3 Commando Brigade

Yeah I'd agree with Nick - doesn't feel like WW1 to me, far too many semi auto weapons, and the armour seems just like a tank from 30 years later. Also, can't get to grips with the amount of SMGs going round!

However, playing with friends, I did have fun! I must admit. I basically took it all with a pinch (scoop?) Of salt and played it for what it is, and yeah, I had fun.
The decision over the French army seems astounding though.

BF1 is currently on the Black Friday sale at Amazon for £30:
http://amzn.eu/j2NXRYd

Weirdly, they're even selling other Origin games at prices lower than Origin's own black friday sale.

I got it cheap for 20€ over a friend who works in retail.

The problem with BF1 that it is a step backwards in many directions. I had some issues with BF4, but those were mainly technical issues and a few maps I disliked. When it comes to game mechanics, I think BF4 is on the same spot of my favourite Battlefields together with Bad Company 2.

The first major annoyance I have with BF,1 is that they massively dumbed down Conquest with the removal of tickets. There are no more tickets that can be decreased by killing other players. You now just gain points for the team by capturing and holding flags. This takes out a nice meta aspect of conquest and dumbs it down to a simple "everybody" rush in the direction of a objective gameplay. With the old ticket system it would actually make sense to find and attack weaker points and in some cases it would make sense to retreat from a point in order to not waste tickets.

The new "Operations" mode feels pretty broken with the combination of bad map design and the fact that only the attackers have tickets and the defenders can spawn as often as they like. The result are maps which are basically unwinnable for the attackers, if the defenders are not completely stupid (which probably happens more as you think). 

I have about 40h of gameplay and I would guess that 35h are multiplayer. In my opinion they made a big mistake with setting the game in "WW1". The issue is that they need to stay "authentic" on some levels, while trying to stay in the current formula that the series and other fps are still using. I don't really care that there are a lot of automatic weapons in the game, but the design of the weapons (gameplay design) is pretty boring and limited by the setting. There are so far a lot less options to change the way a class works. In previous Battlefield games you always had some good options to play a "sniper" that is not a traditional sniper that is sitting on some hill and not really contributing to the actual gameplay. Weapons, Equipment and Perks gave you good and fun options to change the way you could play a class. This is hardly possible in BF1. There is a single semi auto rifle for the sniper class and the damage output is so bad that you cant compete on short range battles or long range battles. This is kind of symptomatic for most guns and classes in the game.

The result is that you will have a lot of sniper players who do nothing but sit on hills and try to get some easy headshots. This problem gets even worse when you look at the weapons of the medic class. They gave the medics pretty much DMR type rifles and so you often will have about 50% of the team playing sniper and 20-30% playing as "Medics". This is not exactly improving the gameplay in general.

Shapeshifters!