DLC #119 - Battlefield 1 - Turning Tides

With what turns out to be the most challenging out of the Battlefield 1 DLC packs, Turning Tides comes with a recurring theme of sea-based combat, adding a series of naval based weapons, gadgets and vehicles, as well as a handful of new water-themed maps which allow for extensive off-land combat.

The package also adds the new Conquest Assault game mode (which is effectively the standard Conquest game with a few tweaks on the methods of victory), and also the new "Gallipoli" Operation, which has 1 of the trophies in this set attached to it, and earned via completion of the operation.

You'll also be required to perform a roadkill with a sea vehicle, which effectively means you'll have to kill a swimming enemy whilst in a boat, and the package also requires you to amass 15 kills with the new L-Class destroyer, a heavy duty warship loaded with health and big enough to make very light work of enemies, meaning 15 kills is a breeze.

The new slew of weapons also comes with the standard assignment based trophy, and the hardest group of weapon challenges in these DLC sets;

Naval Weapons Collection
Perform a kill with all the "Turning Tides" weapon variants

Same rules apply as before. There are 9 new weapons to unlock via a series of assignments, with a total accumulation of 264 kills required in order to trigger this trophy. This is a much smaller  total than the previous DLC packs, but quickly evened out by some frustrating assignment objectives.

Again, there's potentially alot of crossover from some of the objectives within these assignments that may have already been fulfilled within the main game or other DLC packs, and you can attempt the secondary method of scavenging the weapons individually off the battlefield from downed enemies. If you could pick up melee weapons, I would most certainly recommend this for what's to come.

What makes this DLC package the hardest out of all 4 are the requirements to unlock the Naval Cutlass melee weapon. Most of the challenges within the various assignments across all packs were relatively trouble-free right up until this point, with both assignments required to unlock the Naval Cutlass presenting their own challenges.

Part 1 of the assignment requires you to Capture 20 flags whilst in a boat, which might not seem terribly difficult, but alot of the sea vehicles you'll use across the water-based maps leave you horribly exposed to enemies whilst you're capturing control points, particularly to snipers/other land-based infantry (since you're never actually contained inside the boat when you're using it), and air bombers, which make light work of sea-based vehicles in general with their powerful air attacks. This can make capturing flags very challenging, and you'll die often trying to achieve 20 captures. It's always best to park up within the capture zone, and then man a mounted weapon in order to defend yourself and the boat, but this also can present it's own issues with squad members spawning in the drivers seat and potentially maneuvering the boat outside of the capture zone, so there are multiple challenges to contest with here.

Part 2 of this assignment requires you to kill 15 enemies whilst they're swimming, which is the more challenging aspect of this assignment, but only by virtue of the fact you'll need alot of patience in order to accumulate this many kills for the required task. You don't need to be swimming yourself, which limits you to only being able to use a handgun, meaning you can stand over bodies of water on land and wait patiently for enemies to appear, picking them off with longer range weapons, which is definitely the best approach. This can be a very long waiting game at times though, and enemies have a general tendency to use boats to transport themselves across bodies of water, rather than swim, which naturally makes sense. Enemies can also submerge themselves underwater for large periods of time, in order to avoid detection, which makes it even harder to spot out swimming enemies who you may not even realise are there at times. Add in the fact there's also alot of circumstantial luck, and it really slows down progression towards full completion, and combined with Part 1 above, it eclipses any other assignment within these sets of DLC, especially for time and tedium.

Despite having the least amount of required kills than any package before it, it's something that is quickly made up for by the Naval Cutlass assignment, which could arguably add at least 4/5 hours onto the package. It can also be very frustrating having to wait for the map rotation to cycle through into a water-themed map too, which is something else to bear in mind. You can't  make any progress towards unlocking the Naval Cutlass unless you're playing on a water-based map, after all.

Total completion time lies somewhere in the region of 10-15 houts, though this has the scope to be way more open ended thanks to both parts of the Naval Cutlass assignment. Most challenging Battlefield 1 pack thus far.