Battlefield V

 

 I played this right after I finished BF1
And BF5 is very much the same game.
Like BF1, you have these "war stories" for the campaign. These are individual little detached segments about a few select soldiers and their squads.

This time its set in WW2, and the battlefield naming schemes are pretty stupid and awkward. Like BF1 is set in WW2, but BF5 is set in WW2. Dunno.
To be honest between Bf1 (ww1) and Bf5(ww2) theres not much difference in the actual setting! its a lot of the same bolt actions/sub machine guns. I thought the jump would be more drastic between times.

There are four difficulties, Easy,normal,hard,and hardcore. I played on Hard

There are 5 individual 'war stories' .
The first one is just a very short 5 minute intro, so really only 4.
Each of these are about 1 hour long, so its a really short game.

First of all its very much worth noting that the major problem I had with BF1 campaign is fixed here. In bf1, atleast half, if not more of the game was spent inside vehicles or aircraft. In BF5, almost the entire game is spent doing engang on-ground combat, with only the very last mission having some tank combat. This  alone makes it the superior game for me.

Second, its also worth noting the graphical fidelity and sheer polish of the visuals. It really shows that its a multi-million dollar production and this alone is worth the price of admission almost. (I only paid $10).

The individual war stories do have decently memorable characters and settings, in one of them you play as a failed bank robber which has been recruited instead to fight in the army and the two of you have some humorous moments like singing songs while mowing down waves of enemies.
The gameplay feels open world at times where you never really are being handheld and forced to follow a npc down a strict path, but it gives this big world and usually gives you multiple objectives to deal with as you please. Usually trivial things like "Go to one of these places and blow up/destroy this"  There are cars you can get and drive in between these places and it does feel like a big sandbox at times.

Most outposts in the game have alarms which quickly becomes the #1 priority (and starts to feel like a modern Ubisoft far cry game or something)  as theres basically no point to bother trying to shoot enemies until you take out the alarm cause they'll just keep coming. So it becomes this mad sprint to try to disable the alarm as fast as possible.

On the 2nd hardest difficulty, the game is quite hard and challenging, but not really stupidly frustrating or awful. The health regen is very slow and I spent a lot of time just faceplanted on the ground desperately waiting for my health to regen. The guns also have a fair amount of recoil and challenge to accurately hitting shots too, but they all look and feel incredible with a lot of details and great animations. Though I dont like that a lot of the guns have these weird psuedo-modern sights and scopes on them, seems a bit out of place.

Theres a couple of these segments where you have to do dashes back and forth between turrets/anti air missile launchers as youre getting bombarded with enemy missiles that can be pretty awkward and frustrating but other than that the challenge was just right.

PRobably the highlight of these 4 war stories is the Norwegian one where you play as a female scout in the winter forests going around with bolt action rifles /silenced pistols taking out german outposts and the atmosphere is just great. The bolt action guns are real fun to use in this game. Its more of the same gameplay, psuedo-free roam world, find an outpost, Disable the alarm, go to objective destroy/press interact button, Repeat. its a decent loop cause the gunplay is so good and the graphics are awesome.
The norway chapter progresses from night time to day time, where you can even use a mechanic to pull out your skis and traverse through the winter landscape and ice, the graphics are very impressive on these parts and  great atmosphere/sounds. The story of the mother/daughter team is interesting enough the whole time.

The stories are engaging enough and memorable (albeit flawed characters suffering from obvious 'woke' agenda)  like the norwegian segment you're playing as a mother/daughter team which singlehandedly destroys the entire german army and is solely responsible for saving the world basically, its a bit emphasizing the role of women and minorities , not that its good or bad really, its just obvious to tell the agenda/'woke politics' happening in the story. Like the other campaign where you play as african americans doing all these incredible achievements, and at the end you take a photograph with the commander, and then it plays a cutscene of the black people being 'erased' from the photograph to rewrite history. These bits of the story do feel heavily political agenda . Its entertaining nonetheless.

 Then you have another chapter where you play as french african americans in the french countryside hillside taking out bunkers and repelling forces in waves, this chapter is decent and memorable too. Lots of different weapons to try. This one is a bit more linear and has you fighting along side many AI partners doing standard objectives like blow up AA equipment / take over bunkers / Defend yourself and position from waves. fighting through autumn forest with sub machine guns and stuff its decent.

And then right at the end of the game the last chapter you play as the Germans surprisingly enough,  this chapter is mostly spent inside a tank which makes it the only required vehicle segment in the game. Its a typical city streets tank segment where you just fight your way through streets blowing up enemy tanks, the controls are decent and like BF1 it has a button to repair your tank although you cant get out anymore. The tank mechanics are more fleshed out in this though theres a lot of swaying and reticle movement where you aim you tank feels more polished.

So for most of this chapter you just go around blowing stuff up, playing as a German tank commander, teaching young naive recruits the ways of war, but then some points you get outside of your tank and fight Americans on foot. they're pretty tough , hardest enemies in the game which I found interesting. then you spend a bit singlehandedly killing dozens of americans as a german officier, blow up another AA gun, get back in the tank for a final massive standoff against dozens of enemy tanks, then the game ends with a cutscene of you (the germans) surrendering and the young naive kid killing you and your friend because you once told him that "germans dont surrender and kill all traitors/deserters"

So the campaign is decent, its better than BF1 just because most of the time is spent on foot rather than inside vehicles. Graphics are great and highly polished multi million dollar AAA game. Story is memorable enough albeit flawed with an obvious bias/agenda at times.

7/10