Equipment can be purchased with either Credits or BattleFunds: the former earned by playing matches and the latter by laying down a credit card. After some quick calculations, I found that 100 BattleFunds will cost you about $1.40.

100 BattleFunds may sound like a lot, but here’s the catch: unless you buy the 'lifetime-use' versions of the items (which cost around $7.85 each), anything you buy will only last you a maximum of thirty days. A lot of gamers are finding the microtransaction model tough to swallow, and granting temporary items for permanent real money investment isn’t going to win the business model any new friends. Most players will only feel justified investing in permanent items, but those come at a steep price.

It’s not all bad, though: if you play the game fairly regularly, you should easily be able to earn enough Credits to afford continually renting the layout that you want. And that’s really what EA wants from you: they don’t exclusively want your wallet, they want you to keep playing their game. And if you put in the time, they’re willing to make sure you can keep they layout you want, for absolutely no monetary cost to you.

The gameplay is solid, with one major exception: because you your class is locked on your character, no one is able to swap classes during a match. If your entire team decided to play as sniper, then you’re all stuck on a sniper-only team until the other, more balanced team mercy-kills you. Its a horrific flaw that needs to be changed ASAP. And since you cannot choose which server to play on (it’s all based on automatic matchmaking), you cannot see what your team chose before the match.

Gripes aside, it’s important to remember that this is a full-featured Battlefield game that is absolutely free to play. I can complain all I want that it isn’t perfect, but I didn’t have to spend a cent to play this. Considering everything that’s offered in BFP4F, it’s an incredible deal. I may not personally like the talent tree design (and I imagine quite a few shooter-purists will feel the same) but I have to admit that it does dangle a lot of enticing carrots in front of me. Plus, what really matter is that–as long as I keep playing and earning Credits–I can keep my super powerful assault rifle.