I'm going to write a review about this game looking at it more as a F2P FPS than a Ghost in the Shell game. Yes its in the title. Yes the character models and things are there and people are getting annoyed because its missing some key aspects of the series.

But im going to cut that out and focus on the gameplay, mechanics and the pros and cons of it being currently in its Early Access state. Ive played going on 5 hours straight of matches while taking in the things I saw to help clear up any uncertainties people may have. (Be gentle its my first review and it's long)

Lets begin with the PROS that I found were good.

+Movement. It responds well. Decent running and movement animation. Even the action animations are solid. No bugs personally seen yet there

+Firefights are tricky in a good way since you cannot shoot through your own teammates and friendly grenades can kill you

+The look and feel of the game is pleasant and easy on the eyes. Yes people complain about the engine its on but its really quite decent.

+There is a market where you can spend in game currency (not NXcoins) to buy attachments, guns and other things. But so far, the things I can unlock through play are equal if not better than the things I can buy. Not to mention a laser accessory that I could unlock is 9900 GP to buy compared to a 44000 market one.

+As for weapons, each one has its prime situation. Yes the sniper is OP in damage. Yes the AR is better at medium range. Yes the SMG is lighter and allows you to be more agile. Every weapon has a field it excels in and overall its balanced decently well. "Oh man this is so stupid. To get a better weapon I need to spend 200k GP. What a piece of BS". Again, no you dont. You -can- buy it if you want to but the first weapon you unlock is a MP5 or whatever and its pretty decent boosting pretty much all stats less some damage(barely) and effective range from the starter. Pfff, who needs range on a high ROF close range SMG.

+Community. So far every room I have had the pleasure of joining has been nice, friendly and all around enjoyable. Well except for the one guy who apparently was getting away with his bad internet and one guy always seemed to be on the receiving end aha.

+Leveling and Currency. Now I'm not sure if it will stay like this but currently, as you level you get 50k GP to spend on things. "Wow! Thats a lot!” Why yes little Timmy it is. Seeing as you can get 500GP per loss up to 1000 on a win. Not that slow I'll say that much. You can level pretty fast as well. Of course getting more wins than losses speeds it up but I like to think with my current play time and level, I managed to average a little over a level in about an hour

PRO/CON

+-I personally like the skill system. But I’ll put this as a PRO/CON since it comes up a lot in other discussions. At the beginning of a match you automatically start with your tier 1 skill (200points). As you get kills/assists/do game mode objectives, you get points that refill that gauge to a max of 400 points for the tier 2 level of the skill

There are added benefits to saving up to tier 2 and not using your skill every time you can. FYI your skill has a cooldown meter to limit fast consecutive uses if you are on a bloody, messy, mass murdering killing spree. But during that time you may obtain points towards your next skill use. So its not all that bad. Even more reason to save up those precious points

I can see how people dislike it if your team is getting completely steam rolled and its hard to fill. But you automatically regen skill points until your skill bar reaches tier 1. Albeit slow, but its something.

+-Hitboxes. Ah yes, the double edged sword. I like to think that its both, in its current state, helpful and frustrating. I also believe its not just the hitbox but the weapon firing as well that is also a contributing factor. More so the former though. Many times have I tried to gun down someone running up some stairs at me to have him take 25%-50% damage to only knife me in the animated melee kill. But also to run down a hallway away from 3 enemies firing auto weapons at me to get away and lead them unsuspectingly into a pod of my own team for the assists. As I said, it works both ways. Hoping it will get tweaked soon

+-Mobile Agility AKA "Parkour". A little rough around the edges. You cant jump very high so you cant climb on top to many things to either get a vantage spot or cut corners. Granted at this stage its both good and bad. It currently in a way levels the field so everyone is even. There are prompts to press W+Space to "vault" over/up small ledges but some things I hoped were climbable were unfortunately not

+- Healing. Now some people are unhappy that you can't regenerate or heal completely. Cough Cough CoD Players Cough Cough. Well they are right up to a certain point. Now this game is listed as a Tactical Shooter if im not mistaken. So if you were able to just wait for your wounds to heal (looks at certain types of players) then get right back at it, where's the tactics? The stress of not taking damage? The thrill when you kill 3 people alone and survive with 3 hp left to only to feel useless afterwards because you will die to a flesh wound or graze of a bullet. Well fear not.

