I don't know about second best, but it's in the top 5 for sure. The other three for me being the Rogue Squadron series, Galactic Battlegrounds and tie between the two Episode I games (Phantom Menace and Racer).
All excellent choices from the ones I know. I particularly love galactic battlegrounds (also you're the first person I've met that's ever heard of it!) And Episode 1: racer.
You seem to have good taste, so I'll check out Rogue Squadron and Phantom Menace!
And obviously these are just my opinions, I can't fault anyone else for what they prefer.
I'm not even a Star Wars fan, but I spent a lot of time with the PS1 Phantom Menace game as a kid. Some of its levels (Naboo and Tatooine especially) felt surprisingly open world for a game of that era.
Unless they put the og bf1 maps into bf2 like that one pc mod does AND also implement splitscreen on the console versions, there will be no point in playing this. A pc version will only be worth playing if it can still load custom maps and only if the multi-player works ok with custom maps like the original which is a hard bar to reach considering even complicated custom maps with lots of hacks work well over lan.
I played the crap out of this as a kid and also as an adult. It's one of the greatest games ever made. It has to at least be better than the original in every way or it's blasphemy.
If it's not the existing 2 PC games which have already been updated to remove GameSpy and add in modern online servers, then cool. If not I hope they make Battlefront 2's menus controller friendly.