Battlefield 6 (2025)

Battlefield 6 dazzles you with the image of having all of these traits that a great game has. It has multiple maps, pretty graphics, a good variety of match types, tons of guns and attachments to unlock, yada yada you know the drill.

Where I struggle to recommend Battlefield is a ton of little issues that add up to a substantial amount of flaws. Guns and attachments take a comically absurd number of hours of gameplay to unlock. Even months after release, many maps still have exploits that allow players to get onto rooftops where they're not supposed to have access. The assault class's Stim ability is so useless that it's actually bad to use it most of the time. In most matches, you'll die within 2 seconds of having spawned at least once. Shortly after release, EA shoved a Battle Pass into the game, and they constantly harass you to buy the paid tier. Also, it's minor, but the campaign is just dogshit.

The thing that really puts it over the line for me is that the game is still crashing for me. This is the only triple-AAA game that regularly crashes on my PC - I'd estimate one every 1-3 hours of gameplay. It's extremely frustrating to be booted to desktop over and over, especially when the match lengths are often 30-40 minutes.

There's really a lot of great things about Battlefield 6 that I do want to praise. The gunplay feels great. The classes feel like they have unique purposes and niches. The match sizes aren't as massive as prior Battlefield games, but I actually really enjoy the current map and player count sizes. When you're able to enjoy the game for what it is, it feels like a 8 or 9 out of 10 game. Unfortunately, you'll feel yourself get pulled out of that high over and over.

I give Battlefield 6 an "Eh, I guess".

(This started as a status update)
Although I'm currently marking it at a 4/5 stars, it really could be a 3 and it certainly sits somewhere in between. I don't know if I'll ever fully review it, but after about 60 hours I do want to note a couple of things.

• I don't hate the battle pass (And full disclosure I did buy season 1), but I'm not sure it is worth it either in its current condition. I ultimately tie a games overall price and fun when calculating value aiming for 1 hour of play per $1 spent. Sure, I make exceptions for some extremely fun games that take 10 hours while simultaneously costing $60, but for the most part I stick to that metric. I spent hundreds of dollars on World of Tanks back when I played it, but I also put in hundreds of hours. Anyways, I like having objectives to do and things to earn in these games besides trying to just win every match. Especially when so many matches can go completely lopsided. I am though not fully convinced that the base game shouldn't cost less if they intend on releasing battle passes and seasons without including something more in those packages and some cosmetic items are just not worth it.
• Please fix custom load outs. Not only should we get several of them, we should be able to name them as well. Let me create Assault - Close Range - BOOM Focused.
• Still a high percent of matches are lopsided, but anecdotally the percent feels less than other battlefield games I've played. I've even seen a number of games where things went very wrong very early, and things were pulled back because the losing team really focused on objectives, while the winning team just switched to a kill to death focus or over stretched to try and spawn camp.
• I think the problem from earlier battlefield games (looking at you battlefield one) of having challenges that frequently don't contribute to playing the team game laid out in front of you have been mostly rectified. Yes, I hate playing with a sniper rifle as a recon. It's to slow to make you an effective objective taking recon class and you light up like a Christmas tree whenever you even look longingly at the scope. So yes, sniper rifle challenges annoy me. But they are still much better than BF One going (Get 25 handgun kills as recon class). Like okay, I'm just ineffective for a couple of games.
• Other notable complaints. I HATE THE INCENDIARY SHOTGUN. SMOKE ASSISTS NEED TO INCLUDE REVIVING IN FUCKING SMOKE.

OKAY, I'M GOING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT MAPS NOW.

