Massive destruction and solid gunplay may carry the game, even if the campaign falls flat.
It’s been a long road back for Battlefield. After the rocky reception of Battlefield 2042, fans were left wondering whether DICE and EA could ever recapture the magic defining the franchises’ best years. With Battlefield 6, a global team across multiple studios is swinging hard for redemption, bringing bold new systems and a renewed focus on both cinematic storytelling and large-scale multiplayer warfare.
From my time with the campaign and pre-release multiplayer sessions, Battlefield 6 feels like a confident step in the right direction, even if not everything lands perfectly.
The campaign wastes no time throwing you into the thick of war. You begin as Gunnery Sergeant Dylan Murphy, leading a squad in Georgia under siege by the private military force Pax Armata. A mission that opens at barracks when gunfire pierces a calm moment then escalates into a desperate air evacuation gone wrong. By the time Murphy’s chopper is downed and his squad lies dead around him, one thing isclear: Battlefield 6 is trying to make you to feel the weight of war, not just its spectacle.
The campaign flirts with ideas about loss and the futility of conflict, and at times it succeeds. Murphy’s haunted expression as he lays a hand on his fallen comrades, wrapped in an American flag seeping with blood, is one of the campaign’s most striking moments. Only, that moment comes in the very first mission. For much of the story, the subtext gets muddled as emotional beats are undercut by the typical pulpy bravado of a military shooter. Moments like squad member Cliff Lopez’s reckless sniper fire in Ember Strike hint at the trauma and desperation of war, only to move on too quickly. The game occasionally wants to explore the psychological toll of combat but retreats to safer ground. By the end, the deeper commentary I had been waiting for never fully arrives, leaving a mediocre narrative payoff.
The campaign also allows you to step into the boots of other Dagger 13 members, including Simone “Gecko” Espina and squad leader Haz Carter, mixing infantry firefights with vehicle battles across continents. You can add a light tactical edge by directing your squad to tag enemies, deploy smoke, or demolish cover, making encounters in Cairo’s dimly lit streets or a hydroplant in Tajikistan more than just shooting galleries. Even on hardcore difficulty, weak AI dulls the challenge, but the six-hour campaign remains fun thanks to its brisk pace and sharp set pieces. Still, some minor immersion issues and glitches pop up, like Murphy unlocking a padlock with bolt cutters rather than cutting it and frozen AI allies soft locking your progress.
Where the campaign introduces the world and its stakes, multiplayer lets you fully revel in it. Moment-to-moment, Battlefield 6 feels excellent to play. Gunplay is tight and movement fluid, thanks to the newly coined ‘KinestheticCombat’, which adds depth with mechanics like leaning around corners or clinging to vehicles. My favourite addition is dragging wounded allies to safety, yelling into your microphone for your squad mate to hang-on why you pull them out of combat and give them a second chance to live… to get shot a few seconds after (but that’s a skill issue). It’s asimple act that injects real physicality into firefights and brings Battlefield closer in line with modern shooters.
Classes return in classic form with Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon each with distinct tools and bonuses. Weapon balance feels more considered than in recent entries, and leaning into a role, like repairing tanks as an Engineer or spotting enemies as Recon, is genuinely rewarding. This structure improves random matchmaking, too. Being slot into a specific role means everyone knows what they should be doing, and you can identify easily whether your squad needs a kit with defibrillators for revives or a spawn beacon in a choke point.
Tactical destruction remains the star of the show. No two matches play out the same, with buildings crumbling under grenade fire and walls collapsing from C4. The destructible environments feel weighty and deliberate. One moment you’re using a window for cover and the next you need toimmediately relocate or be faced with a tank shell. It’s chaos that, when it works, feels spectacular.
Multiplayer access before launch was limited and stability hit-and-miss. Conquest remains the definitive experience, with well-designed maps and dynamic destruction. Modes like Squad Deathmatch and King of the Hill offer shorter, more intense battles for those who prefer Call of Duty style gameplay. Escalation, though I had less time with it, promises high-intensity endgame zones as objectives shrink in the large maps of Mirak Valley and Operation Firestorm. Overall, multiplayer feels far more tuned than 2042 or even the Beta, with intuitive navigation, consistent time-to-kill, and UI improvements that make spotting objectives and teammates easier amid the chaos of jets and explosions. The caveat being, this is an online game and performance of servers and ongoing updates will make or break Battlefield 6.
The big pre-launch omission was Portal, Battlefield’s custom mode creation tool, which wasn’t available due to reportedly ‘infrastructure issues’. If functional, it has the potential to be the franchise’s creative backbone, allowing players to design unique modes and mashups from Battlefield’s history. We’ve been told it will be ready for all players at launch so we’ll find out soon enough how good it is.
Visually, Battlefield 6 is a powerhouse. On PlayStation 5, Frostbite delivers immense scale with dense city blocks and detailed particle effects that hold up amid full-scale destruction. Cinematic lighting is balanced, maintaining fidelity without losing on performance. The DualSense adaptive triggers are brilliantly implemented, making the physicality of firing weapons tangible. The resistance truly pushes back as you pull down on that trigger, and you’ll feel the feedback of the gun bounce back against your finger.Accessibility options are also extensive, from legacy aiming styles to tinnitus relief filters, although controller menus remain cumbersome and unintuitive. Sliders take forever to move decimal by decimal and there’s just so many options, menus, loadout screens, mode selections and social features that you’ll easily be lost for a while.
Complementing the visual, audio design deserves special praise. I appreciate War Tapes, and for the masochists War Taps V.A.L., for making you feel like you’re in the centre of a war with all sounds being louder and echoing longer. If you want to play super strategically, you’ll be able to hear the precise direction of footsteps or gunfire with the standard and High Dynamic audio settings. There’s options for everyone and each shows off the craft of this immersive soundscape.
Before wrapping this review, it is worth reminding you all that my impressions come from a controlled pre-launch environment, with limited access to modes and scheduled play sessions. Much like Battlefield 2042, the performance of multiplayer and its various modes could look different when the game is fully live, particularly if servers aren’t running smoothly or maps are stress-tested under full player load. AI, map flow and even the tactical destruction may also shift after launch patches, meaning some of the experiences described here could change.
Battlefield 6 is a ferocious multiplayer shooter, even if it stumbles in places. The campaign struggles with inconsistent storytelling and the AI can be frustrating to say the least. The menu system isn’t intuitive, and I worry the servers will need support upon launch. Yet, I’m having a blast with the kinetic gunplay, tactical destruction, cinematic multiplayer, and sheer audiovisual spectacle. For fans of first-person shooters, it flashes glimpses of greatness, but at launch I fear this is a far cry from Battlefield at its best.
A copy of BATTLEFIELD 6 on PC and PlayStation 5 was provided to SIFTER for this review.
