There’s been a ton of hype in the lead-up to Battlefield 6‘s first playable experience, ever since the game was first revealed towards the end of July.
Early access to the game began on Thursday last week (7 August) for players who had previously signed up for Battlefield Labs, EA Play Pro subscribers, and players who watched at least 30 minutes of one of the partnered streamers during the multiplayer reveal.
Following that, the game went into its first open beta phase, allowing all and sundry to jump into the action, which lasted until 10h00 this morning. Three guesses as to what we were doing all weekend.
Fortunately, if you didn’t get the chance to play this weekend, you won’t have to wait too long before the next early access period starts. But is it worth your time?
The TL;DR of it all is yes, absolutely. Whether you’re a die-hard Battlefield fan or experiencing the franchise for the first time, there’s a lot of fun to be had from this action-packed, destruction-heavy first-person shooter.
Making Battlefield great again
The biggest difference between Battlefield 6 and the previous title in the series, Battlefield 2042, is the renewed focus on what made BF games stand out: a focus on squad-based gameplay with well-defined class-based roles, and the ability to absolutely demolish just about everything on the map.
BF2042 had elements of those things, but it tried to be something new by initially removing classes altogether in favour of a hero-based system where each character, or ‘specialist’, had a set of unique skills and gadgets. This move alienated a lot of fans, and while the game ended up adding classes back before long, the damage was done. If you ever played Battlefield 3 or 4, BF6 will feel cosy and familiar.
The new ‘Kinesthetic Combat System’ introduced in BF6 adds fluidity to movement while still making your character feel grounded. Landing on solid ground after jumping out of a third-floor window might make you wince if you don’t hit ‘c’ in time to roll and mitigate some damage.
Then there’s sprint-diving, crouch-sprinting, and sprint-sliding for trying to get out of the way in a hurry. See a downed friendly? Now you can drag them to cover before reviving, so you don’t end up feeding the enemy sniper two free tickets.
The available guns, maps, and game modes were limited during this early access period, something worth keeping in mind. But there’s still enough on offer for you to make an informed purchasing decision when the full game releases on 10 October.
The first open beta weekend included the franchise staple Conquest game mode, along with Breakthrough, Domination, and King of the Hill. The second weekend will add Rush, Squad deathmatch, “and more” to the mix.
There are four playable maps: Iberian Offensive, Liberation Peak, and Siege of Cairo were initially available, and Empire State will be added come Thursday. While the map pool is small, each map is made up of ‘combat zones’, “hand-crafted configurations within the maps that maximize quality under a variety of modes”. So a large map like Iberian Offensive won’t feel that big if you’re playing a game mode with a tighter focus.
The weapon customisation system has been overhauled. You’ve got 100 points to spend on attachments, with different things given different weightings based on how much they add to a weapon. This will encourage the creation of personalised loadouts based on the game mode or map you’re playing, or even what the rest of your squad is packing.
System and server stability
We’re happy to report that we had a mostly bug-free experience during our limited playtime. There was only one instance where we started a game without the UI elements, like the map, compass, and ammo count loading. But that was remedied as soon as we spawned back in after dying.
We’ve heard of others experiencing bugs, the worst of which was the game failing to run at all. This is an open beta after all, so some bugs are to be expected. If you run into any of them, it’s probably worth checking out this list of known issues to see if your problem has a solution yet. Hopefully, those issues can be resolved before the launch in October.
While Battlefield 6‘s system requirements should keep it within reach of a lot of players, even if they haven’t upgraded their PCs in a few years, it’s worth checking the recommended specs if you’re playing on PC. Our test rig is made up of an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen 3 SSD, and the AMD RX 5700 XT 8GB GPU.
When we loaded up the game for the first time, we didn’t touch the recommended settings, and it turns out we didn’t even need to. At 1440p and with FSR enabled, we managed a stable 60-70fps regardless of the map or game mode, just like the recommended specs said. That doesn’t happen with every game launch these days (we’re looking at you, Black Myth: Wukong).
As for server performance and stability, we had even fewer issues. Loading in for the first time showed us a splash screen that said we were only 240,068 in the queue. Just as we were about to get up to do something else, that number dropped to 88,000. The longest we ever waited in the queue was a little under ten minutes on Saturday evening. Considering that was when the game reached its peak concurrent Steam player count of 521,079, that’s not too bad.
There’s a chance that it’ll worsen when the second open beta weekend rolls around, with more people able to join from the get-go. But it’s not a problem we foresee carrying over after the official launch.
Battlefield 6 open beta initial verdict
We were pleasantly surprised with how much fun we had during the first open beta weekend for Battlefield 6. A lot of the elements we loved in earlier titles have returned with a bit of modern polish.
Like with the older games, much of your enjoyment comes from how you choose to use the game’s systems and mechanics. There’s a heavy focus on squad-based gameplay, but if you’re more of a lone wolf, that’s still a viable playstyle.
Even as an open beta release, the game runs relatively well on a modest five-year-old PC, and bugs of any variety were few and far between (at least for us).
If you didn’t get the chance to try it out during the first open beta weekend, we highly recommend you jump in for the second. It starts at 10h00 this Thursday, 14 August and runs until 10h00 on Monday, 18 August. If you were burned by the hype of BF2042, this is a great chance to test the waters before dropping R1,200 on the full game.