Remember how earlier above I mentioned Tier 2 abilities? Well some of those are shareable. "Shareable? How does that work?' Play the game yourself and figure it out. KIDDING. Some abilities once you reach tier 2 are able to be "Downloaded" by up to 3 other operatives. But how does this relate to healing you ask? Well one operatives has Nano Armor I believe its called or whatever. In short, it allows the user and 3 other operatives to gain increased armor and health regen during its duration at tier 2 or just the user at tier 1. I like to think of these operative as either support or tactical roles. Look, there's that word again, tactical. Tactics. Strategy.

Now for the more unhappy part

CONS

- Matchmaking Balancing. I have gone into a match or two where it started as 5v2 and was really one sided. Granted players were matched onto the other team to balance it out, but not until the game was half over with a 20 kill lead. Thats something else I would hope gets fixed pretty soon.

- Glitches(not in game). Some people, myself including, who got one of the early access packs with a character unlock have not/ did not get our free character unlocks at lvl 3 and lvl 5. Currently I have a ticket with this problem sent and am waiting for a response, but will update this if possible with an answer to it. (Edit - Recieved)

-Only a few map types. In Team Deathmatch at least, there are only 3 maps. With the right strategy and team cooperation, either side of a maps starting point can be a winner. Some are less advantaged as others but can be sorted out if you push far enough to rotate the respawn points of the enemy team around. Which also brings me to another CON

-Spawning. I wont lie, I have taken advantage of this. Every once and a while ill go off out of a firefight to flank in from behind the enemy to only end up at their current respawn spot to get a few easy respawn kills before they realize it. Im not proud of it, just extorting this unfortunate algorithm of respawning in an area with enemies around. As I mentioned above the respawn point will move once too many get too close. But one, maybe even two people get there, then they get a few free kills before it realizes and moves.

Honestly, I really do enjoy playing this game and I really like the concept, structure and form this game has. Sure its still a bit bare bones and what not. Its early access, give it a bit of a break. Things will be worked on, added, fixed, adjusted and tinkered with as it grows.

But if you read all of this or even just took the time to skim it and pick out the certain things you wanted to know, thank you for your time.

Overall Score - 8/10

After over 1 year of playing the CBT of this game, and being a part of the community, and doing my best offering suggestions to make the game better, instead... nothing changes or is made worse:

-Weapons Are still Not balanced properly, no damage drop off (pistols are the only exception)
-Utility Grenades are STILL almost completely useless
-Stats are inconsistent and almost meaningless, the netcode that has gone from good to bad to TERRIBAD does not help this (Latest patch seems to have addressed the hitreg issue, not sure for how long though...)
-SMGs are still the best overall weapon in the game thanks to high RoF, low Recoil and being able to oneshot Headshot from 50 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ meters, just like assault rifles :/
-Wonky desynced hitboxes and misaligned scopes and sights
-Not having a Public Test Server SEPERATED from the main game for Random Dive matches where it can properly be tested...
-Removing Dedicated Playlists and treating ALL players like Guinea Pigs
-Treating us players NOT just like guinea pigs, but Piggy Banks as well with this nonsensical new F2P model~!!!
-More grind than ever, low XP gains and cutting rewards earned overall (you now get 20k GP instead of 50k per level, the grind starts to get awful by the time you get to level 20 too, and there are supposed to be 80 Levels TOTAL?!!), making market weapons more expensive (practically tripled in GP costs in the latest update), all so they can sell Boosters, Starter packs and FREAKING OPERATIVE LICENSES WITH NX?!! WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUU~!!!!
-Daily Challenges that do nothing to mitigate the grind :/
-Chips are still overall useless and now act as another form of GP sink, WHY?! is there not enough to spend GP on already?!!
-Selling Chips is meaningless since you get so little GP from them, you may as well just keep em as trophies...
-Empty Promises of better Content and PvE, and removing a way to test guns and attachments for free before buying, and not adding it back since...

