One of the best Free "MMOish" games this year. Help here, minions.

[LORD]

I recommend.
Challenging in many areas and activities. Difficulty and rewards scales decently.
Grindy: need to get resources, items, money etc to keep upgrading stuff and it has lots of upgrading stuff to upgrade.
Good shooting gameplay, moving, aiming, shooting, strafing and all visual effects feel nice and fluid, feels just right. Right speed, frequency/rithm thing.
Boss fights are intense and if you are good and powerful you really feel like you carry the team.
Good measure of progression systems/sources to become more powerful.
Lots of different weapons, that level up and have random itemization bonuses to keep rerolling for a Godly one.
Enough variation on gameplay from the different skills from the different characters.
Well done, polished, technically high quality, good art/taste in graphics, music.
Quests and story is so so (good for most I guess), but the challenge is nice and ramps up and you feel like you are playing a well made AAA single player game campaign.
Where the game shines is the immersion shooting feeling, the setting, story/atmosphere, antagonists, etc all ties well together with the game design of having a bunch of other players around helping you shoot things.

About the P2W.
Its free. Competition is just boasting/bragging online of how much dps you can do, what bosses you can fight, how fast can you farm so much per hour, etc and maybe post videos on youtube and topics on steam/reddit. I think it will take months before people rank up TO MAX ("reincarnate" (they call "rank up") many times, which requires full level up of a character and thats just one of many you can do that, so even if you dont focus broadly on many characters it will take a long time to max). The stuff that you have to pay "energy activators" you can grind one every half a dozen hours, but you would have to grind anyway for the gold/items/resources anyway to keep upgrading things, so as you do, you focus on getting the energy activators as well and people who buy those will still be bootlenecked by the grind of money/resources, etc for the upgrades, so all in all, those who relativize and measure the "p2w" scale, if its "whale to catch" or things like that will feel relieved to know that while some things you can buy, others you would have to work for anyway, so might as well kill 2 birds with one stone (as you grind for energy activators you get the resources).

Better than Helldivers 2 in many aspects:
Better than Warframe and Destiny 2 in many aspects:

Specially on the gameplay, less freaky psychodelic pinball on steroids than Warframe, less pooped in my pants than Helldivers 2 and somewhat cooler mobility skills tightness than Destiny 2. Its actually 1 star more than Warframe/Helldivers 2 gameplay, but 0.5 star above than Destiny 2, being tightly fair.

Boss fights. They are amazing. They can suck if you get some slackers or new players or people who dont have a build they thought or upgraded their cards and stuff. But it starts fast, it is intense, doesnt take long, lots of special details to improve performance, where to aim, how to deal with boss mechanics, the whole destructible covers, getting ammo, helping ress people lol. Its the most worth activity of your time in this game, and all the grind you do is to show off and shine here and IT IS CHALLENGING.

Progression longevity, lots of "cards" to upgrade, lots of "reincarnations" with each character once they reach max level, which require some rare items that require some decent amount of grind for all resources, lots of random stats on weapons to keep looting until you get the good ones, leveling weapons, leveling alt characters for different purposes (bunny is good to farming some money, ajax is good for some quests, others are good for Bosses and things like that, so you probably are going to be leveling 3+ descendents and unlock others and then later get the "upgraded" version of them.

Its going to take (last) more time than Helldivers 2 grind to power cap with the player skill cap together, much more than Destiny 2, but less than Warframe, but its not going to break the challenge/difficulty curve like Warframe does.
progression power.

The difficulty scale system they have with the rewards % chance incentivize you to go higher, and then you fight some random bosses for the missions that quite give you a run for their money and if you are not careful with your resources, ammo, skills, cover, you could be toast in a few seconds.

The actual Boss fights zones, where you join with a small group and have to fight the boss are quite cool, because they measured player DPS and the boss HP and the time and the boss mechanics in such a way that you need like everyone to sort of do average and one or two need to do good to beat the Bosses.


