Battlefield 6 Review (PC) – A Modern Classic In The Making

In recent years, the Battlefield franchise hasn’t exactly set the world on fire. However, Battlefield 6 (BF6) has seemingly recaptured the imagination of fans ever since its first reveal, with plenty of positive reactions to the beta tests. With many noticing the similarities being drawn between BF6 and some of the most beloved games in the series, most notably Battlefield 3 and 4. So, the biggest question going into this is: can Battlefield 6 be the reboot this franchise sorely needs? Will it live up to the legacy of its predecessors? Let’s discuss that and more in this, The Outerhaven’s Battlefield 6 review.

Game Name: Battlefield 6
Platform(s): PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC (reviewed)
Publisher(s): EA
Developer(s): Battlefield Studios
Release Date: October 10th, 2025

A Strong Return to Storytelling

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Battlefield 6, at least for players like myself, is the return of a traditional single-player campaign. Without diving into spoilers, Battlefield 6 delivers an action-packed affair with a surprising amount of gameplay variety and a decent variety of gameplay situations throughout.

In Battlefield 6, you play as a group of NATO operatives defending the US and other nations against a new paramilitary threat, Pax Armata. While the story itself is rather predictable, I think the main goal in BF6’s campaign was to introduce a new cast of characters you’ll come to care about. In that regard, Battlefield 6 achieves its goal. For me, Gecko is my favorite character — she’s just a badass — but I came to love them all through this bombastic, summer blockbuster-style campaign.

Through a combination of different gameplay scenarios, action set pieces, and high-quality pre-rendered cinematic cutscenes, Battlefield 6 delivers the most memorable campaign in the franchise in over a decade. The only small negative is just how short it was — roughly six hours to complete on the default medium difficulty (and that included a couple of deaths). If you’re only aiming to play Battlefield 6 for the campaign, it’s probably worth waiting for a sale based on its short duration.

Smooth As A Knife Through Butter

In terms of gameplay, Battlefield 6 is doing everything right. The return of the traditional class-based system impacts both the single-player campaign and online multiplayer. In the campaign, for example, you can use the left bumper on an Xbox controller to give your squadmates commands, and each of them fulfills a specific role. Lopez will drop you ammo when needed, Gecko can survey the area for enemies, and more. Your team will even revive you when you go down — just keep in mind that you might need to revive them sometimes as well. Thankfully, reviving is better than ever thanks to the new drag and revive mechanic in Battlefield 6. This mechanic allows you to move your wounded squadmates into cover before reviving them, which helps avoid getting downed yourself.

The biggest improvement to gameplay across all modes is the increased mobility and how that impacts your tactical options. Not only with the drag and revive system but also with peeking and leaning around corners and over cover with ease. Just stand near a corner or duck behind cover and a white arrow will appear. If you press the left trigger to aim down sights, you will lean or peek in the direction the arrow is pointing. It really couldn’t be simpler. Being able to peek and lean makes cover-based combat more important and engaging than ever before in the Battlefield franchise.

However, this isn’t the only improvement. Movement feels smoother and more responsive, allowing for quicker direction changes and cleaner obstacle traversal.

You Can’t Have A Battle Without Guns

While gunplay remains largely as you’d expect, the way the weapons feel is vastly improved. Every weapon has its own unique feel, created by a combination of great animations and best-in-class audio design. You hear the weight behind the bullets being fired, providing a clear indication when they hit their mark, and can tell exactly how long a reload will take just from the sound — without looking at the screen.

Assault rifles, for example, feel fast yet punchy, but they take a little longer to reload than an SMG, which by contrast feels lighter in movement and faster to adjust aim but doesn’t hit nearly as hard. LMGs are bulky and will slow you down even when aiming, but they hit with a force that feels unstoppable. Sniper rifles, which aren’t as slow in movement compared to light machine guns, but hit harder than any other weapon. You can hear a shot coming at you before it connects, and the sound of it leaving the chamber and using the bolt to load the next shot never gets old.

There are other weapons such as shotguns, handguns, RPGs, and more — all of which have their own unique gameplay feel, backed up by the animations and sound design that complete the package.

I can honestly say every weapon I’ve used so far feels incredible, and more importantly, they all seem viable in a variety of situations. When I can tell what gun you’re using just by the sound of the shots, you know the team has done a great job.

