Battlefield 6 Review, Gameplay Impressions, Videos and Top Features

Battlefield 6 from Battlefield Studios and EA attempts to take over the future of the first-person shooter space largely by going back to its roots established in the glory days of the franchise.Â

Exiting the widely polarizing Battlefield 2042 from 2021, Battlefield 6 returns to its large-scale warfare roots by leaningly heavily into modern tech to power its destructive environments while peppering in new gameplay modernizations.Â

In an era of sequels and remasters to something more like the golden era of, well, everything, Battlefield 6 needs to answer the question of whether rewinding back to the Battlefield 2 or 3 days can have staying power into 2026 and beyond.Â

Visually, Battlefield 6 is staggering in measures of detail and scale, from the littlest of gun and armor details to the wide-open maps with wild draw distances capable of fitting aerial battles overhead while other players fight it out on the ground.Â

These are easily the best photorealistic graphics in the series to date across the board, which fits right in line with the series’ goal of essentially being a simulation.Â

It’s a similar story for the sound design, as expected, with the roar of vehicles, smooth directional sounds, proximity chatter, whizz of bullets with solid directional sense and a robust array of gun effects fully pulling players into the moment.Â

If there’s a negative, Battlefield’s messy history with enemy visibility returns. The series has attempted to quash the problems in the past in the middle of a game’s lifecycle through things like character shader adjustments and other patches. Here, the problem remains despite an aggressive auto-targeting system, making it tough to pick out enemies amidst chaotic battlefields littered with dust and smoke. Rest assured, it will be a continuously monitored thing again.Â

Battlefield’s well-established love for map destruction returns at a major scale once again. What must’ve been a staggering budget behind the game plays into these moments as well, as it’s always a little breathtaking to see a building collapse or structures crumble. Blowing apart an enemy’s cover and repaving the map during the course of a match is something gamers have sort of taken for granted over the years, something this effort is happy to stress.Â

There’s even an ability to breach floors and attack from above inside buildings now. Or…knock out the ceiling and send enemies careening into some serious injuries, never mind the line of fire.Â

Across the nine maps, there’s an impressive balance between expansiveness to allow massive lobbies and vehicles, but also smaller areas for more intimate figurefights. The flow of Battlefield maps and how players get funneled together has always been a key factor in a release’s success, and at launch, the results feel great for this one.

Smaller time-to-kill, accurate weapons and limited recoil mesh well with the maps, too. It’s a little odd to think the hyper-realistic simulation of destruction sits right alongside more arcade-like shooting action, but it nails the balancing act.Â

A standard Battlefield class system returns: Assault, Engineer, Support and Recon. Those won’t shock gamers, but some of the new wrinkles might.Â

Assault is the traditional FPS frontliner, using assault rifles and earning traits like faster objective progressions and bomb arming. The repair-tool-equipped engineer can take less damage as they attempt to repair allied vehicles.Â

The medpack-slinging support now has a passive that lets other players interact with them for health and ammo. And the sneaky recon sniper role marks enemies from distance, both on the HUD and map.Â

That’s keeping things basic, of course. Each class gets traits, gadgets, abilities and different training paths to unlock.Â

Those traditional things aside, the class system also gets a little bizarre. Any class can use any weapon, but standard class-based play is encouraged through sticking with the ideal weapon for that class.Â

Confusing? A little. The recon class is best with a sniper rifle and gets bonuses for using it. But a recon class running around with an SMG or assault rifle is very much permitted.Â

It seems the goal is to let players find which kit fits best with their own playstyle. But it also sort of diminishes the class-based system in the first place, too. Regardless, the game promises playlists in which this freeform class system is restricted to something more traditionally Battlefield. The problem there, though, is just how much this splits the playerbase in two on playlists.Â

One of the biggest modernizations for the gameplay is through what the game dubs a “Kinesthetic Combat System.”Â

Fancy wording, great gameplay results. Players can now quickly hitchhike onto vehicles, lean around cover and even drag fallen allies to cover. That last point is downright massive, given the Battlefield gameplay loop’s importance on revives and teamwork.Â

While that dragging is the highlight, other upgrades include combat rolls to avoid fire or fall damage, plus the ability to mount weapons on the environment, where applicable.Â

The result is the best-feeling Battlefield to date. Gunplay is good, the scale can stagger and something as simple as being able to drag downed allies to cover before reviving them is a serious good development that adds strategy, never mind those clutch, Hollywood-like moments mid-battle.

