A couple of months ago, I wrote about the Battlefield 6 Beta and what I thought had gone wrong with the previous iteration. I didn’t really plan on buying BF6, but in the two weeks since launch I’ve seen a lot of positive things so thought I’d give it a try myself.

First up, let’s talk about the campaign. If you’re looking for a single-player experience, you’re not normally picking Battlefield (or most modern shooters really). The main component of the series has always been online multiplayer.

I’d say the campaign is entirely skippable if you’ve played any Battlefield game in the past. At these fairly early days in the game’s lifecycle, I don’t want to spoil too much. The storyline has a main antagonist characterised as a “good guy gone rogue”. As is usually the case, our friends at the CIA are heavily involved, and the game then tries to raise the question of who is really the bad guy. It’s a storyline we’ve seen played out time and time again over the years.

It does a decent job of introducing the main concepts of the series to a newcomer. As someone who already had that experience, it felt more like it was trying to set up for something, either a future campaign DLC, a sequel, or perhaps more likely, additional maps or seasonal content down the line.

Multiplayer is the real reason most people play Battlefield games though, and was the reason I had picked it up. From what I’d read in my social media echo chamber, and the sentiment from friends, the game was essentially flawless. The only gripes I was hearing related to some of the challenges being overly long or difficult. So was that the case? Had DICE followed through on a positive beta and made the perfect modern FPS?

Well, it’s a solid effort I’ll give them that. The maps at launch are the same as the beta, fairly good quality with a little too much visual clutter in my view. My main issue with them in the full release however, is that some of the maps feel less like Battlefield and more like Call of Duty ground war. Vehicle use on maps like Cairo is very limited, feeling decidedly un-battlefieldy.

The movement and gunplay feel good for the most part. I haven’t had too many networking issues but I think there could be improvements in this area. While my connection has been fairly stable, the tick rate feels a little low. As a player with a fairly aggressive play style, I’ve had a fair number of cases where I’ve been shot long after I’ve gone round a corner.

The difficulty of the challenges doesn’t bother me too much either. If people complain enough they’ll be tweaked for player retention if they see player numbers or sentiment trending downwards.

Bug wise, also could be worse. I haven’t had anything too game breaking so far. I’ve had times where the scoreboard has gone wrong and shown both teams as having zero tickets, but that’s minor in the grand scheme. The most annoying bug is more of an exploit - people glitching their way on top of the Manhattan Bridge. Likely something that will be patched out fairly quickly.

My biggest gripe with the game though is the balance. It’s something that will likely be rectified over time but it feels like some poor decisions have been made in the sake of crossplay. I say this as a historical KBM gamer, that now mostly plays on controller, the aim assist is too strong in my view. But not only does controller get aim assist, the weapons have less recoil when using a controller.

You can try this yourself if you have access to both input methods. Take yourself to the firing range in game and plug in both inputs. Empty your mag into a wall using the Mouse, then switch to controller and repeat. In my testing the spread on controller was significantly better every time. To me it feels unnecessary to give this improvement to controller - aim assist alone should be sufficient.

In my experience, there is also very little reason to use anything other than an SMG. As they have inherently faster movement speed and mobility, and the maps aren’t overly large, there isn’t a great reason to use Assault Rifles or LMGs for the most part. Anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot of players I’ve come up against using SMGs as well, which suggests my theory on the meta might be right.

I’m also not a fan of what has been done with sniper rifles. From what I can tell, in core game modes they don’t seem to be 1 shot kills without headshots, which essentially rewards playing more passively. Alternatively you can get up close, but a chest shot isn’t going to be enough, so make sure you don’t miss. They also seem to have a “sweet spot” range where the rifles do more damage. Damage drop off at range for some classes of weapon makes sense, but reducing damage at close range for a high-calibre weapon makes little sense to me.

Zeroing your rifle also feels pointless. I’ve seen some people talk online about being able to automatically zero to a distance but I don’t see the need. In my experience you rarely have enough bullet drop due to the scale of the maps to really have to take drop into account, and when you do hardly any adjustment is required.

Overall though, I’d say it was a good game, or at the very least a solid base to build off. It’s not flawless by any means but Battlefield games do tend to improve over time.

I’m also not convinced that the overly positive comments I’ve seen online are entirely justified. I’d give it a 6 or 7 out of 10. It’s definitely not the best Battlefield ever, or as good a game as I’ve seen on social media. It’s a better game than BF2042 was on launch, probably even a better game than 2042 was in its final days.

I could see myself playing for 50 hours or so before it got stale, which for a live service game probably isn’t great. I’ll be interested to see what the player drop off is over the next few months.