Multiplayer Feels Fantastic

All of these gameplay improvements translate to multiplayer, where they are further enhanced by the class system and more. For example, when it comes to traversing maps, you can now hitch a ride — allowing you to hop on the side of a vehicle when all the seats are full to get to your next objective more quickly. Another neat bit of traversal, which actually has tactical and gameplay implications, is the assault ladder, which you can use to breach windows and cross gaps.

This is just one of a few improvements that make Battlefield 6’s multiplayer really shine. I mentioned earlier the return of the class system — that’s right: Assault, Engineer, Support, and Recon are back and better than ever. If you’ve played the Battlefield series for a long time, you’ll be well aware of what these classes do and how important each role is. However, if you’re newer to the franchise, I’ve put together some information about each class below. I don’t share all the details, as part of the fun is figuring out what each class can do.

• Assault: Excels at run-and-gun warfare, especially in close to mid-range battles. If equipped with an assault rifle, this class benefits from a faster sprint-to-fire time. You also get access to an adrenaline injector, which allows you to sprint faster for a period of time and mitigates the effects of a stun grenade.
• Engineer: When equipped with a submachine gun, you’ll benefit from improved hip-fire accuracy, allowing you to aim down sights less often — saving time in the heat of battle. The main role of an engineer is to repair your team’s vehicles and prevent them from being stolen by the enemy, using a handy repair tool.
• Support: Ideal for LMG lovers. Using an LMG with this class won’t incur a sprint speed penalty, and you’ll also get a boost to your aim-down-sight speed. Support can do multiple things, but its primary role is to keep squadmates stocked with ammo and provide healing when necessary. You can drop ammo boxes, or your squad can interact with you to grab ammo and replenish health. If you’re a team player, this is probably the class for you.
• Recon: Perhaps the most beloved class in Battlefield history. When playing as Recon, everything revolves around sniping. With a sniper rifle in hand, you’ll have less weapon sway, the ability to hold your breath longer, and more. Another key part of your role as Recon lies in the name — you can spot enemies, marking them for other players, and even call in a UAV.

Each class also has two training paths that impact and change the abilities available to them.

The reintroduction of these classes in Battlefield 6 really makes the multiplayer a joy to play. However, as we all know, any multiplayer mode is only as good as the content it offers — and I’m pleased to say Battlefield 6 succeeds in this area as well. It’s packed full of maps and modes at launch, with more on the way in Season 1 in the coming weeks and months.

Unfortunately, I only got a chance to play a small amount of BF6 during the review period, and some of this time included bots due to limited player numbers in this pre-release phase. That being said, I genuinely love every map and mode I’ve tried — from all-out warfare and conquest to close-quarters team deathmatch and more. If you’re a multiplayer first-person shooter fan, Battlefield 6 has a mode for you.

When it comes to the maps, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of locations on offer and how they scale these locales with the size of the mode you’re playing. What impressed me most was the almost perfect balancing of every map I played, accommodating many different styles of gameplay and tactics. At launch, there should be nine maps available, with more coming in the future.

What About Progression

Progression in Battlefield 6’s multiplayer is simple yet deep. You have a character level, which increases as you earn XP through completing objectives, getting kills, and conquering in-game challenges. Increasing this level unlocks new tools and weapons, but improving these weapons requires higher proficiency with any given gun. The more you use a weapon successfully, the more proficient you become with it. Gaining proficiency levels unlocks a variety of attachments you can equip to improve the weapon as you see fit. Just keep in mind that each attachment uses a certain number of points, and weapons have a limit. So, you might not be able to equip every attachment you’d ideally want to use, meaning you’ll have to make some tough choices.

You might be wondering how much of a grind leveling up is, and the truth is that it does have a simple answer. In part, it comes down to your own personal ability, and also because I can only speak about early game progression.

What I’ve found is that weapon mastery can take some time, especially if you’re switching between classes and weapons throughout a match. However, character levels used to unlock new weapons progress much faster, at least in the early stages. For example, I’m currently level 6, and to reach level 7, I need to earn a total of 30,000 experience. This might sound like a lot, but because your XP earned is essentially tied to your score in every match you play, gaining XP is relatively easy. So many actions score points, and all of these help build your character level. Even if you don’t get many kills, you can rack up points just by capturing objectives, healing allies, and so on.

