I’ve been hooked on the Battlefield franchise as a whole, playing just about every major release, ever since the release of the then-revolutionary Battlefield 3. It was all thanks to its its excellent squad-based gameplay, which did strike a sweet spot between grounded and arcadey playstyles in huge battles. However, it hasn’t been perfect, and the series has had some rough moves leading up to the mess that is Battlefield 2042, a mostly competent shooter that forgot what franchise it belongs to. After four years, Battlefield 6 is here to attempt the series back from the brink of mediocrity, and hopefully reclaim its crown as the king of multiplayer shooters. So, did it succeed?

 

Campaign 

Set in the year 2028, the world is in a full-scale war. NATO has collapsed, and a prominent PMC known as the Pax Amata is cleaning up what’s left behind. You play as Dagger 1-3, an elite US force sent into conflicts to support the remnants of NATO and turn the tide of war. 

It’s a solid setup for an FPS campaign. However, there isn’t much here to dig into. Much of the story is set in a flashback, much like Battlefield 3, and there’s very little going on. It’s mostly about uncovering who the Pax Amata are and why they are getting involved. The game constantly jumps between conflicts with uninteresting, forgettable characters as they slowly uncover a plot that goes nowhere.  

For the most part, you will be fighting in warzones on foot with some top-tier shooting gameplay, whilst dealing with lacklustre allied and enemy AI who kind of just wander around somewhat aimlessly. There are attempts to mix things up with occasional vehicle, stealth, or on-rails sections, but they do very little to enhance the experience. 

I played the campaign on Hardcore difficulty, and it won’t take much longer than 6-7 hours to complete, with little reason to go back. At its best, it is a competently crafted shooter campaign that can be bombastic. At its worst, it feels sloppy, hastily assembled, and lacks coherence in many areas, with an incoherent plot and uninspired level design. It’ll be OK for a single playthrough, but you will most likely uninstall that component afterwards, and I wouldn’t recommend buying it if you are looking exclusively for a good campaign. 

 

Multiplayer 

While the campaign doesn’t reach its potential and feels like a Temu Call of Duty, it’s the multiplayer where Battlefield truly shines. And for the most part, Battlefield 6 brings back those massively bombastic multiplayer battles with up to 64 players demolishing everything in sight (Yes, 128 players from 2042 is gone). It’s still an imperfect experience, but in some ways it adds to the charm and delivers something I feel many shooters have forgotten over the years: it’s just fun to play. 

This is thanks to top-of-the-class gameplay that feels smooth without making the skill floor too high to play. Most of the guns feel incredibly satisfying to use. It looks, sounds, and feels really impactful to use, and the movement is fast yet grounded. You can still hop and slide around like the modern slop you see in recent Call of Duty games that defy any sense of physics, but I noticed it works a lot less often. DICE has found that sweet middle ground that allows skill expression in your movement without punishing players who don’t engage that way. I’d still like to see a little less in here, but the game still feels absolutely fantastic to play. 

Battlefield 6 also has a surprising focus on bringing new game modes to the forefront; while Conquest is the flagship mode of the franchise, the new modes have been given much more love here. Escalation takes the core of Conquest but brings the battles closer and closer to the centre as the game progresses. At the same time, Breakthrough takes the idea of Rush and evolves it by having teams capture two points simultaneously. Most matches on Breakthrough are utterly chaotic and provide that frantic frontline combat that will have you make heroic charges one moment and then cowering in a corner the next as you hope that barrage of grenades doesn’t land at your feet. I wasn’t expecting to like these modes, but they became my favourites (depending heavily on the map). 

Map design is where things really take a turn into the love-it-or-hate-it territory. Battlefield 6 maps aim for a more moderate scope. Often feeling relatively bite-sized compared to the scale of some previous entries. Manhattan Bridge is a great map, but it doesn’t come close to Siege of Shanghai. It has a somewhat confusing layout that limits access to certain buildings. Doorways that you think you can go through are just blocked off. Destruction has been brought back in a big way as well. Whilst you can’t demolish every single building in sight, you can destroy huge chunks of them. It’s a glorious effect that really makes it feel much more like a Battlefield. 

Out of the nine maps available in the game, if I had to pick the standouts, I would pick Cairo for providing one of the best infantry experiences that the franchise has had. With narrow alleyways and wide-open streets that are both chaotic yet give you time to breathe. Yet, at the same time, it allows APCs to dominate the open areas of the map. And Liberation Peak for providing one of the more true-to-form Battlefield maps in this game. The others are usually either too small and chaotic or just large empty fields with a few buildings scattered throughout, without much thought or pacing. 

Both Mirak Valley and New Sobek City are the biggest maps in the game, but with the huge empty terrain and lack of buildings, it can feel empty despite being much smaller than previous games. Meanwhile, Iberian Offensive is easily one of the worst maps I’ve seen, with nonsensical objective placements and routes that encourage running in circles. At this point, I leave when it pops up. It’s a mixed bag of maps that really hold Battlefield 6 back the most, and the one remake map, Operation Firestorm, is massively overrated, making it a weird choice. The map design leaves a rough taste in the mouth, and whilst few are unplayable, they certainly won’t be winning any awards either. 

