I’ve spent the past weekend evenings enjoying the Battlefield 6 Open Beta — to the tune of around four hours, according to Steam.
I didn’t run into quite the same problems Roger did, but I did have to dive into my BIOS and change the Secure Boot Mode to Standard.1
After that, things were mostly smooth.
Mostly, because the party queueing had its quirks. Occasionally, after leaving a match, the queue would get stuck, and the only solution was a full restart of the game for everyone.
One time, I joined a match late — and while I did get pulled into the game, the next time we queued together, I got left behind in some phantom queue from the previous match that had already ended.
*shrug*
Still, I should be fair — playing on Aus/NZ timing, our queue times were generally pretty snappy. Often instant. Rarely more than a few minutes. Had that been different, I might’ve had a much stronger opinion on those hiccups.
As for the gameplay itself, though?
Well… It’s Battlefield, alright.
Important context: I’ve not seriously played a Battlefield game since.. uh.. 2. Or Bad Company 2, if you count that. I’ve dabbled in most of the releases over the years, perhaps all except Battlefield 3. But far and away the ones I spent the most time with were Battlefield 2 and Bad Company 2.
So with where I am in terms of skill, I could at one moment feel like a fricken hero dropping smoke cover over a dangerous passage, run in, extract a fallen ally and bring them back where we then hold the fight until other allies can arrive, ultimately saving the point, to…
… dying repeatedly, sometimes barely moving a few steps forward from the chosen spawn point.
There were enough hero moments to balance out the bad, though. Ooh, another particularly good time was when our squad managed to get control of the tank driver and gunner positions, then loaded up the rest of our squad plus a few others and just steamrolled through the enemy backlines, backcapping several points before they mustered enough of a force to give us trouble.
I played (almost) exclusively Support in my time, and I think I’m a fan of the kit streamlining that allows you to both resupply and heal/quick resurrect allies, particularly given all classes can resurrect (albeit at a slower speed).
I also really liked the Support’s Level 3 in-match perk, which allowed a cooldown that temporarily made you the supply/heal kit, meaning you could rush forward with an allied army and keep the supplies rolling for a short period.
What I’m honestly not sure if I like yet or not is that it does feel like even mid-range encounters with the starting kit are… hm. I hesitate to say impossible, but ill-advised for sure.
This showed up in driving me to adapt my play style to lean more heavily into… funnily enough… the supporting elements. Suppressing fire rather than shooting to kill, and generally being where I needed to be to get allies back up and supplies out.
I’m only on the fence because my time away from Battlefield, seeing how the other side (Call of Duty) lives, has taught me to appreciate going on extended murder sprees as well.
In any event, you will unlock additional customisations for your weapons as you play through, including other optic sight options. So you will absolutely be able to customise your guns to suit your preferred play style, or even the map you’re on.
There are some where the sight-lines are quite long, and even a non-Recon class might appreciate being able to ping the annoying gnats that sit around the edges playing deathmatch.
*grumble*
Verdict
My friend group and I are in.
Provisionally.
Although that provision actually has little to do with BF6 itself, and more to do with the fact it is dropping only a month after Borderlands 4, which we’re also in for, and they’re both $NZD 120 games for the basic editions.
So we’re not going to preorder, and instead see how long Borderlands 4 actually lasts us for.
There is every possibility we’ll be done with it (for the first playthrough at launch, at least) by the time Battlefield 6 rolls around a month later, in which case, we’re in.
We had fun with what we played, even when we were losing. (Sometimes horribly… I think we had one match where our team hit 0 tickets while the enemy was still >600.)
I don’t think we’d really planned on going in again for the second open beta weekend, given your xp and base unlocks won’t carry over anyway… But I’m less sure now. It was fun enough that maybe we’ll do it anyway!
This was posted during Blaugust 2025, the annual blogging event normally hosted by Belghast, with a twist this year of being hosted by Krikket. Blaugust is an event aiming to welcome new blogger blood into the fold and revitalise those who’ve been at it a little longer.
The Blaugust Discord is still available to join in, year-round!