With The crummy netcode, No Dedicated playlists and the Empty Promise that the game will get better, just do yourselves a favor and don't do what I did... Stay far FAR away from this game. I thought it would've been a good game, but it's just another ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Early Access Game trying to Milk the crap out of the Licensce it's based on, Master Minded and Ruined by the King of Greedy ass F2P Games itself, The Corporation from Hell, Corporate Commander's one of many BS and money hungry Branches, THE ONE, THE ONLY, Nexon... I should've known better, I wish I could refund all the money I spent on it, but I will instead just warn you NOT to buy into this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!!

https://youtu.be/BP-r6rzIWtI

For all intents and purposes my 'Yes' recommendation is lukewarm, will re-assess as the beta continues.
Is it worth 5$? Sure.
Will I still be playing it six months from now? Maybe.
As with any game on the market, do your own research before dropping any serious money on it.

Pros:
-Ability System - I like the character abilities and the focus on team-play that results from having a good spread of abilities on the team.
-Original English VAs - Might seem like something minor in most games, but it shows dedication to be true to the source material to get the voice actors from the series to work on lines for the game.
-Teamplay Oriented - Not much to say here. If you pick your characters to have a balanced spread of abilities and play to their advantage, then you'll be much more successful.
-Interesting Approach to Advancement - Unlocking more mod slots as you play and having post-game drops that degrade over time but allow you to enhance your characters.

Cons:
-Therm-optic stealth isn't a blanket ability that everyone can use. - It would be much more interesting if the Major could hack -and- control enemy Think Tanks instead of being the only character able to cloak.
- Can't Cook Grenades - You can pull the pin and hold it forever, it still won't effect how long it takes to explode after tossing it.
-Character Stacking - Anyone who has ever played TF2 can attest, having a team full of snipers is never a good sign. Having a team of eight people all playing the same character with the same ability isn't any better.
-Map Size - Not all of the maps suffer from this, but TDM levels are especially cramped.
-Useable Space - Some of the maps are of a decent size, however the usable area is very -very- flat. Sure there are sniper rifles in the game but good luck finding a decent vantage point to make good use of them.
-Spawn Protection - TDM is the main culplrit here, if you have enough people with cybersentries on your team you can lockdown a spawnroom and turn it into free kills until the game is over.
-Freedom of Movement - The contextual movement system is alright, but when you can't go up a ladder because you were jumping and have to land then look up before climbing the ladder it just slows everything down.
-Togusa doesn't have a Mateba.

A huge update is rolling out soon, meaning this review is subject to change. Keep a look out.

Every time this game updates I expect something to improve and really, that's not the case. My main issues with GitS: SAC - First Assault Online (apart from the ridiculous name) are as follows:

-Hit registration and lag compensation are horrible and it's been that way for a long time. This game has some very large issues with players being hit behind walls or before they can see enemies. Their most recent solution was to make this even worse with the upside of stopping laggers from rubber-banding- making the big issue worse to solve a smaller one. The hitreg is so bad that people are constantly accusing others of wallhacking and/or whining about hitreg ingame.

-The large and growing weapon selection is pointless because the game has had the f2p policy of making everything require ingame credits, so you must either grind like crazy to get anything or buy everything with real-world cash. Attachments are costly and can only be used for the single weapon you purchase them for. The level-up rewards used to give 50k credit vouchers every level, but now they give 20k. Operatives (characters you play as who only differ in their special abilities) are expensive and you only receive a few vouchers at the start and from your first few levels. Unless you feel like dishing out a few hundred USD, you will never experience the full roster of characters and weapons this game has to offer- which brings me to my next complaint.

