Recent reviews by Dec_Cetera

"BATTLEFIELD IS BACK" - Nah, this ain't it, chief...

After 162hrs of playtime, I feel I can finally write a worthwhile review.

At the end of the day, this WAS a swing back towards 3 and 4 but the tonal shift when season 1 dropped was jarring and quite a shock.

We went from: "here is game, here are gamemodes, go and play!" and "Are official servers a bit too laggy and too sweaty for you? No worries, here's full portal progression!"

We felt listened to, it was grounded, hardcore and refreshing. Yes the challenges were an absoloute grindfest but to the dev's credit, they fixed them. I started playing this on release and then couldn't stop.

THEN CAME SEASON 1

Me: *opens game, excited to see new content*
BF6: BUY SEASON 1! BY PACKS! BUY BF COINS! PLAY BR! BUY BATTLE PASS!

The menu became an absolute cesspit of ads, store pages and utter garbage. Then the real kicker, I saw that the British (Lancer Squad) skins were available to get for assault and engineer... to my horror, they are locked behind the dreaded Battle Royale challenges. Oh and portal XP was Thanos-snapped out of existence at the same time.

I don't want to and will not be playing another cut-and-paste waste of time a dev resources, at all. I am certain that I'm not alone in this.

Once again, I bought a game, got excited, got invested and the EA does EA things and pulls the rug out from under me and I'm left sat in a pile of advertisments, cosmetics and a Battle Royale. Which by the way is the only big map, and the destruction is far better on the BR too...

Some bullet points:
-Maps too small, even on "larger" (and i use that adjective loosely) maps you can lock onto enemy jets from spawn-spawn.
- TTK is way off
- Some weapons are a clear meta, some are lasers that do 20 damage and others a scattergun that does the same.
- BR (FREAKING FREE TO PLAY) clearly got more love than the base game (WHICH I PAID FOR!)

If something changes, I'll readdress and make this review positive. If not, then this will definitely be the last Battlefield game I ever buy. It was a nice 20 years I suppose...

If you were thinking about getting into this game for the BHD mode, don't here's my review from the DLC:

I was so unbelievably hyped for this, since the days of the Novalogic Game.

But this is just... a mess.

The AI are unreal, picking you off with RPGs halfway across the map. And there are LOTS of AI. The difficulty is absolutely sky-high. You can only matchmake with randoms, no friends invites (or at least that I could figure out). And don't even bother trying to SOLO the campaign, you'll run out of ammo with no way to restock before you get halfway through.

It launches a separate client with Hawk Ops running in the background, utterly TANKING the framerate.

I should have realised that this would be an unpolished mess in the intro video. some clips had subtitles, some had none and others? Inexplicably Chinese subtitles.

This was rushed out the door, no QC, no balancing and no polish. A damn shame, because this is the thing I was hyped for this game over, not the cut-and-paste hero shooter that the Multiplayer is. Speaking of which, I thought I'd grab the bundle of DF:BHD skins for MP, not at MORE THAN £25 I WONT.

I feel they rushed out the campaign in order to launch the cosmetics bundle for a quick buck. Damn shame, but back on the shelf with this one until they fix the god-awful implementation of the campaign...

I was so unbelievably hyped for this, since the days of the Novalogic Game.

But this is just... a mess.

The AI are unreal, picking you off with RPGs halfway across the map. And there are LOTS of AI. The difficulty is absolutely sky-high. You can only matchmake with randoms, no friends invites (or at least that I could figure out). And don't even bother trying to SOLO the campaign, you'll run out of ammo with no way to restock before you get halfway through.

It launches a separate client with Hawk Ops running in the background, utterly TANKING the framerate.

I should have realised that this would be an unpolished mess in the intro video. some clips had subtitles, some had none and others? Inexplicably Chinese subtitles.

This was rushed out the door, no QC, no balancing and no polish. A damn shame, because this is the thing I was hyped for this game over, not the cut-and-paste hero shooter that the Multiplayer is. Speaking of which, I thought I'd grab the bundle of DF:BHD skins for MP, not at MORE THAN £25 I WONT.

I feel they rushed out the campaign in order to launch the cosmetics bundle for a quick buck. Damn shame, but back on the shelf with this one until they fix the god-awful implementation of the campaign...

Came back to this after a hiatus of about a year and...

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO MY BOY!

the map vote, means its ALWAYS desert maps, USA v RUS, without fail.

