Battlefield V is out on early access (*) since yesterday and I played it only a little bit due to the 10 hour trial I'm on. For my three short gaming sessions I just jumped into the first the best random conquest map which turned out to be the new Fjell 652 map all three times. It's an infantry + aircraft map high in the Norwegian mountains and actually pretty damn fun. And I thought before playing the game that this would probably be the more boring map of the 8 release maps available.
My first impressions are pretty great! I liked the game already in open beta (took some getting used to) but the gunplay feels more refined and polished compared to then. The popular YouTubers all seem to praise BFV for a return to form with much better gunplay than in BF1. I have to say, I really liked the BF1 gunplay as well, the somewhat random accuracy of those weapons felt in-line with how I would think WWI weapons would have been in real life as well. And killing people with the self-loading rifles from the medic class felt ooh-so-great! Guns play very different in BFV but I do like the system as well and I can see why more people like the BFV system. As a whole, the game does feel like a technological step up from BF1, the graphics are absolutely stunning and the sound is great as well. Since I'm on that 10 hour trial (more on that later) I have skipped the singleplayer war stories completely so I can't comment on that yet.
(*) launch and early access is absolutely confusing and you really have to be EA to come up with a system as silly as this one is:
* If you have EA Origin Access Premiere (PC only) you can start playing the full game from Nov 9th.
* If you have EA Origin Access Basis (PC only) or EA Access (XBox One) you can start playing the full game from Nov 9th but only for a period of 10 hours.
* If you have the Deluxe Edition (all platforms) you can start playing the full game from Nov 15th.
* Standard Edition (all platforms) starts Nov 20th.
So I did pre-order the deluxe edition and I have EA Access on my Xbox One which means I have a 10 hour trial period that started the 9th. From the 15th on my Deluxe edition kicks in and I have full access. So I'm spending those 10 hours between Friday 9th and Wednesday 14th to get the daily assignments done and do some multiplayer.
If you are even slightly interested in a WWII game or a Battlefield game, definitely check this game out. There are 5 remarks I would like to point out though:
1 - DICE wants to tell the "untold WWII stories" so don't expect the landing of D-day, the Americans, the Russians etc just yet. For now you have 2 factions (British and Germans) and 4 locations where the battles take place. 2 snow maps in Norway, 2 desert maps, 2 urban maps in Rotterdam and 2 open field maps in France. Post-launch a new vehicle combat focussed map in Belgium (!) will be released and later a map in Greece. Of course the community wants to see Americans, Russians, etc as well but no info on that yet. Judging from BF1, DICE is pretty good in adding a lot of post-launch content as well, in BF1 the French and Russian soldiers, weapons and locations were added later as well.
2 - No DLC, no season pass. All future content is free. But there will be cosmetic micro-transactions in the future.
3 - Many content missing from the game at launch. The final singleplayer War story will be for December, as well as a shooting range and coop play. The Firestorm Battle Royale mode will be for March 2019.
4 - Battlefield 1 had 4 DLCs over it's 2 years of content support which results in about 30 maps, 150 weapons and a ton of content. Comparing the launch version from BFV with that version of BF1 the game might feel a bit low on the number of maps and weapons. But that is stuff that needs to grow over time.
5 - As far as value for money goes, since BF1 is now extremely cheap (free on PC in November, currently part of XBox Games with Gold, full season pass given away for free multiple times) I have to say that BF1 still stands strong. I still like BF1 as well but BFV feels new and fresh and I'm curious to see how this "Tides of War" live service will work out, if done well and the more popular theatres of war are visited then this could become an amazing game for the 2-year journey it's probably going to take.
Here is the launch trailer and the post-launch info:
The problem now is dividing all my gaming time between these 4 fall 2018 blockbusters: FH4, AC:OD, RDR2 and BFV. First world problems I guess?![]()