I played a lot of SWBF2 (competitive etc.)...and it is quite different than a typical tactical FPS like BF2. It is, let's call it, tactical FPS lite.
-- There is no focus whatsoever on teamwork (although teams are more effective).
-- The weapons, vehicles, etc. are not intended to be realistic (whatever that means for a game based entirely on a fantasy
-- There is little/no real attempt at balance between the classes (everyone was an Engineer).
-- It is more fast paced.
It did NOT suck in my opinion...it was fun but it was really somewhat of a fluff game. Hardcore FPSers take issue at how non-hardcore it is.
The biggest problems with SWBF2 were:
i. Not as good as SWBF1.
ii. There was no real depth to the gameplay...just run and shoot basically (or possible grab the flag).
iii. LA gave absolutely no support short of one patch which seemed to fix nothing but stupid things like hit detection on rolling droidekas. Heck, we, the community, had to contract (I use the term loosely) the dedicated server author to add modmap support ourselves.
iv. Glitchers and exploiters were absolutely everywhere using the wall glitches and other exploits that LA refused to fix. Heck, these guys were even in the leagues doing this stuff in matches.
I would imagine that LA is not oblivious to the fact that SWBF2 felt like fluff and did not appeal to most real FPSers (only to fanboys like me). As such, I would think/hope that SWBF3 would incorporate much of the things missing from SWBF2...like squad play and balance. Last I heard it was not Pandemic doing SWBF3, so that's a step in the right direction at least. Granted, the studio that was rumoured to be making SWBF3 (Free Radical) doesn't seem to have tactical FPS experience (unless I'm wrong about the style of game that Timesplitters is).