Battlefield 5 Chapter 6: Into the Jungle (PS4) Review

Battlefield 5 was the first game of the popular Franchise to use a Life Service approach to implement new content instead of the more classic versions of expansions or DLC. This Life Service is also being referred to as Tides of War and all new content after the initial release of the game in November 2018 was published for free and available to all BF5 players. Every couple of months the Tides of War received a new Content chapter with new maps, weapons, modes, skins and so on. 

Chapter 6 'Into the Jungle' went from early February till late April 2020 and continued and expanded the theme of the Pacific War from the previous chapter. This chapter got hit especially hard by the worldwide Coronavirus epidemic, which is the reason for a lot of content not being published during Chapter 6 and instead getting delayed to the final content update in June. 

With 'Solomon Islands' only 1 map was launched during the chapter (3 new maps in the previous chapter), it however was a pretty good map. The map is quite large and does a really great job at capturing the Jungle vibe. Solomon Island plays especially well in Conquest and Breakthrough (Also playable in Squad Conquest and Team Deathmatch). In Breakthrough the attacking team has to land at the beach side with its scraggy hills. They have to invade the beach from their Ships on sea, which is usually a very tight battle. From there the invaders will reach the Harbour Village, with some footbridges and cabins aside it. Parallel to the Harbour village, there is the Officers Command post, which consists of a single large barrack building and a Silo. There are some construction materials surrounding the area. The Harbour Village and Officers Command post are the last line of defense before the first jungle area. This jungle will lead to a large river, which divides the map and contains a small island with a river village on top of it. This river village is the central point of the map and especially in Conquest the point, that both teams will try to conquer the most. On both sides of the river there are buildings and stationary guns to help both teams to attack the central point. At the other side of the river there is an even bigger jungle, which contains two more control points. In the heart of the jungle is the Salvage Site, which is a plane wreck. There is a small creek nearby and this site is probably one of the most dangerous spots, because it is so difficult to spot sneaking enemies through the deep jungle terrain (Between Salvage Site and the river village there is even a small traversable cage). The other control point in the jungle is the Logging Station, which is another harbour village. The Logging Station however is smaller than the first Harbour village and is right between the Jungle and the next river (It is actually the same river as before, just wiggling a curve between the Jungle and the final environment). On the other side of this river is the Japanese home base, which is the last sector in Breakthrough. The only way to reach it for the attacking team, is to cross the river. Therefore the Japanese army has a small advantage, since they can see their enemies coming. It will be tough battle, but since the river is large the Americans will with time probably break through to the other side and than the final battle can begin. 

Overall I really like Solomon Islands. There is a large variety of different environmental elements in it, that all manage to satisfy. It is exciting to try to either cross or defend the river at the first beach, the river village or to the Japanese home base, and the Jungle environments are really beautiful and quite chaotic, since it can be challenging to spot all the enemies. Boats play aside from tanks and trucks an important part in this map to pass the terrain. There are no planes (aside from the plane wreck) on Solomon Islands and with the nontransparent environment in the jungle, tanks are certainly not OP on this map (in particular if you consider the new Lunge Mine and M1A1 Bazooka weapons of this chapter).

It would have been nice, if they could have added a second map during the Chapter, but Solomon Islands is in my opinion certainly one of the best in the game. (The delayed map is not going to release with the June update, but seems to be in a desert environment in Libya and wouldn't have really fitted the chapter anyway.)

The 5 new weapons of Chapter 6 are the M2 Carbine, the Model 37 Shotgun, the Type 11 LMG, the M1A1 Bazooka and the Lunge Mine. 

The M2 Carbine (same as the Model 37 Shotgun), was initially intended to be a Tier reward (More to that later on), but by accident was added to the inventory of all players at the beginning of the chapter. The weapon is an Assault Rifle for the Assault class (obviously). The M2 Carbines standout feature is its high rate of fire. This makes it a very efficient and popular weapon for close and middle range combat situations. It however takes a bit more shots to secure a kill than some other Assault Rifles, but this is in my opinion getting equalized by the high rate of fire. In addition, the weapon also has a relatively low recoil and a fast reloading time, which makes it a strong close combat weapon. On large ranges the M2 is however a lot less efficient and not necessarily recommendable. The M2 Carbine fits an offensive, rushing playstyle well, but could also be used in defense of a protected objective.

