to gain either a psychological advantage or one through reaction time. Every matchup between characters drastically changes gameplay opportunities (much like saber styles from JKA, admittedly, however, it is multiplied by the sheer number of characters even if they aren't all competitively viable at the highest level of the game, this, however, can be fixed by playing a specific format) in interesting ways, giving it a ridiculous amount of replay value. To talk about your statements about balancing in general and with gunners, it should be known that a game shouldn't be judged by balance, especially when everyone has access to the same options. When you have so much variety, balancing would probably make them too similar, and thus, pretty dull.
Well, I did not originally intend for that to be such a mouth-full. I apologize.
