I've always been a fan of war games of all types. Warhammer, civ, starcraft, call of duty, and battlefield being no exception.

To shed some background, battlefield bad company 2 is my favorite. It was my introduction to the title of battlefield and remains my favorite, battlefield 3 being a close second.

So, putting aside how this is basically a dlc for battlefield 1 (the same being true for battlefield 4 being dlc for battlefield 3) I'd like to give this game a fair review in its game play focus.

I personally think this is the worst entry in the franchise. I enjoyed the maps and play of battlefield 1 a lot more than I did here.

So, the primary focus will be on two modes: Operations and Breakthrough. Traditional warfare has attackers and defenders. Sometimes it's thrown in differently but almost every time there's a side defending their territory and a side trying to claim it.

Attackers are weighed in favor by default with lower respawn timers and vehicle advantages. This is supposed to be traded off by the fact that defenders can build fortifications and hunker up while attackers must storm out of cover.

The problem is the execution, specifically two factors, with one being by extension: Defender fortification fragility, and snipers. Fortifications from hence forth unless otherwise specified will refer to all defending structures and cover, including but not limited to the buildable ones.

Defending fortifications are incredibly fragile. Due to the fact that everyone respawns with a fresh stock of explosives and an overall fragility of the fortifications, they are gone almost instantly.

Now what happens when people localized to an area and have nearly no cover? They get surrounded and choked by snipers.

There are absolutely zero defenses in this game that are immune to snipers. Not one. This includes defenses that are supposed to stop the things from destroying your cover to keep the snipers from being so good.

Plane dropping bombs on your fortifications? Get in the AA gun and get headshot out of it from 100m. Your alternatives are basically nothing as MMG deal next to no damage even with the specialization.

Tank destroying your fortifications? Get in the AT emplacement and get headshot out of it from 100m. Your alternative is to be an assault class and do 30 damage with both of your shots, and then get headshot.

(Which by extension leaves vehicles poorly balanced because there's no reliable way to kill them other than hanging next to the buildable ammo stockpiles or have an overly large amount of assault classes but we will get into that later.)

Getting killed by snipers? Go sniper. And get headshot from 100m away.

This does not mean recons are overpowered. It means that they lack a counter other than itself.

Defense by nature in this system cannot be defensive. At every turn every factor that SHOULD be an advantage is nearly instantly nullified. All emplacements existed with bullet shields in ww2 but for some reason do not exist here.

Even then, you could compensate for the lack of bullet shield on, say, an anti air emplacement by allowing the sandbags placed to be high enough to protect yourself, after all the AA gun only needs to see the sky, but it's not there.

Defense now has lost all of its advantages. No cover, no emplacements, no bunkers. The attackers now have advantages that absolutely steamroll, and why you see over half of the attacking team as snipers.

Vehicles could fix this normally, on defense a tank is incredibly valuable. They aren't required to move and can be repaired much easier when playing passively instead of aggressively, functioning as an emplacement almost immune to infantry. They come with a wide variety of guns too, to deal with infantry, air, and vehicles alike.

So actually, just giving defense say, 3 tanks to attacks 1 would almost completely fix this. Defending infantry is less forced to run around since the tanks deal with rushing infantry and vehicles, and can hunker down and have more snipers.

This doesn't fix everything, map design is frankly awful. In every other entry, there were 2 major points and 1 minor point in each sector. With current map design, enemy spawn Is outside of defending territory, essentially cutting out the entire middle section and first major point, giving defenders far less opportunities to defend any given sector. Usually defense loses the first two points in the sector, but they put a significant dent in the attackers tickets.

So now we have defenders with no cover, emplacements, in a localized area, with less chances to defend the major point before the enemy gets here.

Vehicles are integral to strategic warfare and yet they are so rare in combat since the vehicle interaction system is so horrible. Emplacements are useless, spawned explosives do little damage and are far less easy to restock, and thus because of that vehicles rarely seen for either side.

I've had to convince myself to play conquest at this point since playing anything but that isn't fun for either team for me. Attackers I steamroll, and defenders I spawn and get headshot almost instantly.

There are a few bandaid fixes for this. Class limits, adding extra vehicles for defenders, increasing fortification health, and for the most part that would do a good chunk of rebalancing. But nothing changes the overall dynamic.

I want this game to be good. I like ww2. But it's just such a sad, rushed, neglected mess of gameplay. But this is just my opinion. Hopefully they learn from here and make the next games better.