The Model 37 Shotgun is a beast on very close ranges, nearly always killing with a single shot and having one of the highest rates of fire among all shotguns (Not as fast as the M2 Carbine, but very quick for a shotgun). This allows the weapon to be sprayed on unaware enemies and nearly always securing kills (Low spread of gunshots is another strength of the weapon). The Model 37 Shotgun is however only this efficient in very close combat. Shots from more than 5 meters will probably not automatically kill and everything above 10 meters is very inefficient. Therefore the weapon should only be used in Buildings or other smaller and more chaotic areas. In large open fields the weapon will be pretty useless. For close range situations it is however a strong alternative. The Model 37 Shotgun can only be used by the Support class.

The Type 11 LMG is another weapon for the Support class (Type 11 unlocks at Chapter Rank 10). It plays very differently than the Model 37 Shotgun, which is no surprise, since it is a LMG. The Type 11 has a high ammunition capacity, a manageable recoil pattern and decent bullet damage, but a slow rate of fire and a long reload time. The Type 11 is generally quite comparable to the Type 97 MG, but it has a bigger amount of ammunition and a longer reload time in comparison. The reload time and below average rate of fire make the Type 11 a less efficient weapon in close combat situations. In mid to long distance ranges the weapon does perform relatively well. The weapon sights of the Type 11 support this playstyle. Because of the long reloading times, the weapon might be used more in defensive than offensive encounters. The visual standout feature of the Type 11 is certainly its golden bullets at the side of the weapon, which look pretty cool. 

The M1A1 Bazooka is a gadget for the Assault class (Unlocks at Chapter Rank 20). It is a rocket launcher and it does lower damage than its two counterparts in the game (Panzerfaust and PIAT). It also has a relatively low blast radius, which makes it more difficult to kill infantry with. It is still possible to kill an infantry player however with the M1A1, but that usually requires a direct hit. The biggest strengths of the weapon on the other hand are its very fast projectile speed, long range and high accuracy/ small recoil. Tanks in a great distance can still easily be hit accurately. Therefore the M1A1 is a great counter weapon against long distance tank kills. The special feature of the weapon are its 3 different aim sights, for 50, 100 and 200 meters. It is very difficult to kill moving enemies with the M1A1 because of its low blast radius, but it can be a very efficient counter against still standing snipers. The fast projectile speed makes it very difficult for them to dodge the shots. The high accuracy (low bullet drop) of the M1A1 is noticeable in comparison to the other rocket launchers. Another standout feature of the weapon is its backblast. This will not be a major issue in most games, but every shot with the M1A1 leaves a little backblast immediately behind the M1A1 shooter, which can 1hit kill enemies standing behind the player or detonate any explosives behind the shooter. (Some skilled players even purposely run to enemies, do a 180° turn and shot in the sky to kill them with the backblast). Overall the M1A1 is a great addition and is being used by many Assault players.

The Lunge Mine is a gadget for both Assault and Support classes (Unlocks at Chapter Rank 5). It's kind of a fun/joke weapon, but it can still be very deadly. Players with the lunge mine will either charge into enemy players and tanks in order to destroy them(like a bayonet charge) or swing it with a melee attack . A direct hit will either kill an infantry player or give 50 damage to a tank. The weapon has only 1 mine and a charge attack can be used, that increases the players speed while moving towards a target, but the player will exhale a loud scream, that could warn potential targets. Upon detonating (The lunge mine will explode whether it hits an enemy, object or wall/ground) the attacking player will receive 20 damage and be thrown on his back. This can actually be useful in a chaotic situation, if the enemies expect the attacking player to have died of the explosion as well. It can of course also easily turn into a suicide trap. Because of its chaotic potential and fun value, the Lunge Mine is actually quite popular. The weapon can be a great addition on certain maps and situations, but i wouldn't generally recommend it as the number 1 gadget. 

Chapter 6 contained, same as the previous chapters, a chapter reward system. You could also simply call it a Battle Pass, since it works pretty much the same way. This 'Battle Pass' consists of 40 Tiers/Levels, that unlock rewards. There are weapons, characters skins, Vehicles and Weapon skins, company coins and Dog Tags (Medals) to be collected. 

Overall Chapter 6 contains 9 new character skins. 2 common full outfits can be unlocked through the weekly challenges of week 2 and 3 (One Japanese and one American soldiers with undershirts). The rare outfits unlock at Chapter ranks 18 and 23 and simply slightly alternative the 2 new common outfits with some hats and ammunition bags. The 2 epic outfits of the Chapter ranks (Unlock at 36 and 37) are slightly heavier equipped alterations of the previous chapter outfits (Okay, the Japanese outfit also got some additional face paint...). The two other epic outfits are included in the Chapter 6 Premium Booster (More to that later on) and therefore hidden behind a paywall, but they at least look quite different and actually quite nice. The first 6 outfits of the Chapter are only slightly dressed to reflect the tropic temperatures of the Jungle, but the 2 booster outfits are fully dressed up and look like they are ready for war. 

