The game has just officially released for its global launch and although it has already been out for a week through early access there are still some bugs that need ironing out to warrant this being worth full price.

The game plays a lot like previous titles. For me it is a mixture of BF V and BF4 in how it feels and plays. The maps are the biggest they've ever been and although that isn't always a good thing it certainly does look great from a visual standpoint. The downside is that you will be doing more running, driving, and flying than ever before.

The specialists aren't as big of a deal as people are making them out to be as they mainly replace the role of classes. I rarely found myself taking notice of the various specialists on the battlefield. The biggest problem I have with them so far is that they encourage players to pick the funnest specialists like the lady with the wingsuit as they simply cannot be bothered to walk around. Obviously this has a huge impact on team play and the lack of ammo and repair tools being used is very, very noticeable. Guns are fairly limited in numbers currently and that is a major downside as most people gravitate towards the PP. Guns and gear are no longer locked to specialists / classes either, enabling you to equip whichever combination of weapons and gadgets you like.

Performance isn't amazing on PC and I suffer from semi-frequent lag and rubber banding. Other bugs persist too such as not being able to revive in certain scenarios, inputs not registering correctly, black screens after matches, directX function erros, and the list goes on. Dice have thankfully ackowledged most of these issues already and have promised a patch within a week or two.

Portal is the saving grace at the moment for this game. The previous titles included in portal only feature 2 maps per game but its a welcome nostalgic trip down memory lane. The UI and some of the sounds / feel to the guns retain a lot of the core BF2042 feel which can be odd but almost all of the original elements for each game are there such as no prone in BC2 and no sliding in 1942 etc. The ability to customise your portal experience through EAs website editor is something i'll be looking forward to hugely.

There isn't much left to say at this point. The game has just launched and no doubt it will change drastically in the next few months, rendering this review irrelvant. I hope that happens as theres a strong base to build off here and so far it appears to be a smoother launch than previous titles but core functionality is surprisingly missing. Let's hops they can turn this around quick!

See you out on the battlefield, gamers:)

EDIT: I have downgraded my review from 4 stars to 3 stars as I just cannot excuse the lack of features included in this game despite the campaign being scrapped, presumably for the multiplayer to be worked on...

2023-01-03 update: I've been playing this game a ton the last month or so. It's in a much better state than it was at launch. I'm still utterly disappointed that there's no Titan mode. Regardless, the gameplay feels great and Conquest is still fun. This is the first ever live service game where I'm actually trying to complete the weekly quests and looking forward to when new ones come out.

I was keeping such a close eye on this since it was announced. Watched all the dev streams and interviews. 2142 is probably my favorite FPS of all time, maybe one of my favorite games ever. All I want is for them to bring Titan mode back. Major disappointment they failed to do so yet again. But that would only knock down one star if the game was really good otherwise. But even months after release, I haven't even been able to complete my 10 hour trial through Game Pass because every time I try to get into a match for the last few weeks, it just hangs. When I do get into matches, I'd fairly frequently see bugs. When things were working well, gameplay was about as smooth as it's ever been. I'm always disappointed when my team won't PTFO, which happens too often. That's typically not the fault of the devs, except this time at launch they didn't provide us with a lot of the tools we've long had in the series for helping maintain team and squad cohesion. I really want to like this game and I'll come back to it later after some major updates, hoping that it'll be fun.