Only inferior things to Helldivers 2 and Warframe/Destiny 2:
Helldivers 2 visual effects EXPLOSIONS, DESTRUCTIONS, GORE, the sheer awesomeness of the call downs, some weapons, the setting/atmosphere, the hype and success it had online, sales amount to keep the thing alive and making more in the future, etc is all good. The bugs/factions and missions on top difficulty level are MORE intense/challenging, so overall its worth your time better MOST OF THE TIME (but who knows if The First Descendant last difficulty scaling tweaks of the release version will not be up to par?), but it becomes irrelevant anyways after 6 weeks (when you cap both progression and player skill for Helldivers 2, for most people) or so and now many months after release its old and dead for gaming internet standards (for people migrating to what is new, fresh, the new internet event, new "game club)" and they Helldivers 2 didnt thought progression through (its lame, takes like 100 hours and you are done, a decent online game that wants to retains and monopolizes the players to itself has to take thousands of hours to cap power progression), and their gameplay without jetpacks/jumpjets/ground vehicles, ski mechanics, etc is janky, stucky, the animation knockback/fall down etc is not good.
Warframe 2 is too old, only those who started back then tasted it as they should, and the random purple cards ruined challenge, and it got "shadow abandoned" in favour of Soulframe, had shameless monetization, and progression, despite bulky and broad, felt limited (until they ruined with the random purple cards), pvp was an after thought, and the "difficult content" was always easy, because the gameplay too convulsive freaky spasmatic (I had a keyboard macro so I was always fly rolling like a pinball, it was lol, but too much).

Destiny 2 I cant talk much, as I saw it was lame from the first one, than the second one was popular to the casual, so to me it was like World of Warcraft of the genre. I respect people who like it, but to me its shallow banal boring. They have/had the best PVP though of this genre. But still, who wants to pvp like that matchmaking there are many options much better. So Destiny 2 was the fix of those who didnt got the Warframe bus over ten years ago.

Oh, I remembered just now, The Division, lol. Nah, lol, Just no. Know what I am saying? Ubisoft lame spongy unrealistic shooting HP pools, cant stand watching the ridiculousness of the thing in action for even a minute. Just a frankenstein that game.

[LORD]

The first run through First Descendent campaign mission is certainly worth your time all the way. Lots of challenging areas, bosses, if I remember correctly, if you go solo, but you can do with people around, much easier.
Its what you choose or need to repeat in it afterwards that Im not sure. The gameplay loop that people will actually choose could make or break the game, because its all about reward per time and efficiency and min maxing these days after you beat the campaign and who can guarantee if what is the best stuff for our time is actually the most fun/challenging activity?
That we will see if the First Descendent has been tweaked to provide the fun, the challenge AND the balance amount of rewards. If they weave the net to trap us right where they want us: in their game and not getting bored/disappointed with some lame ass gameplay loop for some meta efficiency method of farming. These things are poison in game design, they have to clean the games of these for us nowadays or we ruin our own fun.
The Boss fights are almost always good and worth your time. Its the open world missions you can repeat and choose difficulty/scale alongside the requirements for upgrades/progression that might cause people to "wake up" and be like "wtf, this is not worth my time, going to go check Once Human".

[Soulo]

steam level zero. im now seeing this is troll post. man i actually read all of that to xDD

[LORD]

Originally posted by Ghost:

steam level zero. im now seeing this is troll post. man i actually read all of that to xDD

Im steam level 20 and never bothered with buying cards, I actually sold all mine.

[NoPhilter]

Originally posted by Ghost:

steam level zero. im now seeing this is troll post. man i actually read all of that to xDD

I mean based on the test I experienced of this game, his post is pretty damn accurate, trolling aside.

[Special Ed]

Originally posted by LORD:

I recommend.
Challenging in many areas and activities. Difficulty and rewards scales decently.
Grindy: need to get resources, items, money etc to keep upgrading stuff and it has lots of upgrading stuff to upgrade.
Good shooting gameplay, moving, aiming, shooting, strafing and all visual effects feel nice and fluid, feels just right. Right speed, frequency/rithm thing.
Boss fights are intense and if you are good and powerful you really feel like you carry the team.
Good measure of progression systems/sources to become more powerful.
Lots of different weapons, that level up and have random itemization bonuses to keep rerolling for a Godly one.
Enough variation on gameplay from the different skills from the different characters.
Well done, polished, technically high quality, good art/taste in graphics, music.
Quests and story is so so (good for most I guess), but the challenge is nice and ramps up and you feel like you are playing a well made AAA single player game campaign.
Where the game shines is the immersion shooting feeling, the setting, story/atmosphere, antagonists, etc all ties well together with the game design of having a bunch of other players around helping you shoot things.