Aside from these character skins, Chapter 6 also for the first time includes an elite skin as a Chapter Reward. (Elite Skins are special characters, than can be used by any faction. They have no gameplay advantages, aside from their unique character weapons and their outfits usually standout from the crowd. All previous elite skins were locked behind a 1000 Boins paywall.) Misaki Yamashiro, a female Samurai, is being unlocked at Chapter Rank 40 and her special weapon is a Machete. On the one side I think it is great, that give the elite skins to players for free, but on the other hand I believe all elite skins should have been free in a full price game to begin with. I also dislike the fact, than Misaki can for example be used in battles with German or British/American forces. That takes quite a lot of immersion from the game. (There are also generally a very high amount of Misaki skins in battles with the Japanese army.) The Misaki skin is nonetheless generally quite well designed. The elite skins of Steve Fisher (USA) and Akira Sakamoto (Japan) were also planned for Chapter 6, but got postponed until the May Update after the end of Chapter 6.   

The other skins of Chapter 6 include some male and female standard haircuts (At least they are not strange or weird looking, but also quite boring), and various vehicle and weapon skins in a large variety of camouflage colours. Some of them look quite alright, but nothing out of the ordinary or worth writing much more about. 

The company coins can be used to buy some of the more common skins of previous chapters in the armory (Battlefield Shop) and are nothing to interesting. There are a lot of ways to gain Company Coins in BF5 and the amount of Coins from Tier rewards is not really worth writing home about either.

The bronze Dog Tag is being rewarded at Level 10, the silver at 20 and the golden at Level 40. The real rewards like Weapons, Skins etc can be unlocked faster through the many Tier Skips from the Weekly Challenges. This however doesn't affect the Dog Tags. Players trying to get the golden Medal at their profile picture, will need to grind to Level 40. This wouldn't be so bad, if Battlefield would be using as system like most others game, were the gap between the various levels remains about the same. In BF5 however the gap continuously rises. The first few Tiers only require around 10.000-20.000 XP to level up, the last 15 on the other hand require 100.000 to 200.000 XP per Tier. Chapter 6 overall takes about 3.2 Million XP to be completed, which is more than any other chapter. Chapter 3 till 5 all had a comparable length of the season, but they all only required about 2.2 Million XP to be maxed out. 

The shady part of this is, that DICE/EA offer a Premium Booster Pack for 2000 Boins (20 Euro/Dollar), that gives players 20% Bonus XP every match. The implication is, that the developers artificially enhanced the length/difficulty of the chapter in order to promote/encourage the purchase of such a Booster. In a F2P game this would already be dubious, but in a Full Price game it is pretty shameful. Yes, there are no real gameplay advantages (All weapons unlock till Level 20 and they don't noticeably surpass the standard weapons), but this is annoying and shady. The Premium Booster Pack also only extends the XP rate of Chapter 6. There were also Premium Boosters for Chapter 4 and 5, that cost 2000 Boins respectively... Aside from the XP Booster, the Premium Booster for Chapter 6 also includes one epic outfit for Japanese and American Soldiers, 4 weapons and 1 vehicles skin and additional assignments for faster XP progression. 

Every Chapter of the Tides of War also includes weekly challenges and Chapter 6 was no exception. Each week contains around 8 different tasks, which are interconnected through a tree system. This means for example, that you have to complete task 1 in order to participate in task 2 or task 3. Task 4 requires a completed task 2 to start and task 5 a completed task 3. It works like limbs of a tree. Every week has a final task, that is achievable through different pathways. Completing this task unlocked, in the previous chapters, weapons or skins. This was only the case for two weeks in Chapter 6. The other 10 weeks all contained Tier Skips as a reward. The XP rewards of the different challenges varied between 5000, 14000 and 30000 XP, which made leveling noticeably easier. (You could also say completing the weekly challenges was absolutely necessary to max out the Chapter progression system.) Most challenges were either very basic (Kill or revive 30 players; Capture 3 objectives; Build 20 Fortifications) or annoying (Roadkill an enemy with an airplane; Shoot 5000 Bullets). 

