Battlefield V was released on November 20, and as a long-time fan of the Battlefield series with well over 1000+ hours of playtime across all titles, it’s not that good. I’ve put about fifty hours into the game so far and this is what I have to say.

The game was originally supposed to released in late October, but was presumably delayed for a month to iron out glitches and give us a more stable release – what does it have to show for it? Not much honestly. The entire experience just feels like one game-breaking bug after the next.  Bugs like:

• Mini-map not working
• Health regeneration not working
• Gun spazzing out, stopping your ability to ADS
• Not being able to spawn while in-game  

That’s just a short look into the world of bugs that plagues this game, but bugs are far from the only thing creating a shallow, frustrating experience.

Weapon Balance – The weapon balance in this game is just not good, to put it bluntly. You have 20+ weapons to choose from, but only a couple feel worth using if you really want to compete. Dying to the same three guns 50% of the time gets old fast.

Graphics – At times the game just looks muddy and weird – sometimes textures take their sweet time loading in and the lighting is all kinds of messed up. Good luck aiming out of a window because you’ll face the unrelenting sun rays of heaven itself. Sometimes the game is drop dead gorgeous, but it’ll also sometimes have you saying, “What am I looking at?”

Maps – It’s not that necessarily that they’re bad, but they’re just painfully average. There’s really no magic to any of these maps and I can’t picture any of them being remembered too fondly down the line. Just an average set of maps you’ll get tired of very quickly

Setting – Despite being set in WWII, the game seems to try its best to make you feel like you’re not playing a WWII game. A solid ½ of the weapons are from during or before World War 1. Despite being a WWII game there’s only two factions at launch – Britain and Germany. No USSR? No USA? No Japan? It gets old, fast. Most of the maps are also inspired by fictional battles instead of ones that actually happened. Wacky customization options that would never be seen on the Battlefield during WWII don’t really help its case

Behind all of this a fun game craving to be just that – fun. When it actually works or doesn’t irritate you it’s fun. But I’d wait for the developers to patch it.