It's not an amazing expansion but if you loved Battlefield 2 then you wont want to miss out on it.
Well the gameplay hasnt changed at all- and I cant be bothered to explain the rules of Battlefield so if you havent played any BF game and are reading this then sorry! Anyway, the main differences are the new armies and weapons/items. There is the British SAS, the Russian Spetznaz, Rebels, and 2 of the original armies: USMC and MEC. Only the British SAS get 1 or 2 new guns and the Spetznaz and rebels get exactly the same weapons as the MEC did in BF2 which is a shame but that's probably similar to what the real Spetznaz use anyway. However, the focus isnt on guns, it's on items: there are now flashbangs, grappling hooks, zipwires and tear gas which is really cool and makes infantry combat so much more fun/cool than it was before. There's a few new vehicles like a Quadbike but vehicle combat isnt the main focus of the expansion. Still, the infantry is top-notch and if you hated constant ground and air vehicle battles then you'll most likely prefer Special Forces (being killed on foot by jets and helicopters constantly is extremely frustrating in the original BF2 and this occurs a lot less in the expansion).
There's about 8 new maps in the game- and like before you can only play 2 online and there is no offline support for the 2. So there are 6 maps available in offline mode and 8 online. Each map is generally smaller than the maps in BF2 which is good in some ways and bad in others. It just depends if you prefer to fight on foot or in vehicles I guess. While each map looks impressive like before, the maps here arent as nice-looking as BF2 because some are set at night forcing you to use your nightvision goggles which is pretty cool and makes BF feel a lot different. There are more urban-style maps in SF so there's more cover lying around. The graphics are still really good at high settings but the maps just arent as beautiful as they were in BF2 because there just so much darker and dingy.
The sound is still the same, excellent as it was before. The biggest complaints about this game is that it took so long for me to get it running- overall, before I could play the game properly I must've spent around 1 hour and 20 minutes hours. First, before the game actually installed it had to install and old 1.1 patch which took around 15 minutes for some reason, then the actualy game instealled which didnt take long. Then I started up the game and logged in to my usual account and found that there was only 1 server. This was because the game has to install that old patch so I had a little go offline first. Next, I had to download the latest patch (I hadnt been bothered to do this with BF2 because there was always a good few servers playing the map I wanted to play). Anyway, the size of the file for the latest patch is over 500MB and the fastest download time from a website I could find was 30 minutes. So I waited for this THEN I had to install the patch which took a good 20 minutes AND THEN I COULD FINALLY THE PLAY GAME. The loadtimes were long in BF2 and here, they are even longer which is ridiculous if you ask me as it's basically the same game.
Overall though, if you have the patience to get this game installed and running with lots of servers then you'll really like the game. Every BF fan needs this game.
Pros:
+ Excellent, improved infantry combat
+ Good new maps
+ Cool new items and vehicles
+ Same great graphics and sound
Cons:
- Took me ages to get up and running
- Even longer load times
- Slight peformance issues at times
- Still not as great as the original BF2