My suggestions for improvement would be to remove the tree system and let players participate in all weekly challenges instead of unlocking them one after another, remove the weekly time constraints (Weekly challenges can only be completed in that one week. If you got no free time or holiday that week, you miss out. Other games give you access to all weekly challenges till the end of the whole season (Fortnite, Apex Legends)) and make the weekly challenges a little more exciting and less basic. 

As an incentive to keep playing the game, Dice gave out free rewards during the corona crisis. This is a good idea, but unfortunately Dice only gave out 1500 Company Coins on 2-4 of April. This is very little reward and to most players felt more like a charity handout, than a real gift. (Boins (that shouldn't even exist in full price game) would have probably been more appropriate.) Aside from that the Developers also enraged/ humoured the community by stating, that double xp events in Battlefield 5 would be technically impossible. BF1 and BF4 were having double XP events during April and Battlefront 2 was even having triple XP events. If you keep in mind, that the developers are selling Premium Boosters to increase the amount of XP gains per match, than they seem to be either completely greedy and out of touch with their community or frighteningly incompetent in programming. 

The biggest problem of Chapter 6 however was the TTK disaster from the previous chapter, that got dragged into Chapter 6 as well. During Chapter 5 Dice out of the blue implemented a change to double the Time to Kill (TTK), which made all weapons weaker and completely unbalanced the game. This was probably done in order to appeal to a new, probably more casual audience, that had so far avoided the game. The problem was, that it didn't bring in any new players and completely enraged the BF community. The original TTK was being accepted by the vast majority of players as either good or acceptable, while the new TTK was disliked by most. Small changes to a TTK can have a big impact, but to just double a TTK without any real adjustment, was nearly crazy. Worst of all, the developers lost practically all credibility and reputation within the BF community. The first 4 chapters weren't perfect and got a couple of criticism along the way (Even though I would argue, that most added maps and new modes were actually pretty good. Just everything surrounding that was mostly a disaster.), but Chapter 5 was seen as the big turnaround, that not only completely satisfied the active Battlefield community, but actually drawn in a lot of new players. The TTK change however was like a bomb that detonated the whole BF5 building. 

In early March (One month after the start of Chapter 6), the TTK was being patched back to its original state. Ever since than the gameplay is actually working really well and balanced, however the reputation of the game seems to have taken irreparable damage and the playerbase has not increased to the Chapter 5 highpoint, despite the Corona epidemic (that boosts most other Online Multiplayer games.) BF players were probably so displeased with Dice, because the developers had already in a previous chapter attempted a TTK change and reverted that far quicker after a giant player tantrum back than. The TTK change in march took place after around 3 months with the disliked TTK. (Why are Dice Updates since 2-3 years always taking so long?)

At the very end of chapter 6, when players were looking forward to Chapter 7 and a potential eastern front expansion, Dice pulled the plug from the game and announced the end of support in June 2020. There will be no new Chapter after Chapter 6 and in June the final content update with one new map and the 2 missing elite skins will be published. As a little compensation (At least the attempt of a compensation) Dice also rewarded all players with a Login-Bonus of the Winterkrieg Set of Winter outfits for the German army at the end of the chapter. At the release of BF5 in 2018 Dice had promised a Life Service Model, that was supposed to support the game with new content for years to come. In June 2020 they ended the Tides of War after only 1,5 years in order to focus on the development of Battlefield 6, which is supposed to release in late 2021 (It is however questionable how successful this game is going to be after the major loss of reputation from the developers.).

Result:

Chapter 6 was certainly not amongst the worst Battlefield Chapters. Solomon Islands was a really strong, diverse and beautiful map, that managed to capture the theme of the Chapter very well. The new weapons all brought something new to the game and were either a good alternative (like the Lunge Mine, Model 37 Shotgun and Type 11 LMG) or even some real highlights (M2 Carbine and M1A1 Bazooka). The free skins were generally fitting, but a bit to bland and monotonous. The free Misaki Elite was a good addition, but that should have been the standard in previous chapters as well. In Comparison to Chapter 4 and 5 there was significantly less content int the Chapter (Regarding Maps, weapons, skins etc.) and the existence of time limited weekly challenges and a Premium Booster (Weak points of other chapters too) and 1 month with the inferior TTK regrettably hurt the Chapter experience. It is sad, that the BF5 journey already ends, since there were a number of positive elements during the last 3 chapters, that were potentially promising a glory future for the game. At the end Chapter 6 was less than what could have been (Some might even say less than what was promised), but in the most important areas good and enjoyable content nonetheless.

7.5/10