Couldn't EA keep their grimmy hands off this title.
Now, as I said the game is fun once it is started... and thats the problem: starting the game. EA just had to get their grimy little paws on this potential master piece and ruin it with bloat and making the entire experience a hassle. Furthermore, no refund. My first major problem is Origin, which is EXCLUSIVE source you can get the game on PC. If you thought Steam was bad, take all it's flaws, double the magnitude and take away any strong points. What do you get? Origin. It is a resource hog, and it doesn't even do anything for game. It's not even really needed, but necessary to start the game.
Once you have the game installed, try launching it. Instead of starting the usual game, you are greeted by your web-browser. Who the **** decided this would be a good idea!? Take an already demanding game, make it required to install a very bloated, unresponsive game manger (Origin), and launch the web-browser in the background too. The website is a stat-tracker and server browser. There is no reason why this should a separate component; there are many games with server browsers integrated and work just fine, such as Modern Warfare. And in order to use the website, you need to install additional plug-ins... yes plug-ins. As in plural of plug-in. Not even Runescape needed to run multiple plug-ins, and that game runs completely in browser. This games takes more than a dozen GB's of space! So now I have to run Origin, Firefox, and multiple plug-ins and I STILL haven't started the game yet and am consuming hundreds of megabytes of RAM. As a minimalist, this is a ginormous pet-peeve. Fortunately I have oodles of RAM; 8GB to be exact. For those with 2GB, or even 4GB, upgrade or don't bother playing this title; the combination of programs needed to run this game will eat RAM like the Bugatti Veyron eats gas. Once I finally got in game, after 5 minutes of play, I got kicked. I don't know why, apparently I don't have enough screen real-estate to display the message... on a 1080p screen. The plug-in is poorly designed. So after copying the message to my text editor, notepad, I discovered PunkBuster was kicking me. Why? Because the automated installer is incompetent and wasn't installed correctly (or completely missing altogether, the message wasn't clear). So now I have to (re)install Punk Buster so it can stop kicking me.
Finally in game, and you know what? The default mode sucked. Weapons were under-powered the community is full of players using cheap tactics such as base-rape (the entire enemy team gathers at your spawn point and picks you off as you spawn). Even got bass-raped single-handily by a tank. Not a group of tanks, Not by overwhelming infantry, but by a single player, with a single tank. Another annoying thing about regular mode is under-powered weapons. I don't care what kind of armor you are wearing, a 7.62mm x 51nm NATO sniper round coming from 100+ meters is lights-out. But not in this mode; it will take multiple rounds from powerful weapons to kill an opponent, making the most effective tactic spray-n-pray. Switched to hard-core and never looked back.
Hard-core alleviates some of the problems, but base-rape is still an issue. Fortunately, some servers ban the tactic and will black list players who use it. Sniping is hard because you have to account for drop/arch. I haven't seen many games implement this, but it's a nice addition to realistic games, though I'm sure some will hate it. Other than that, hardcore mode is fun, without any major weaknesses, except maybe in an over-crowded map your typical life-span is about 5 seconds. I found that to be rather frustrating.
As for the single player, I didn't even bother. I usually play single-player if my internet is acting up, or is down completely, but it turns out you need an ACTIVE internet connection to launch OFFLINE content. Why even bother installing anything locally if you can't play it without an internet connection!? In addition to this annoyance, the AI is completely competent.
The hassle to start this game is it's single biggest downfall, so big that it will ruin the experience. After the second day (actually within the first hour, but I wanted to give this game a chance), I decided I wanted a refund, but EA has a no-refund policy. Now, I play this game not because it's fun, but because I feel obligated to after pissing away $60 down the drain.
Kudos to DICE for making a fantastic game, shame on EA for ruining ANOTHER masterpiece. At this point, EA is on my blacklist. I don't care if it's best game of the century, if EA is on that cover, DO NOT BUY IT. Is a matter of fact, this feat was already done. Mass Effect 3 could have easily been the best piece of media ever, until the last 10 minutes invalidated the ENTIRE series and hundreds of hours of gameplay to sell DLC. If EA has their greedy little hands on a title, run away from it. This game included. I'm starting to think all the reviewers were paid to rate this game highly, because the frustration to even start the game isn't worth the pay-off.