I’ve been earning around 10,000 character XP per game, and that’s without completing challenges, which give you bonus XP on top. Sure, the weapon mastery system could maybe be a little faster, but overall, the progress feels like it’s moving at a nice, steady pace. Of course, as more people get their hands on the game, this could all change since it’s tied to player skill. I’m not a pro first-person shooter player by any means. I probably more accurately represent the average player, so if you’re average at these games, I’d expect you to have a medium rate of progression.

Battlefield 6 Looks Good, But Sounds Incredible

The Battlefield series has always been known for high-class presentation across the board, and Battlefield 6 is no different.

Visually, it may lack some modern ray-tracing features, but it still looks fantastic. Explosions and building destruction are real highlights. In truth, it’s the audio that truly takes things above and beyond. Both the game’s reimagining of iconic themes for the score and, more importantly, the sound design stand out.

When playing with my Logitech G A50X headset, it felt like I was actually in these battles — bullets whizzing past my head, explosions giving me that tinnitus-like sensation you’d expect, and more. Battlefield 6 has the best audio design I’ve heard yet in a first-person shooter.

Battlefield 6 is a Well-Oiled Machine

Battlefield 6 is one of the most impressively optimized PC ports I’ve played this year. In terms of technical issues, I didn’t encounter a single problem… almost. I did have two crashes when tabbing out of the game during recording, but switching to borderless mode seemed to fix this. So overall, when it comes to performance, I’ve been shocked by how scalable and well-optimized it appears to be.

Admittedly, I have a very high-end PC at my disposal (specs listed below), but having tested this game at both 4K and 1440p resolutions on the highest available settings for each visual aspect, I’m confident that many players should have a great experience — especially if your setup meets or exceeds the recommended settings. You can see my test results below:

All tests were completed using the game’s highest available settings with no frame generation.

• 4K Native, highest available settings with DLAA over TAA for anti-aliasing: 80 to 110 fps in gameplay
• Enabling DLSS Quality at 4K increases this to between 140 and 165 fps in gameplay
• 1440p Native: 144 to 165 average fps in gameplay
• 1440p DLSS Quality: 210 to 225 fps in gameplay. The engine seems to cap out at 300 fps in cutscenes here (none of the other tested resolutions and settings hit this cap)

My PC Specs: AMD 9950X3D, RTX 5090 Founders Edition, and 96GB of DDR5 6000MHz Corsair RAM.

While I don’t have the ability to test different hardware configurations, the fact that all these tests were completed with settings maxed out bodes well for Battlefield 6’s performance across a wide range of machines and hardware configurations.

A WORD OF WARNING FOR PC PLAYERS

Much like EA Sports FC on PC, Battlefield 6 requires that your PC has Secure Boot enabled in Windows 11 to run. If you do not have TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot working on your system (You can check by pressing Windows+R, typing in ‘msinfo32’, and pressing Enter. You will find it in the system information), then the game WILL NOT RUN. You will need to make sure that the following settings are enabled via your motherboard BIOS settings

1. Your boot type is UEFI, not Legacy or UEFI+Legacy
2. CSM is turned off
3. Your OS hard drive is formatted as GPT, not MBR (Master Boot Record)
4. Your OS hard drive does NOT contain a recovery partition
5. Secure Boot has been enabled in ‘Standard’ mode via your motherboard BIOS settings

While you must have many of these steps completed to run Windows 11, depending on how you installed or updated Windows 11, Secure Boot may not be enabled by default. If you haven’t completed these steps, you will need to do so. Most of this can be handled by Googling your motherboard manufacturer and following their guides, or EA does have a tutorial on their website… Otherwise, buy Battlefield 6 on console so you will not have to worry about these things. Windows 10 users will probably be out of luck.

Battlefield 6 Review Verdict – A Triumphant Return to Form

Battlefield 6 is everything I could have hoped for and more, signaling a real return to form for this iconic franchise. Bringing back the class system was a stroke of genius, supported by the smoothest movement and gunplay in the series’ history. Not to mention excellent PC performance and scalability, all while maintaining the fantastic presentation the series is known for.

The only downside is a shorter single-player campaign than I would have liked, but this is more than made up for by the plethora of options in multiplayer. If you’re here just for the single-player, then it’s probably worth waiting. But if you want the complete package, Battlefield 6 really does deliver. In that regard, it’s mission accomplished — and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for Battlefield.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Battlefield 6 was provided to us for review purposes by EA. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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