Story, Multiplayer and More

It’s 2027, NATO is close to collapsing, so players must suit up to combat a private military big bad dubbed Pax Armata and save the day.Â

Translated: Battlefield 6 isn’t going to stun those who have played something similar. To its credit, the campaign loops in some pretty interesting characters and has some memorable moments. While it doesn’t change the genre or anything so dramatic, the campaign, at least, acts as a nice almost tutorial to each class of sorts.

It also keeps the realistic vibe in gameplay, too, as players won’t live through much damage at all. Squadmate callouts are usually helpful and the allied AI solid. Those who want realism and a sense that they’re not just running up to avoid the next wave of unlimited-spawning enemies will feel at home.Â

But by and large, the headline act of Battlefield is, well, the battlefield. That means the multiplayer and its surrounding systems.Â

Those systems again sit on the expansive side of the scale, too. Weapon customization through mods makes the cut and offers different ways to personalize how a gun performs. An attachment point limit adds a necessary boundary so things don’t get too silly, which also pushes the strategic element of decisions.Â

Again, it’s going to be interesting to see how the community embraces or steers away from the open weapon system across all classes and how it impacts playlist population and wait times.Â

At face value, Battfleld could fall into standard-fare “meta builds” lists. One can imagine a medic with the top weapon and certain mods being the only things picked in “sweaty” lobbies, leaving the other classes behind.Â

Much of Battlefield’s identity and gameplay loop has revolved around an emphasis on those classes. If everyone can run around as a medic with a tricked-out gun, it poses a serious question, if not problem, for the game.Â

Battlefield 6 gets mostly traditional with its game modes. Conquest, Breakthrough, Rush and deathmatch classics, among others, return to the fray.Â

Escalation is the outlier and highlighted new mode at launch. Think, conquest, where teams score points based on captured points, but the number of zones reduces as a match progresses. It replicates some of the battle royale feel of other popular games and inevitably funnels all the players in a lobby to one area for an intense final showdown.

It’s a fun mode, but any new arrival has to fight the long history of fan favorite conquest and rush. An uphill battle, to say the least, though the stab at innovating on the formula is appreciated and perhaps it takes off.

Battlefield’s Portal sandbox creator returns with a souped-up suite of options, too, letting players express themselves and then put them online for others to use.Â

There, players can tweak scenarios, maps and rulesets, among many other details. Even cool little things like the ability to toggle a backfilled-by-AI option that puts AI players in the game created mode until real players join.Â

Creations go into the community section, with some eventually being highlighted by the game itself, opening them up to bigger audiences and permitting experience gain.Â

Experience gain overall is solid, with it earnable in most of the game’s offerings, so there’s no overwhelming pressure to do something a player doesn’t really feel like playing just to keep progressing.Â

The usual Battlefield server browsers return with their nice rulesets and filters. The UI is a little laggy, but forgivable. In action, the game runs well despite some booming lobby sizes and the list of options tucked into the menus is again robust.Â

Battlefield 6 is a blast. It’s a little all over the place, with stunning visuals and environmental effects clashing with the obvious desire to emulate offerings from more than a decade ago. It’s also doing the latter, but while also opening up weapons to all classes in some odd ways.

Still, it would be petty to knock Battlefield for trying new things in the past, seeing it admit those didn’t work, then knocking it for looping back to its series identity and improving upon it.

While the open-ended weapon system will remain controversial and rightfully so, it’s a small blemish on a fantastic package.

If the goal was bringing the glory days to modern times, Battlefield 6 achieves it through its own specific-feeling brand of combat simulation and realistic sandboxes.

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