Battlefield 1 has finally arrived, following lots of hype and speculation. I myself wondered how World War 1 would fit as a setting for a series that has spent nearly ten years in a modern setting. I pre-ordered the game and played it since day one and have sunk many hours into it. I now feel ready to give my review on Battlefield 1.

Let’s start with the single player campaign. The Battlefield series has never been known for having stellar campaigns, but I myself have truly enjoyed most of them. In fact, the only campaign I truly found terrible was Battlefield 4’s campaign. Battlefield 1 has taken a new approach to storytelling by offering six different vignettes following different parts of the war instead of a single epic campaign. These campaigns aren’t meant to show Rambo tier special ops soldiers, but meant to show normal people dragged into the fighting as World War One did. I have played through a good portion of the vignettes and they succeed in flying colors. There is strong character development and fantastic voice acting across the board. My only gripe is that each character’s story seems to end right when they become interesting, but this is a minor issue compared to what else the campaigns offer.

Onto the main event, the multiplayer. The battlefield franchise has been known for large-scale warfare with more realism than its competitors. This entry is true to its namesake in every way. Being in World War One, the developers had a challenge with managing fun and historical accuracy. Everything is era correct from a timeline perspective, but it doesn’t always seem to fit.

Many of the weapons are fully-automatic, not something you would think of when thinking of World War One. I understand, however, why the developers took this route. If there were only semi-automatic and bolt-action rifles, the game would get stale for the majority of players very quickly. The developers needed to retain the player base. The weapons function very well overall with only a few overpowered weapons. The maps for the most part are very well made. On some maps you will find issues of clustering players, but it’s not that big of a problem. On a positive note this is the first battlefield title since the Bad Company series that I feel has true vehicle balance. The vehicles are tough to take down and hit hard, but are slow and have limited fields of view, making them approachable. The specialty vehicles, behemoths, are a completely different animal. These vehicles, specifically the zeppelin, need some major tweaking. Their weapons deal tons of damage and can easily turn a game around for a losing team. The first tweak that I feel needs to be made before anything else is the severity of the loss the losing team is apt to call it in. Right now the score difference sits somewhere at 75 deaths. If I’m playing in a good squad we can easily recover from that loss without the vehicles. The deployment needs to be moved to somewhere between 200-300 deaths.

The game modes are fun and each has its fair share of interest, but they really aren’t anything you can’t find in other games. That being said, the Operations mode is exempt from that statement. Battlefield has always been focused on large-scale warfare and Operations takes this to the next level. There are two teams, attackers and defenders. Attackers have a limited number of re-spawns to take over 2 points on a map. Succeed, and their respawns are refilled and the defenders are pushed into a different segment of the map. Attackers have to take all 5 map portions to win the game. Defenders are tasked with keeping the attackers at bay by using gun emplacements scattered across the map. The losing team will receive a behemoth to help them turn the tides of the battle. Depending on the map they can receive a warship, an armored artillery train, or a death star zeppelin. These games can easily take over an hour to complete but are well worth it. Overall the multiplayer is the most fun I’ve had with a battlefield game in a long time.

Now onto the game play and technical side of the game. First off, this game is gorgeous. This game is the prettiest game I have ever seen. Everything looks real, whether it be the mountains in the distance or the mud splattering onto the side of your gun everything looks beautiful, no matter what you are playing on. Also the game runs very well. On consoles the game keeps a sold 60 fps at all times, which is sadly a rarity. I was shocked at this fact since I was always plagued with fps drops in Battlefield 4. Obviously PC players will receive performance based on what they put into their computers. The in-game menu can cause some problems since it does become difficult to join on friends or navigate to different tabs. I feel that this problem will fade away as time progresses and people become more used to it. The player “UI” serves its purpose, but I feel it’s very plain and could use some flair. A large plus is that the game is stable. It’s not plagued by constant crashing or network outages like Battlefield 4 was at launch. There are bugs, but most of them aren’t serious. The only serious bug that I’ve come across is a damage bug. I’ve noticed that some shots deal more damage than others, such as a shotgun dealing 8 damage point blank and 32 damage at range. Hopefully these bugs are fixed as time progresses. DICE is very good at supporting their game after launch, so I’m not worried about these sticking around too long.

In closing, Battlefield One is a fantastic game for veterans and newcomers alike. This game is definitely different from the other entries in the game, but I think it’s for the better. This game offers something for every type of player and is a great entry point for those who have been too scared to play Battlefield in the past. This game is true to the franchise’s name, offering large-scale warfare in a way never done before.

Final Game Score: 9/10