"Battlefield 6" played: Brought back to life

Philipp Rüegg

31-7-2025

Translation: machine translated

"Battlefield 6" wants to win back disappointed fans with a multiplayer mode full of destruction and a traditional class system. It might even work.

For the first time in over ten years, «Battlefield» is set in the present day. After detours into the two world wars and the future, Dice is once again taking a classic approach.

The first trailer is clearly inspired by the legendary campaign from «Battlefield 3» with epic tank battles and aeroplane pirouettes. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to try it out at the play event in Berlin. Instead, I was able to fight my way through several maps and modes in multiplayer. After around four hours, I am cautiously optimistic that «Battlefield 6» could grow to its former greatness.

The classes are back

I am a «Battlefield» fan of the first hour. The mass battles in «1942» with huge maps and 64 players who were fighting with guns, vehicles and turrets were simply fascinating. A lot has happened since then. Depending on how you count, 15 instalments have already been released. From free-to-play spin-offs to console-exclusive versions and futuristic scenarios with combat robots. Just like the inconsistent naming, the quality varied enormously.

«Battlefield 6» wants to return to old strengths and is strongly orientated towards the third and fourth parts. «The players and we ourselves like them best», says Nicola Grelck, head developer at Dice. Battlefield 3 also enjoys the highest reputation among the Digitec community.

Dice has experimented a lot since then, especially with classes. These were greatly softened in «Battlefield 2042». Part six returns to the classic four-class system: Attacker, Recon, Supporter and Pioneer. They are once again noticeably different in terms of gameplay. The option for all classes to use all weapons has been retained. However, this option can be deactivated. Each class also has a handful of weapons that give them certain bonuses.

In addition, there are individual special abilities such as faster resurrection, less explosion damage or automatic enemy marking. This allows me to additionally specialise classes.

The standard class is the attacker - the offence specialist. I can use it to inject myself in the leg. I'm faster, take less damage and shoot more steadily. He also has a ladder, but it wasn't available at the test event. Overall, he plays the most linear.

As a provider, I heal, distribute ammunition to my comrades and am equipped with a heavy machine gun as standard. My aim is slower with this, but once I open fire, the enemies drop like flies. Especially if I set up my steel wall beforehand and rest my rifle on it. As a fan of turrets, this really appeals to me.

However, the primary role of the supply officer is to revive or heal his comrades. Thanks to the defibrillator, he can do this most quickly. I think it's great that I can now also pull injured team members out of the danger zone when resuscitating them. This means it's less likely to turn into a kamikaze mission.

The pioneer, on the other hand, relies on mines and bazookas. He is the only one who can repair vehicles. My favourite combination is driving a tank and doing the maintenance myself. And if I spot someone on foot behind a wall, I pull out my big gun and bang: no more hiding.

The scout is the sniper class. It has various gadgets such as drones, C4, mobile spawn points and a laser aiming system for particularly powerful missile launchers. I haven't been able to try out much of it yet. I primarily focussed on shooting new air holes in the heads of others. That was a lot of fun with the existing sniper rifles.

Mobility and destruction

Of course, there are also mobile destruction machines such as jets, air defence or combat helicopters - as usual, I drove the latter onto a rock face within seconds. Flying things are not my strong point.

As always, my highlight is the tank. It feels pleasantly heavy and massive. Unfortunately, I only made it into the Cockpit once, but the joyride was fantastic. I do attract enemy engineers with their armoured fists like flies. But it makes a marvellous noise when my trigger finger is faster than theirs.

Now I can even hang on to the outside of tanks for a free lift. The soldiers have also become more mobile in other ways. I can dash through windows and climb over most walls. That's great when I can sneak up on someone. It's less nice when someone is lying in wait for me with a weapon at the ready. The latter has definitely happened more often.

«Destruction is a trademark of Battlefield», says Stefan Wittelsbürger, one of the game's producers during the event. It was missing in the last part. All the better it comes into its own in «Battlefield 6». After its complete absence in the last instalment, it's a balm for destruction-mad people like me.

Buildings can be beautifully blown up with tanks, C4 or stationary guns. Unfortunately, as always, only rarely completely. If an entire squad is camped behind a house entrance, I can be sure that this very corner is bombproof. My battlefield immersion suffers somewhat.

Many maps and modes

There are a total of nine maps at launch. These include Firestorm from Part 3, which I was unfortunately only able to marvel at in the trailer and not play. However, there are interesting alternatives with Cairo, Brooklyn, Iberian Peninsula and Tajikistan.

«Liberation Peak», which should be located in the aforementioned Tajikistan, is a hilly, medium-sized map with vehicles. As with all maps, the size varies depending on the mode. In the mode «Conquest», it rarely takes long before I get an enemy in front of the shotgun. Nevertheless, it offers enough space to flank enemies or ambush them.

«Empire State» is perfect for intense deathmatch battles with its narrow high-rise canyons and a huge construction site that has always been hotly contested due to its strategic position. There is now also a squad deathmatch mode.

«Iberian Offensive» is a house battle map. Here I can be shot at any time and from any direction. Conversely, I can sneak up on unsuspecting enemies and kill them from ambush.

Of the eight game modes, which are by and large familiar, the new «Escalation» mode would have interested me the most. Here, the playing field continuously shrinks if a team is able to hold a flag for a longer period of time. This makes the matches more and more intense.

«Portal» will also be available again. Here I could create my own maps with my own rules and combine content from different «Battlefield» parts. This was already available in the last part. There are now even more tools, AI scripts and setting options so that creative minds can create crazy maps. Experience points can now also be collected with «Portal». The ambitious plans to attract over 100 million players are probably due in no small part to this mode.

If I add the campaign to this, «Battlefield 6» definitely promises a lot. Grelck even calls it: «the biggest Battlefield package of maps, modes, gadgets and weapons we've ever had.»

Conclusion: a «Battlefield» for the fans

In «Battlefield» everything is still gloriously chaotic. Bullets fly from all directions. One moment I'm shooting merrily and the next my lifeless body is cartwheeling through the air.

In between, there are the typical «Battlefield» moments. Shortly before the end of the event, I took a helicopter out of the air with a Sunday shot from a turret, which crashed into two onrushing soldiers at exactly the right moment. Sorry, colleagues, that was my loud laugh that rang through the event hall afterwards.

«Battlefield 6» doesn't reinvent the genre, but it looks set to become a real «Battlefield» again, as many fans have been hoping for. If the campaign also delivers what it promises, there's hardly anything standing in the way of a hot autumn.

«Battlefield 6» will be released on 10 October for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. EA invited me to Berlin for the event and covered all the costs.

Philipp Rüegg

Senior Editor

Philipp.Rueegg@digitecgalaxus.ch

Being the game and gadget geek that I am, working at digitec and Galaxus makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop – but it does take its toll on my wallet. I enjoy tinkering with my PC in Tim Taylor fashion and talking about games on my podcast http://www.onemorelevel.ch. To satisfy my need for speed, I get on my full suspension mountain bike and set out to find some nice trails. My thirst for culture is quenched by deep conversations over a couple of cold ones at the mostly frustrating games of FC Winterthur. more

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