• Some maps are VERY one sided, as in, the team with the good side seems to (nearly) always win, on some maps, always win handedly.
• Some maps are plain bad. And due to their design or lack there of, they encourage some battlefield sins.
  • For example, a certain map with oil refineries. Has so little cover, it gets filled with snipers. Not just recons, but tank snipers as well.
  • Another certain map with a massive mountain in the middle (which ironically has an out of bounds near the top, but not all around it, get's players filled with snipers that have a pretty good advantage of also requiring you to go out of your way to kill them. This map is also overly designed to give advantages to aircraft. I've found this map to be a worst offender when it comes to lopsided victories. Attack helicopter pilots going 60-0 is a frequent occurrence because it is almost sculpted to let the ace combat pilots go nuts the entire game (not ace as in good, ace as in, I played that shitty Ace Combat where the helicopters could barrel roll), with very little chance of being shot down. Removing aircraft seems to be the only way to fix this map. Honestly, the map is small enough, all vehicles except the jeeps and 4 wheelers should go.
  • Other maps where teams can camp rooftops where the only access is to highjack a helicopter and bail onto it makes these squads annoying. Sometimes they will lopsidedly contribute to a win since they can be hardened in place and functionally impossible to remove because of a deploy becon and squad play. Not in a good way though, just in a way that requires a counter squad to fully focus on their removal and ultimately 8 people not playing objectives. Nothing any of these players have done wrong, just the reality of the map design not having taken that into consideration. On the other side, these same players may overwhelmingly contribute to a loss if their only focus becomes k/d. That's not punishing those players, that punishing the entire team. Again, if the map is smaller, maybe just remove aircraft.
  • Again, map design seems to be lacking on a lot of maps. They don't consider if they are overly pushing certain classes or vehicle abuses. The great thing about battlefield is everything should have an effective counter, and, on some maps, the only effective counter is overly committing to certain classes or vehicle abuses and everyone hating being on that map.
• I'd like to see greater attention paid to which maps get access to which vehicles, focusing on making sure that they are setup in a way that rewards good group play and not manipulation of the games rules. For instance, a tank supported by infantry should be a very good force that's difficult to combat, but a tank sitting on the edge of the map all alone should be an easy target. Stealing and immediately crashing an aircraft so that you can take a rooftop should be punishing to the team's chances to win. Sure a good attack helicopter might be able to dominate an area where they have no engineers with counter AA missiles, but once the AA fire shows up the helicopter shouldn't be able to smack the ground at near full velocity into the conveniently placed ravine, survive, and get back its full health an unlimited supply of countermeasures (the unlimited supply of countermeasures is especially egregious when you realize how long it takes infantry classes to get things out of supply bags, especially counter vehicle ammo, MAKE THEM RETURN TO A BASE AND SIT AND WAIT FOR RESUPPLY).
• Aircraft should have to maneuver and it should be hard. Letting them basically run through power lines on some maps, or making them over responsive, or being forgiving when they slam into the ground might be making them too effective.
• The out of bounds timers should get less the further out you go from the map. Sure if infantry steps slightly out of bounds, they should have ample time to return. If a pilot lands well outside of the map, they shouldn't be able to get out repair, get in, get out again and fully repair. Make them return to a a safe location in bounds for that. I'm not even opposed to limiting vehicle ammunition so that they have to resupply either at a given location or via the supply drop from the engineer. While simultaneously increasing vehicle spawn timers so that getting yourself destroyed is not a faster resupply. This should be balanced so vehicles stay fun, but not allow them to be an unsupported killing machine that can't be countered because they don't come near the objectives.

Conclusion

I've spent too much time ranting about a game that's probably going to become more call of duty like rather than less. Yes, I'd love to see us get back to the day of a battlefield that was less flexible in class and vehicles because there were less of them and being exception required not only being good, but having good support (such as team restriction on class numbers).

These types of limits may not solve battlefields declining player base though, and unfortunately the more accessible approach is probably more appealing to a wider audience, which is more important than a well-balanced game that focuses on the teams strength rather than the individuals.

Remember, games like MAG (back when it was there) had a better focus on the grand team with higher numbers of players and a structured chain of command approach, opening up more options the further along the game ran. It was more limited in its development and was locked to the PS3 ultimately leading to its demise. I'd love to see Battlefield inspire to be a better MAG than a better Call of Duty. but I don't think that is its future.

At the end of the day, I can't think of another FPS multiplayer game on the market right now, with a decent player base, that would be better to play. So if you like FPS gaming, and you like the large battles focused on taking objectives, I think this is where you should spend your time and money (I'm not a battle royale player so I'm not going to touch that mode). I will continue to play this game, and I'm cautiously excited for season 2.

4/5

We're back. Battefield 3 was a very important game for me and this harkens back to that era. Great gun mechanics, fun online, beautiful graphics and runs like a dream. The maps could do with some work and some huge ones would be fun to play on. Redsec is not really my thing unfortunately. Hope they continue with some great DLC for this one.