-The weapons all have random spread and most OHKO on headshot. This makes high ROF (rate of fire) weapons extremely likely to headshot you (but if they don't it's fine, kills take 3-4 shots. 3 if you're using an AR w/ a damage barrel and hit center mass, 2 if you're using an MG with damage barrel. Most snipers one-hit anywhere when within range and shotguns use this funky mechanic where their spread reduces while ADS (aiming down sights) as if they magically get a barrel choke, meaning every shot is essentially a prayer to RNGesus). Certain weapons are extremely easy to use and get adopted very quickly- it happened with the C30 and later the f2020 (both ARs with high damage and rates of fire). People have been complaining for an f2020 nerf ever since it was released and it still has not happened. TTK (time to kill) has been too high since release and nothing has been done to change that.

-Missions with player rewards tend to be extremely time-intensive/grindy and offer meager rewards. Examples include getting grenade triple kills, getting a very high number of kills with grenades and 2 specific pistols, planting an insanely high number of bombs (and defusing) in demolition mode (where you might be lucky to plant 1-3 times and defuse once or twice unless you try to do nothing but plant and defuse). Weapon rewards from these missions that are already owned by the player means the player gets essentially nothing from the mission- no refunds on bought weapons/attachments. When an expensive weapon skin was a mission reward, people argued that since it cost 10 USD on the market, it was justified. I argue that there's no reason for a simple weapon reskin to cost that much besides greed. Even if 10 USD was fair, think of it as less than 2 hours of minimum wage pay. How long will the mission take? 4-5 hours? Maybe more- and if your game time counted as work, you'd be getting paid a fraction of minimum wage for your time. That's insulting. That's not all, either.

-The new ingame gambling system is disgusting. About a day after it dropped, I'd already heard of multiple experiences where people had funneled a lot of money into it and gotten nothing. There's now a third kind of ingame currency meant to be generated from the meager refunds you get off items you didn't want. It's like they took the pointless gambling aspect of CS:GO and then removed all other methods of item aquisition like trading and the market. Skins (reskins for guns) and outfits (reskins/outfit changes to operatives) are presented as being extremely valuable but are really clearly just a cash grab.

-The game is horribly optimized, takes ages to load, suffers from stutters, and looks 6 years old to boot.

-There are only 2 server joining options. The big one is dive, which means that the game selects whatever server and mode for you. You will be sent back to servers you wanted to leave.The other is private match, where you can play on servers with next to no one besides 1v1s that are full. No community server or server browser option has been implemented.

-Maps are small and suffer from annoying chokepoints as hard as any tactical shooter- except this game is trying to be paced more run-and-gun. The result is an odd mix of campers and people hopping around firing automatics from the hip. It's frustrating and makes modes like Terminal Conquest impossible to carry because of the inevitable wall of enemies suppressing you from halfway across the map at all times. There are moments where you can get away with satisfying multikills, utilizing your secondary and such, but die from it because some scrub respawned behind you and killed you with a random headshot. This might not reflect everyone's experience but I know I'm guilty of taking advantage of bad respawns and stupidly long lines of sight to get kills far too easily and still I hate when it happens to me.

-No matter how many times we complain about something and recommend good features like server browser, the devs fail to respond. On the discussion boards, the community manager Lumos is happy to respond to a good number of posts but I haven't seen this game take any steps towards being noteworthy.

I'd like to like this game but I can't. I'll still check it out after major updates to see if it's improved, but my hopes are not high. It's another Asian FPS cashgrab.

There's much more that could go into this review but I've used enough space as is. If you'd like to know more, add me and I'll answer any questions.

edit: will be doing ingame testing to confirm map problems etc. nothing has improved yet but I've stirred up some interest with this review.

AVOID this game!

I would love to recommend this game. It was really fun when it launched but unfortunately as is the way with most games these days the publisher has gone out of their way to destroy it.

Nexon recently implemented changes to what weapons characters can use, you used to be able to use any weapon with any character but then they limited weapons to certain characters. They did this without giving you the option to reset which characters/weapons you had spent all of your unlock points on. Meaning you potentially had weapons that couldn't be used by the characters you had unlocked.

Furthermore after you reached an account level of double digits these unlock points were very hard to come by and reward drops were few and far between. Instead of letting you reset your unlocks you would have to make a whole new account to get more unlock points to buy the correct weapons for your characters. Or, of course, you could spend real money for more unlock points.