Then we have some of the more baffling choices in Battlefield 6. Namely, the battle between open weapons and closed, which lock off certain weapons to different classes depending on their speciality. It’s an absolutely baffling choice, as class-locked weapons add more strategy to your weapon choices, and DICE seems to be hiding away closed weapons in the horrendous Netflix UI. Progression is another baffling choice; there’s a traditional levelling system that gives you a lot of gear and attachments to build your own loadout. But to truly get the good stuff, you will need to complete a wide variety of classes and weapon challenges that have you completely modifying your playstyle. Having to obtain suppressions to unlock a new gun is an incredibly poor choice, making the progression feel sluggish and borderline frustrating. 

None of these issues is game-breaking for me personally. Just a collection of oddly bizarre choices that leave a mild taste in my mouth. 95% of the time, I’m having an absolute blast with Battlefield 6‘s multiplayer. The core gameplay is addictively good, with great shooting mechanics and vehicles that feel powerful. Easily the best multiplayer game I’ve played since The Finals. Could the map design and progression be better? Absolutely, and I hope they address this over time, but the core experience makes up for it. 

There are so many of those “only in battlefield” moments. Like that time when I parachuted from the top of a building, landing behind a tank and wiping out all the engineers, only to then pick up an Engineer kit and destroy the tank using a repair tool. Or those last-minute team pushes where entire squads push onto a single point and absolutely annihilate everything in sight in the most chaotically explosive way possible. When Battlefield 6 channels this approach, it’s magnificent. Overall, Battlefield 6 represents a new and interesting direction for the franchise. Bringing back the classic feel while adding elements of modern shooters, such as the criminally underappreciated Modern Warfare 2019. It’s an absolute blast and will easily give me my main multiplayer fix for the foreseeable future, but it is incredibly hard to ignore the blatant issues.

 

Season 1 

October 28th marked the release of Season 1, which should also give us a glimpse at the future of Battlefield 6 and its monetisation strategy. It also served as the drop for the obligatory Battle Royale mode, RedSec. A very standard mode that looks, plays and feels just like Warzone and barely even feels like a proper Battlefield experience save for the epic destruction on display. Complete with the dreaded armour system that brings up the otherwise nicely balanced TTK to an absurd level. At the very least, someone at BF Studios knows how to create a large-scale map, so hopefully we can see that return to the core experience. 

Alongside this, the store was fully unlocked, as was the game’s first Battle Pass, which comes in two versions. A standard $10 one, and a “pro” version that costs upwards of $30, which includes extra XP, battle pass tier skips, some exclusive skins and a… radio station with licensed music. Battle Pass progression is a mix of gaining XP and completing random challenges that will force you to play in different playstyles to progress at a reasonable rate. The cost here is an absurd ask for so little, especially when additional items are added to the store on what I’d assume will be a regular basis. Worst of all, this limited-time battle pass pushes FOMO game design to the forefront. Even Halo Infinite figured this one out. 

Future updates and seasons are expected to continue this trend. Add new modes and maps (hopefully they create larger maps), and explore more ways to monetise different aspects of the game. The only current addition to the map roster is Blackwell Fields, the smallest all-out war map with very little to enjoy. A lot of flat, empty terrain with a few hills and small buildings to cower in. I won’t lie; I am a little concerned about the future of Battlefield 6, even though I’m still enjoying the game right now. Hopefully, DICE won’t steer it in the wrong direction. 

 

Frostbite

There is an ever-increasing number of games running on Unreal Engine 5 that experience continuous performance and stability issues. So it’s a pleasant surprise that Battlefield, of all games, returns with a refined Frostbite engine, one that not only looks and plays great but also offers some of the best optimisation I’ve seen in recent times. I’ve only experienced one game crash during my time playing, and I’ve never encountered anything game-breaking. 

For the most part, Battlefield 6 also looks exceptional. It has a grounded (for now) aesthetic that immerses you in epic gunfights. Bullets fly, tank shells demolish buildings, and it just looks epic. Dirt, blood and water droplets build up on guns the longer the fights go on. Whilst buildings crumble into a pile of rubble, kicking up dirt and debris. Despite some rough edges, it all does a great job of making you feel like you are on a… Battlefield… 

Surprisingly, the launch here has been an excellent one with fewer bugs than I was expecting, fewer glitches and server issues than previous entries. It’s by far the smoothest Battlefield launch, which may be a low bar, but they cleared it. Though it’s not perfect, and some teething issues still need to be sorted out. Occasionally, random objects will send you flying through the air; exploits exist that allow players to reach previously out-of-bounds areas, and annoying no-reg issues persist. 

 

Verdict

Battlefield 6 comes so close to returning the franchise to its glory days. The top-tier shooting gameplay is some of the best Battlefield has ever had, featuring frantic and chaotic action that is both fun and addictive. However, it is let down by one of the weakest campaigns in FPS gaming history (and this is no exaggeration), questionable map design and a progression system that does everything in its power to slow you down. 

Graphics: 8.5 Frostbite shows the competition how it’s done with a nice, clean and optimised presentation.	Gameplay: 7.5 Some of the best core shooting mechanics are let down by a terrible campaign and questionable map design.
Sound: 9.0 Loud and chaotic, the game’s battlefields erupt in gunfire and explosions that are both epic and overwhelming in the best of ways.	Fun Factor: 7.0 Battlefield 6 should have been a home run for the franchise, but some perplexing choices hold the game back.
Final Verdict: 7.5

Battlefield 6 is available now on PC, Xbox Series and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PC with an RTX 4070, Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 32GB RAM.

A copy of Battlefield 6 was provided by the publisher.