About the P2W.
Its free. Competition is just boasting/bragging online of how much dps you can do, what bosses you can fight, how fast can you farm so much per hour, etc and maybe post videos on youtube and topics on steam/reddit. I think it will take months before people rank up TO MAX ("reincarnate" (they call "rank up") many times, which requires full level up of a character and thats just one of many you can do that, so even if you dont focus broadly on many characters it will take a long time to max). The stuff that you have to pay "energy activators" you can grind one every half a dozen hours, but you would have to grind anyway for the gold/items/resources anyway to keep upgrading things, so as you do, you focus on getting the energy activators as well and people who buy those will still be bootlenecked by the grind of money/resources, etc for the upgrades, so all in all, those who relativize and measure the "p2w" scale, if its "whale to catch" or things like that will feel relieved to know that while some things you can buy, others you would have to work for anyway, so might as well kill 2 birds with one stone (as you grind for energy activators you get the resources).

Better than Helldivers 2 in many aspects:
Better than Warframe and Destiny 2 in many aspects:

Specially on the gameplay, less freaky psychodelic pinball on steroids than Warframe, less pooped in my pants than Helldivers 2 and somewhat cooler mobility skills tightness than Destiny 2. Its actually 1 star more than Warframe/Helldivers 2 gameplay, but 0.5 star above than Destiny 2, being tightly fair.

Boss fights. They are amazing. They can suck if you get some slackers or new players or people who dont have a build they thought or upgraded their cards and stuff. But it starts fast, it is intense, doesnt take long, lots of special details to improve performance, where to aim, how to deal with boss mechanics, the whole destructible covers, getting ammo, helping ress people lol. Its the most worth activity of your time in this game, and all the grind you do is to show off and shine here and IT IS CHALLENGING.

Progression longevity, lots of "cards" to upgrade, lots of "reincarnations" with each character once they reach max level, which require some rare items that require some decent amount of grind for all resources, lots of random stats on weapons to keep looting until you get the good ones, leveling weapons, leveling alt characters for different purposes (bunny is good to farming some money, ajax is good for some quests, others are good for Bosses and things like that, so you probably are going to be leveling 3+ descendents and unlock others and then later get the "upgraded" version of them.

Its going to take (last) more time than Helldivers 2 grind to power cap with the player skill cap together, much more than Destiny 2, but less than Warframe, but its not going to break the challenge/difficulty curve like Warframe does.
progression power.

The difficulty scale system they have with the rewards % chance incentivize you to go higher, and then you fight some random bosses for the missions that quite give you a run for their money and if you are not careful with your resources, ammo, skills, cover, you could be toast in a few seconds.

The actual Boss fights zones, where you join with a small group and have to fight the boss are quite cool, because they measured player DPS and the boss HP and the time and the boss mechanics in such a way that you need like everyone to sort of do average and one or two need to do good to beat the Bosses.


Only inferior things to Helldivers 2 and Warframe/Destiny 2:
Helldivers 2 visual effects EXPLOSIONS, DESTRUCTIONS, GORE, the sheer awesomeness of the call downs, some weapons, the setting/atmosphere, the hype and success it had online, sales amount to keep the thing alive and making more in the future, etc is all good. The bugs/factions and missions on top difficulty level are MORE intense/challenging, so overall its worth your time better MOST OF THE TIME (but who knows if The First Descendant last difficulty scaling tweaks of the release version will not be up to par?), but it becomes irrelevant anyways after 6 weeks (when you cap both progression and player skill for Helldivers 2, for most people) or so and now many months after release its old and dead for gaming internet standards (for people migrating to what is new, fresh, the new internet event, new "game club)" and they Helldivers 2 didnt thought progression through (its lame, takes like 100 hours and you are done, a decent online game that wants to retains and monopolizes the players to itself has to take thousands of hours to cap power progression), and their gameplay without jetpacks/jumpjets/ground vehicles, ski mechanics, etc is janky, stucky, the animation knockback/fall down etc is not good.
Warframe 2 is too old, only those who started back then tasted it as they should, and the random purple cards ruined challenge, and it got "shadow abandoned" in favour of Soulframe, had shameless monetization, and progression, despite bulky and broad, felt limited (until they ruined with the random purple cards), pvp was an after thought, and the "difficult content" was always easy, because the gameplay too convulsive freaky spasmatic (I had a keyboard macro so I was always fly rolling like a pinball, it was lol, but too much).

