Unlike most FPS players, I have the strange habit of not paying much attention to multiplayer, but just playing the single player campaign. And therefore my review is mainly about it.
Battlefield 3 is very well received and very well baked product (mostly), and the campaign is (as expected) not breathtakingly good, but is actually above decent and passes many others I've tried withing the COD-BF-MOH-and alikes-family.
Best feature in the game which is worth mentioning first is the graphics, which are truly amazing and actually ARE breathtaking, even on low graphics setting which I had to play with (which would lead me to an issue with BF3 later on). I really enjoyed wandering the various battlefields throughout the levels of the game, watching the very fine details and environment.
Story is alright, nothing too good, nothing too bad, it surrounds various characters which is cool and is an excuse for trying to vary your same old banal FPS gameplay with some (rather weak) aircraft mission, and also some tank driving and stealth missions (which, on the contrary, I greatly enjoyed).
You'll find that the campaign always tries to be cinematic, and it is, I personally enjoyed these efforts but I believe that it also comes at expense of the gameplay, when at many occasions throughout the game you'll just find yourself simply running around, following your squad-mates and witnessing some dramatic pre-scripted explosions or other noisydamaging events.
Again, I actually liked the cinematic feeling, but am not sure the hardcore players would find it very enjoyable.
Multiplayer seems good enough, if it only was my thing.. But it isn't. Anyway it's very active until this very day and there are many servers to join, beware that you'd usually need PunkBuster to play multiplayer and that can currently be a nightmare on Windows 10 (from my experience).
And now for the (not very minor) complaints about the game which made me drop the grade to 6:
First and worst, some issue with sound stuttering caused on dual core processors. After researching around I figured out the issue is not so uncommon, and the only solution is to let BF3 use ONLY ONE processor unit. WHAT THE HELL, EA? That terribly reduced the game performance and made me drop the graphics to the lowest settings possible, or else the game wouldn't be playable at all for me.
Rather Annoying.
Second, which I guess is quiet common among FPS, but I'll still indicate it. The maps gives you the illusion of very large areas, and as I already mentioned, the magnificent graphics of BF3 just made me want to explore the maps some more than what the scripted events of the campaign let me.
Alas, there's nothing to explore, whenever you find the time to do so (and at many times you won't) you'd find that the maps are actually not as big as you may feel, and when there are some corners to turn and some untaken roads to venture, they are very empty and insignificant.
I guess that explorations is really not the main attraction in such game as BF3, but I think it could be great with such amazing graphics to add some collectibles and let the players do some searching around, if he wishes to.
One last thing, the difficulty seemed unbalanced at times, as on NORMAL difficulty, I've faced some sections which felt insanely difficult. At least for me.
Don't get me wrong, I do like challenges. But I picked NORMAL for a reason, I still want the game to flow, and not replaying the same portion for over 15 times of dying over and over.
I guess that BF3 deserves more than a 6, but based on these experience, this magnificent looking game which I'll probably never ever play again would have to do with a 6.