Watch the quick video version of our Battlefield 6 review, one year after launch:
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Battlefield 6 launched on October 10, 2025 and was a monster right out of the gate: over 7 million copies sold in three days, making it the best-selling game in the US in 2025. A year and five seasons later, the game you’d buy today isn’t quite the one critics scored last October. The core experience is still the series at its best — 64-player all-out war with strong, readable gunplay and destruction that gives every fight its own story. Critics agree: it holds an 83 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic.
But Season 5, Siege of Vegas (arrived October 13), is splitting the community. The new Vegas Strip and Area 51 maps are genuinely fun, and returning classics like Wake Island are welcome — yet players are frustrated by a Season 5 XP cap of around 300 per minute arriving alongside the Game of the Year Edition’s paid “Ultimate Shortcut Kit,” and by popular modes like Rush, Squad Deathmatch, and Gauntlet being pulled from normal matchmaking. Steam reviews sit at Mixed with 63% positive across more than 370,000 reviews.
Our verdict: 8/10. A year on, Battlefield 6 remains the best big-battle shooter of recent years when it’s firing on all cylinders — and right now it’s tremendous value: 60% off on Steam at $27.99, with a free-to-play trial this week and inclusion in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate via EA Play. If the XP cap gets reversed and the missing modes come back, the score goes up.