Destiny 2 I cant talk much, as I saw it was lame from the first one, than the second one was popular to the casual, so to me it was like World of Warcraft of the genre. I respect people who like it, but to me its shallow banal boring. They have/had the best PVP though of this genre. But still, who wants to pvp like that matchmaking there are many options much better. So Destiny 2 was the fix of those who didnt got the Warframe bus over ten years ago.

Oh, I remembered just now, The Division, lol. Nah, lol, Just no. Know what I am saying? Ubisoft lame spongy unrealistic shooting HP pools, cant stand watching the ridiculousness of the thing in action for even a minute. Just a frankenstein that game.

Can you elaborate a bit more and go into greater detail about progression, story and gameplay.

[LORD]

A. Story to me is so so, so I wont bother. But Im "ahead of the curve", hardly get impressed, surprised, etc.

B. Progression is 1 granular enough (a little bit here and there every half hour at most), 2 vertical enough (one can be many times taller in power than others) and 3 horizontal enough (months). It is also 4 seasoned well amongst all activities and all activities are somewhat balanced in terms of fun.
So its a 4 out of 5 stars.
The only weakness on progression is the 5: ratio of time and effort is probably "hackable" still (hackable to me: once we figure out the best payouts per time and find out the weaknesses, exploits, methods, we blame the developer for the incongruency and imbalance of all possible pathways and the game dies within us, then we share and spread the disease to others and the game dies to all) for a veteran gamer.

They have to pay professionals to get the thing (player experience, the ubermensch will to power within power gamers need a developer who is ahead of the curve) under control from beggining to the end or suffer failures of audience.

C. I havent played all characters yet. But what I played and experienced, after all the tests, over a hundred hours, is that you can reach a hand-eye-mind focus state in your brain where you become one with your character, so you could say the GAMEPLAY SYNCHRONIZATION IS SUCCESFULL ABOVE A CERTAIN %. Transiency of man-machine to entertainment is smooth, unnoticeable. You become a mix of THE FLASH, SPIDER MAN, BATMAN, SUPERMAN, never feeling elderly, lame, pantless, embarassed, tired, sluggard, etc. You identify yourself with an attack helicopter. This drug effect is improved with progression and player skill learning curve. IT FEELS GOOD.
And it might even ruin your perception of fun for other games, past and present. So after using this "drug" the other ones wont satisfy. BE ADVICED. ITS FREE.

[Skillshot]

Originally posted by LORD:

But what I played and experienced, after all the tests, over a hundred hours, is that you can reach a hand-eye-mind focus state in your brain where you become one with your character, so you could say the GAMEPLAY SYNCHRONIZATION IS SUCCESFULL ABOVE A CERTAIN %. Transiency of man-machine to entertainment is smooth, unnoticeable. You become a mix of THE FLASH, SPIDER MAN, BATMAN, SUPERMAN, never feeling elderly, lame, pantless, embarassed, tired, sluggard, etc. You identify yourself with an attack helicopter. This drug effect is improved with progression and player skill learning curve. IT FEELS GOOD.
And it might even ruin your perception of fun for other games, past and present. So after using this "drug" the other ones wont satisfy. BE ADVICED. ITS FREE.

Add a semi-naked skin to the mix and you got your first decent waifu. :P And then you can try hand-eye all day.

[LORD]

Originally posted by Skillshot:

Originally posted by LORD:

But what I played and experienced, after all the tests, over a hundred hours, is that you can reach a hand-eye-mind focus state in your brain where you become one with your character, so you could say the GAMEPLAY SYNCHRONIZATION IS SUCCESFULL ABOVE A CERTAIN %. Transiency of man-machine to entertainment is smooth, unnoticeable. You become a mix of THE FLASH, SPIDER MAN, BATMAN, SUPERMAN, never feeling elderly, lame, pantless, embarassed, tired, sluggard, etc. You identify yourself with an attack helicopter. This drug effect is improved with progression and player skill learning curve. IT FEELS GOOD.
And it might even ruin your perception of fun for other games, past and present. So after using this "drug" the other ones wont satisfy. BE ADVICED. ITS FREE.

Add a semi-naked skin to the mix and you got your first decent waifu. :P And then you can try hand-eye all day.

You can shoot with guns too!

[LORD]

Its a good game.

[LORD]

Preparing snacks for later this night.

[LORD]

Are you hyped?

[LORD]

Are you guys ready for a good time?

[LORD]

I was right again.