Battlefield 6 is coming in hot for its October 10th release. Ahead of its release, there are two Betas you can play. The first one took place this past weekend, and I dove in during its early access. We also played it for our community game night live Friday night and had a blast. I got roughly over 10 hours in over the weekend, so I am here to give my first impressions.

Check out the Battlefield 6 achievement/trophy list and get ready for war!

The original 4 class system is back! Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon. They all have shared weapons, so the sky is the limit when it comes to how you approach the game. There is a mode called closed weapon conquest that features a rule where each class is locked to their specialist weapons.

Personally, I loved the fact that guns were not locked to specific classes. I ran Recon with an assault rifle in domination mode to unlock a challenge of spotting 300 enemies. It was easier as Recon since they auto tag enemies. But aside from making challenges easier, I love running as a medic to aid my teammates. I’ve always hated that kept me from specific weapons. But if I ever miss the classic setup, I can simply jump back in to Closed Weapon Conquest for a classic Battlefield experience. It certainly offers more importance as to who is running in what class.

As for the game modes available in the Beta, there was breakthrough, conquest, closed weapon conquest, domination, and king of the hill. I played a good bit of each and they all offer quite a different experience.

Conquest is a step up from Battlefield 5 and 2042. The map design is far superior in every way. Granted there were only four maps available out of nine, but if the rest are like the four I played in, I will be a happy guy. In Battlefield 5 and 2042, the map designs were so flat and open that it made snipers/recon being the only beneficial class to play as. In this one however, the map design makes it friendlier to all class playstyles.

You can still spawn on squad mates who are not in combat and also on to captured zones. Not to mention vehicles as well. So nothing there has changed. It is still so much fun to spawn in a helicopter and parachute down to a good sniping location. To add to that fun, there is a new mechanic where you can grab on to the back of a tank as it rolls out from spawn. This is really helpful since you will have a lot of ground to cover when the game first starts.

A big change I noticed is how fast you can choose to respawn. When downed you can press A/X and immediately be back to the spawn scene. In previous games you would have to wait so long to bleed out. Even with speeding up the process, it wasn’t as fast as this. But I didn’t find myself consistently speeding to respawn. The new mechanic where you can drag a downed teammate and revive them as you move to cover makes helping your squad so much easier, that people are more inclined to help you. Most game modes rely on your team not running out of lives, so saving is just as important as getting a kill.

I won’t deep dive in to each class, as that will be something to explore more in a full review of the game. But I will go in depth in to the Recon class so you know what you can get a feel for what kind of experience is in store for you in using the different classes.

Battlefield has once again proven to be one of the most fun ways to snipe in a game. While the maps are more friendly to every class, snipers are still very beneficial. When choosing a sniping spot, you need to take in to consideration that the glare from your sniper is insanely easy to spot. Not only that but the surrounding area is fully destructible and can collapse on you, so you could lose cover or even die from your cover. Dropping a remote spawn point in a good location of where you set up camp is also important.

The bullet drop from the sniper is something you will need to calculate as you shoot your sniper rifle. So many small things lend itself to such a immersive experience when you play as recon.

Weapons

Weapons can be fully customized when spawning in. Even when you have already spawned in, you have an extra moment to change your class and loadout. Each weapon will have 100 points that can be spent across attachments. Spend 15 points on a scope, that’s 15 less points that can be spent on a better grip for your gun. 100 points was more than enough however to fully kit out any gun. Most importantly, my gun kits/preferences were saved across all loadouts. So no need to constantly go in and customize the same gun for each individual class.

Destruction

Destruction is one of the biggest features in Battlefield and it lends largely to what makes the franchise so special. While some matches don’t shove it in your face, you may not notice just how good it is off the bat.

Some maps are so close quartered with so many buildings that it doesn’t feel as needed, since there will just be another wall behind the one you took down. But by the end of the match, you could be battling in the ruins of what you once felt was overly populated by buildings.

Destruction is campers worst nightmare. If you find a good spot, don’t expect to be there long as the entire building or its surroundings can simply turn to ash.

Aside from its tactical importance, it aids to the overall vibe of the game. I ran through the streets to capture an objective and the smoke and destruction of the buildings around me just added to such immersive chaos that no other shooter can compare to.

Performance

While you would think that much on screen action would negatively effect the way your console runs, think again. I played on Xbox and experienced no issues when it came to frame rate drop. No weird bugs or visually glitches that un-immersed me from the graphical beauty that this game is.

What is wild, is that this is just a Beta. This is the part of the story where problems happen and get fixed before release. After two sessions leading in to the full release, I expect the base game will be golden.

With that said, I feel the main tweaks that need to take place is gun balancing. There are some weapons that simply don’t do the damage they are suppose to for its degree. For example, the EMR should serve as a middle-long ranged weapon, but its damage is so low that there is no point in using that over an assault rifle. I legitimately coped without a DMR by switching my assault rifle to single shot. I then slapped a scope on there to make up for the lack of a good DMR. Don’t get me started on how over powered shotguns are.

Aside from some minor tweaking, Battlefield 6 is lined up for a far smoother launch than Battlefield 2042. Most importantly, it has left me with the feeling of the game is the spiritual successor to Battlefield Bad Company 2 that I have waited for.

The next Open Beta is scheduled to take place on Thursday, August 14th – Monday, August 18th. Check it out for yourself!

Battlefield 6 will release on October 10th, 2025 on Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 5, and PC.