Ballistics Report

Pros

Gameplay
Not quite revolutionary, but better than a mere evolution, BF2 stays true to the core principles of the Battlefield series while augmenting them with squads, voice comms and the commander view.

Graphics
At its best, it looks excellent. At its worst, it's passable. It performs quite well to boot.

Sound
More competent than excellent, but it helps deliver that intense "wow, this is a moment" feel, along with the gameplay and graphics.

HUD
The in-game HUD has a lot of information to deliver and it does a reasonably good job. Most impressive is the "Q" menu, which permits players to report spotted targets, who briefly appear on the map, and make various requests.

Engine performance
Not to be confused with GUI performance, the game engine does a good job with only occasional stutters and lag spikes. Mostly in the Pros section for its big improvement over BF1942 and BF:V.

Cons

GUI
An unreliable and flaky keymapper combined with a laggy server browser had me this || close to installing GameSpy Arcade. I came to my senses, but it gives you an idea how desperate the situation is.

The Crowd
Not really a con as much as a warning that being on a good, co-operative team where everybody accepts a role is vital. BF2 is one of those games where even a small clan joining a team has the ability to disrupt gameplay mechanics significantly, simply because they're willing to use all the features.

Loading screens
EA, DICE and God only knows who else crammed a myriad of splash screens which take longer to view than the game does to load. Go into your "\\Program Files\\EA GAMES\\Battlefield 2\\mods\\bf2\\Movies" folder and remove all files except "menu.bik" and "menu_loggedin.bik". You might want to keep "Intro.bik", but you can move it to a different folder. Again, not really a con, this is here just to save you some headaches.