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Absolute Disaster

Battlefield V… a game rife with controversy pre-launch and post-launch, abandoned just as it started to truly improve.
Just to note, I have 282 hours on this game on the EA app.
While Battlefield 1 had some issues, it still felt like a passion project and is possibly the greatest World War I game ever made, brought to life within the Frostbite Engine.
Battlefield V on the other hand, the game following Battlefield 1 (yes, this series has awful naming), is set during World War II and instead of feeling like a passion project with a team that’s dedicated on giving us a somewhat immersive war experience with the Frostbite engine, DICE instead opted to try their own spin on WWII… a bad one.
Let’s start with…

The Disastrous Pre-Release

Battlefield 1 was generally well received, but the community had it’s complaints, especially after coming from Battlefield 4. Going back in time and limiting the sandbox wasn’t what a lot of people wanted, but still, the game was massively praised for it’s graphics, sound effects and it’s ability to immerse players in WWI on modern systems. A lot of players also did really enjoy it once they got used to the gameplay and updates increased the content in the game.
Before the release of BFV, there was tons of speculation about what era the next game would be set in. Eventually it was announced the title of the game would be Battlefield V and would be set during WWII.
Players were excited, WWII involves possibly the most famous battles in the history of the human race. This was DICE’s opportunity to show these battles in a first-person shooter on one of the most graphically impressive game engines out there.
When the trailer dropped… all hopes were shattered. Characters were running around with prosthetic limbs firing machine guns during WWII, characters said cheesy lines despite the fact that they were currently in the middle of combat, they wore ridiculous outfits that real soldiers never wore and overall the historical accuracy was basically non-existent.
It felt like a parody of World War II. They took WWII as a setting and then just tossed the worst of modern game art into it, hoping to score some easy monetization.
There was also backlash due to game allowing you to pick your characters gender and race, despite it not being historically accurate for certain genders or race to fight on certain sides. Personally, it’s not something I care much about, especially in multiplayer, but I can see arguments from both sides being somewhat valid.
DICE decided to mock fans at the launch party for the game. At the party, a big screen, with messages handpicked by DICE, containing a mix of nonsense “feedback” and actual valid reactions from members of the community.
Nonsense such as “Genderfield 5” and actual valid community reactions such as “What the f*** was the developers thinking!”
Instead of listening to actual feedback and communicating properly with people, they decided to ignore everyone and openly mock the community, regardless of whether the feedback was good or not.
Great start… let’s move onto the actual game.

The Campaign

The campaign is in the same format as BF1, “War Stories” which have the player playing through different soldiers stories throughout the war.
Like BF1, the game starts off with a fairly strong prologue war story. This war story brings us through each year of the war from a different soldiers perspective.
While BF1’s prologue intends to show you the absolute horrors of WWI and the loss of life which occurred, BFV’s is more about the epic scale of WWII, as you go from several different fronts on land and in the sky.
It's definitely not bad, the music is great and it really gets you excited to see how DICE have brought WWII to such a graphically impressive engine.
After that, it all goes wrong… while the war stories in BF1’s war stories weren’t amazing, some of them had their moments and the levels themselves were well put together. The worst thing about BF1’s campaign was how it didn’t feel as big as it should’ve.
BFV takes this to another level while also being worse at absolutely everything else. You thought you’d see D-Day on the Frostbite engine? Think again.
I wouldn’t recommend the campaign at all. It takes the worst from BF1 and amplifies it massively.

The Multiplayer

The multiplayer for BFV was often panned for its historical inaccuracies, however I don’t really care about that, I care about the gameplay.
They made some significant changes in the multiplayer for BFV, some good, some bad.
The movement is possibly my favourite change to BFV. It’s fast and very fluid. Sliding works very well and you have a lot of control over your character while doing it, it allows good players to out-manoeuvre those who haven’t mastered the movement as well. This game also introduced sprinting while crouched, a very nice addition which allows you to keep a lower profile while keeping some speed.
Characters now naturally goes onto their back when prone in certain positions, rather than always lying on their stomach. You also have control over how your character lands when falling from smaller heights, you can roll which takes longer but negates all damage, or you can just fall and take the damage, but you’ll be a bit quicker to get your sights up. It’s a very nice system.
They removed spotting, which has been in the series since at least the original Bad Company. Instead of spotting, you can now ping locations similar to say Valorant.
You can still get traditionally spotted if enemies are using certain combat roles, but later on they added a “You are spotted” indicator to let you know that you’re currently marked for the entire enemy team, a great addition.
Speaking of combat roles, they added these on top of the traditional class system. Each class has different combat roles, which basically just changes the perks you have. It's stupidly convoluted and overcomplicates things unnecessarily. They had planned to add additional combat roles post-launch, but didn’t bother because of the games poor reception.
The UI in general is dreadful. For example, there’s some fun challenges to unlock skins for weapons, however you need to ACTIVATE each challenge for each weapon individually in the main menu. You can only have 4 active at a time, if you complete them, you then have to LEAVE whatever server you’re in, activate more and then look for another server. This is an absolute nightmare if you’re playing with friends. Games like CoD4 came out in 2007 and you could complete any challenge at any time without ever leaving the game.
Maps in multiplayer aren’t great either, a lot of the maps are too big even for 64 player conquest. You basically have to play as a medic in this game in order to do any effective push as there’s often not enough cover and medics are the only class with effective smokes. If you don’t have several medics who creates smokes for your team, you aren’t going to advance at all. It feels very unbalanced, especially in the linear game modes.
The new fortification system is a great addition to BF, which allows players to build fortifications all over maps.
It’s not overly complicated too like say Fortnite. You simply take out your fortification tool and outlines of what and where you can build will appear around you, simply go up to them, hold left click and bam, you just built something.
This was a great addition that I was originally reluctant about, but it did grow on me.

Overall Thoughts

The campaign really isn’t worth playing, the multiplayer had some good changes but it’s definitely more frustrating than BF1 and just when DICE started to make some excellent progress, they abandoned the game to create the terrible Battlefield 2042.
A terrible pre-release, a terrible release and a terrible post-release filled with tons of broken promises and poor communication.
As of 2023, buy Battlefield 1 instead.