This game still has a lot of fun Battlefield moments, which is why I gave it a 7 - Good despite all of its flaws. I know many people out there would disagree with this score, but I legitimately have had a lot of fun playing it with friends. I would not consider it an 8 because that would be calling it great based on the byte1ife scale.

If you happen to be playing on Series X|S, PlayStation 5, or PC, it will support up to 128 players in Conquest matches rather than the 64 player limit from previous generations. If you prefer, you can still choose to play the 64 player playlists. The 128 player matches can definitely be quite chaotic, in a fun way. It's definitely an overwhelming feeling to see so many enemies at once. This can make vehicular gameplay quite rewarding when you go on large sprees. I have personally almost never experienced long waits for matchmaking, and I haven't had difficulties finding full servers. The only time I had issues was very late at night, around 2-4 AM.



The playlist options are somewhat limited. Conquest and Breakthrough (kind of like Conquest & Rush mixed) are always available to play, and that's it. The rest of the playlists rotate every week via Portal mode, and include modes like Free for All, Gun Master, Rush, and Team Deathmatch. These playlists are sometimes limited to the remastered BF 1942, BF3, and BF:BC2 maps. I wish that modes like Team Deathmatch were always available, as sometimes I'm not in the mood for large conquest-style matches. They tend to eat up your free time rather quickly!

Recently DICE has been adding other more unique modes to Portal to attempt to keep things fresh, but at the same time limit the number of choices so there are higher player populations in each mode's hopper. My favorite example recently has definitely been Classic Conquest, or rather a variation thereof where you could play with 2042 characters, weapons, and vehicles, but on maps from Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Battlefield 3. The maps are huge, support many players, and to me, the upgraded visuals from this iteration of the Frostbite engine shine more on the redone classic maps than the new 2042 maps that shipped with the game.



For a game that takes place in an apoclyptic future, there is very little futuristic tech/weaponry/vehicles and the maps seem somewhat clean/empty (besides the aforementioned classic maps). Even the Battlefield 4: Final Stand expansion included much more future tech than this game. Overall, you can tell the Frostbite engine received an upgrade, but I feel like they didn't take the immersion quite as far as they did in say, Battlefield 3, 4, 1, or even V. One thing that stood out to me was the difference between character movement (especially their animations) in the older games and 2142. 2142's animations and movement just seem a lot more basic. However, the vehicles handle much more like a racing/driving game now, which could be good or bad depending on your opinion. I'm guessing Criterion contributed to this aspect.



This game has many flaws which I do hope are worked out. I do remember Battlefield 3, 4, 1, and V launching in similar states. I do wish that DICE and EA would release their games in a more finished state, but I'm definitely preaching to the choir on that one! To be more specific, 2042 forgoes a lot of the improvements from prior games, such as the fluid movement from Battlefield 3, 1, and V, sea vehicles, better spotting, suppression (this is a big bummer for me, and weakens the support role) and random bugs like difficulties reviving players and getting stuck with certain guns (not able to switch). DICE also uses a lot of AI to support/seed some of the emptier servers. Generally it's pretty easy to rack up some streaks on them, but I've also seen them top the leaderboards. Depending on the situation, they can have perfect accuracy from much farther away than the average player, even if behind cover. There's also no vehicle destroy assists, so if you aren't the person to get the last projectile in before an enemy vehicle explodes, you won't get any XP for it. That's kind of a bummer for Engineer roles.



Another glaring absence is the lack of a single player campaign or missions of any sort. For a game that is the same launch price of USD $60 (if not more, for the next-gen versions) as its predecessors, it's a huge surprise to see much less content. I feel that purchasers of the Deluxe and Ultimate versions especially got shafted.

The only microtransactions currently in this game exist in the form of the Year 1 Pass, which has yet to start as of the time of this review update. The game is still in Preseason, and Season 1 has not yet started. It is anticipated to start sometime in summer of 2022. There are no cosmetics to be bought, although there are Twitch Prime in-game cosmetics to be had. Everything in the game is unlockable by everyone so far. The reason for the delay is that DICE has been focused on fixing bugs and the in-game experience/polish before moving forward with more new content.

If they can add a bunch of new content like maps, vehicles, weapons, specialists, and a few new modes, I'm sure they could bring back a ton of players and turn this thing around. It was a shame to see Battlefront II get dropped right after it was getting very good, and I would hate to see the same happen to this.

I hope they can turn this around because I still have a lot of fun playing this game, but in its current state it's hard to recommend to everyone unless you are a diehard Battlefield fan like myself. Not everyone will be able to overlook some of the flaws.