The Chicago Dice love for Battlefield goes all the way back to 2002 and the release of Battlefield: 1942. We have played every one of the 12 mainline releases over the past 16 years and the latest entry – Battlefield V – might be the best one yet.

I don’t normally write about video games. But after two weeks of Battlefield V I feel compelled to share my thoughts on what is quickly becoming one of my favorite games. 

What I love

• Incentivized squad play – BFV does an incredible job of rewarding you for good squad play. In this game you earn points for capturing objectives and killing enemies. But you also earn points for healing and resupplying your teammates. Double those points if it’s a squad mate! To put this in perspective, you earn 100 points for a kill and 200 points for reviving a squadmate. Capture an objective with your squad and watch the points roll in. Add on the ability for any squadmate to revive any other squadmate, not just Medics, and you have yourself a reward system that keeps players playing together.
• Sound design – No surprise here. One feature that has been consistent in every BF game is the sound design. No studio captures the explosive orchestra of war better than DICE. Don’t get me wrong, the game is gorgeous, but it’s the sound that really pulls you in and never lets go.
• Spotting changes – A key tactic in previous BF games is spotting. Whenever you are engaging a target at range – spot. This will highlight the enemy on the map for your teammates and add a little red dot above them on the screen. It made team shooting much easier but the end result was players shooting at icons instead of enemies. Spotting still exists in BFV, but it is limited. Scouts can spot using binoculars and flares, and Supports can do it by suppressing enemies. It’s a fantastic improvement that forces you to look at your surroundings, instead of your mini-map.
• Assignments – I love a good quest and BFV has added dozens of them. Every weapon has a series of Proficiency and Mastery assignments that reward cosmetic customization options. It’s a fun system that rewards players for mastering a specific weapon.
• Customization – The ability to customize your player character in multiplayer games has come a long way. It was a huge deal in BF2 when they had the option between two different main weapons for your class. Well, that was a over decade ago and in BFV you can customize every aspect of your character, class and weapons. I’m talking about helmets, face-paint, sidearms, goggles, individual parts of your main weapon, pants, shirts, emblems, weapon upgrades, class upgrades, character model, melee weapons, the list goes on.

What I hate

• Bugs – It’s been two weeks since launch and there are a host of small, but annoying, issues. Nothing game breaking and nothing to stop me from playing but it’s frustrating when you try to revive a teammate only to watch their player model slowly fall through the bottom of the map. Or the fact that the most difficult opponent an MMG Support player will ever face is their own bipod. I know all these issues will be fixed. And I must come to terms withe the ‘ship now, patch later’ model that most development studios seem to follow.
• The menus – Simply put, the menus are terrible. The number of clicks required to get where you need to go is far too high. There is no ‘apply to all’ option for cosmetic and weapon changes. There is no way to select a new assignment once it’s unlocked if you are in-game (it can only be done via the main menu), you cannot change your weapon specializations in-game, if you change sub-class in-game it resets your selections. Yeah, the menus are a mess. 

The Verdict

Even with the issues I have, and those issues are really just some gripes, I adore Battlefield V and I cannot wait to see what future updates bring to the game. I’ve already played for almost 25 hours and that’s with only eight maps and two factions (Germans and British). There is so much potential and if the BFV post-launch content continues to roll out, the Chicago Dice crew will be playing this game for a long, long time.