The opening moments of Battlefield V show off a game at odds with itself. It begins with a montage of skirmishes on land and air that wax eloquent on the atrocities of World War 2 and its impact on humanity to the point of repulsion, marrying it with slick gameplay and production values in an attempt to keep you playing. While the Battlefield series has had a serious tone since its inception, with detours into cartoonish and dark humour with Battlefield Heroes and Battlefield Bad Company respectively, Battlefield V doubles down with dollops of stoic story-telling. So much so that it loses its impact and comes across as hollow. And that's in just the first five minutes.
Hours later after completing Battlefield V's[1] single-player campaign, the initial impressions still stick. It's structured similar to Battlefield 1[2] with the action spread across separate adventures with different protagonists rather than a single, traditional campaign.
Some of these have some interesting gameplay sections, such as skiing through Nazi-occupied Norway stealthily slaying enemies as you uncover a sinister plot, but by and large they feel out of place in a Battlefield game despite an exceeding level of visual fidelity. Only one of the three missions feels like you're actually taking part in a large scale war with the others emphasising on the game's stealth mechanics that don't have any use outside of the single-player. It doesn't match some of Battlefield 1's missions such as teaming up with Lawrence of Arabia against the Ottoman war machine including an armoured train.
Battlefield V's multiplayer fares a bit better with a larger focus on squad-based play. Health doesn't regenerate beyond a certain point if you don't have a medic on hand to pass...