And the new weapon sway? unusable. I had a shootout in my last game, we were less than 25m from each other. We actually both ran out of ammo and decided to run away.

Also, in games of past I had a cool 50+ fps even with the recreation of Armageddon taking place, but now, one barrage and my game is a slideshow...

OWI, what did you do!?

7 YEARS of development and this... This is what they have to show for it?

By far one of the worst, most un-optimised, empty and buggy messes I've played... And I've only played it for 20 minutes!

I normally don't review games this early in their development but I have to stand up for the Dev team on this one.

THE. DLC. IS. OPTIONAL.

It costs the same as a medium McDonald's meal (not one of the good ones either!)

This game has incredible potential. Those that have review bombed over paid DLC, kindly put your review where it belongs, up your...

At the end of the day, if you fancy some extra units and some cosmetic variety to your forces, then like me, get the DLC.

It supports the devs for less than a happy meal.

This game has come on leaps and bounds in the >30hrs I've been playing it. It's well worth trying out.

UPDATE NOV 2024

Tried to get back into this once more now that the UK Region pack released. but I can't even download it. Plus, I just discovered that the mods install onto your C: drive, with no ability to change the location without some CMD.exe trickery... Just read the room and return to the Steam Workshop...

UPDATED since Economy 2.0

Now, I don't know if I'm just an idiot, or whether there is a serious issue, but since the Economy 2.0 update, I can't get past 6k pop before I have a total financial collapse and lose everything. On my most recent playthrough, I thought I had it all balanced nicely. That was until at some point, my energy demand skyrocketed (energy budget was set to around 70% at the time) and when I increased it to 150%, I STILL was not producing enough. This resulted in all my pop leaving and game over.

I tried to offset the budget by producing loads of my own goods for export via road. I HAVE NOT SEEN ONE TRUCK EXPORT NATURAL RESOURCES IN 3 PLAYTHROUGHS SINCE ECONOMY 2.0!

So unbelievably broken, again.


Original Review:

I've tried and tried and tried to enjoy this game. But after having hundreds of hours in CS1 I cant get more than an hour or 2 into CS2 before I go "I'm not actually having fun here." No mods, Economy Broken, import/export broken, zoning broken, traffic AI broken, zone demand broken... I just cant. Released a broken and unfinished mess for £40... This one is now uninstalled and back on the shelf. My pockets £40 lighter. What a rip off..

Update:

So almost 1 year since release and there is so little content that I cannot play for more than 30 minutes at a time. Still no editor, AI still can't drive, UI is clunky and clearly designed for console first, with PC being an afterthought.

Let me put it this way: with the state of the game, if ARMA 4 releases on console, I will NOT be buying it. I want an upgrade to A3, not watered down console crap. This game wipes a stain on an incredible franchise.


**I WILL UPDATE THIS REVIEW IF MY OPINION CHANGES***

I'll keep this short and sweet. Playing this didn't feel like ARMA at all. Felt like DAYZ meets SQUAD with a very casual feel. My main gripe is the fact that it feels watered down and lacks the complexity seen in the ARMA franchise. I DO NOT want ARMA to change it's game to suit Console audiences.

Also, unplug your HOTAS (if you have one) it conflicts with the keyboard controls as it binds as "GAMEPAD" (which you cant change the bindings for, another reason for ARMA needs to stay a PC exclusive)

Pros: Beautiful graphics, good gunplay, better animations, incredible lighting

Cons: Very little to do, multiplayer connection issues, watered down experience, HOTAS conflicts

I'm aware it's early access and a lot may change.

Absolutely loved TF1 but just can't recommend this in its current state. Poor performance and regular CTDs. Even had a black screen of death a couple of times. Unacceptable stability and performance on a high powered system.

My specs:
R5 2600x
16gb ddr4 3200mhz
RTX 2070

IN SHORT, GREAT CONCEPT, POOR EXECUTION

So, having wanted to really like this game, I just can't.
Pros
-It looks great
-It runs really well
-it has a metric tonne of potential

Cons:
-The player base are all KOS, regardless of who you are
-The crafting system is janky at best
-The base building makes little to no sense and takes far too long
-You sometimes respawn in the middle of the ocean and have to wait 5 minutes to "suicide" because there is no drowning mechanic. (I was underwater the full 5 minutes waiting to drown and didn't)
-The looting is literally god-awful

As much as I really wanted to love this game, I just don't, the playerbase are terrible and the game is so far from streamlined it's unreal.