Myself, I already put money into the game for skins and didn't want to put any more in just to buy characters I didn't want to play just so I could use my previously unlocked weapons. After a well-deserved community backlash over these changes Nexon decided that rather than fixing these problems by rolling back changes or otherwise making any real effort to fix the issues this caused, not even by offering resets, that they would instead end support for the game in all countries other than japan, shut down the servers and laugh their way to the bank.

This was a genuinely fun game that has once again been ruined by a greedy publisher.

AVOID this game, hell, avoid Nexon.

A very interesting and addictive shooter. This ain't CS:GO, this ain't CoD, this is Ghost in the Shell. Probably you can feel the game better if you have watched the related anime. I haven't, but that does not affect me to enjoy the game. One thing I would like to point out is that the recoil pattern (if ever existed) is not as regular as CS:GO or CoD so spray and pray is not the right way to fire unless the enemy is 3 meters away from you. Snipers are weird mainly because the sensitivity for zooming in and zooming out are different, which may take some time to familiarize.
So far as Early Access, NOT P2W AT ALL. All weapons, attachments and characters can be and can ONLY be obtained by spending non-cash in game points which you can earn by simply playing games. What can be purchased using cash? I don't know, because it is totally unnecessary.
Despite that there are not a huge amount of players playing this game, you can still find a lobby in 4 seconds, whenever and wherever. Sometimes teams are not balanced, but as game goes on, more players will fill in.
Lacks a lot. So far there are only 3 game modes. TDM, which we all know how it works; Demolition, which refers to Search & Destroy in CoD and CrossFire which is also the most classic mode in CS; Terminal Conquest, which is a variant of Domination from CoD. Differently, there are 5 terminals linearly on the map. The game begins with the third which is the middle terminal and whichever team has 3 more points than the other team or has 5 points wins.
Not so many. I'd say there are about 15-20 weapons in total. HOWEVER, you have to use the certain weapon if you want to unlock attachments for that weapon. And to be honest, there are a LOT OF attachments for weapons. Some of them can be purchased directly from in game shop, others you have to unlock them first by using the weapon and then purchase the unlocked attachment from your inventory. The order of attachment unlocking is fixed, meaning that you have to unlock the first attachment before unlocking the next. This is also the main reason why I'm still using my default MP5 after playing this game for 10 hours. THERE ARE STILL LOCKED ATTACHMENTS FOR MY MP5!
Like I said before, you need to unlock them using licenses purchased from in game shop using non-cash points. But if you are lucky enough, you can earn that license from daily login reward. There are several different characters, every single one of which has unique abilities, so pick the one you feel the most comfortable with. By using one character over time, you can progress the slot unlocking for that character and thus equip more chips onto that character.
This would be a F2P game eventually so they did use some rewards to hook people up. Daily login reward is the most common one, whch does appear in this game. You can get different things in daily login reward, from GP (in game non-cash points), to EXP boosts, to GP boosts, and some other stuff. Don't look down upon those rewards. Yes I admit that most of time you will only get small bonuses from those rewards like 500GP or 10% EXP boost or 10% GP boost. But believe it or not, I used to get a 500% EXP boost for once and that thing helped me level up 3 times in 1 hour. All boost rewards from daily login reward last for 1 hour once you use it, so if you just want to play for 5 minutes and take a nap, don't use it until you have enough time to play the game.
After each match you will be asked to pick one reward out of three. Totally random. It could be GP boost or EXP boost which applies to the current match, but the thing probably you really want the most is chips. So far chips can only be obtained from after match rewards. Another thing worth noting is that those chips are not "usable permanent". Of course if you earn one and don't use it then it will be permanent, but there is a duration for each chip, as long as you bind one chip to a character, you cannot take it out until the duration reaches 0 and it would be destroyed automatically. I didn't really calculate the wearing speed of chips but I would say that each chip can last for about 3 matches. And yes if you have multiple chips equipped, they will wear at the same time.
So far I have played this game for 10 hours and I didn't see many salty/toxic players in game. There are b**ches, but not so many. So if you want to enjoy the game, you can.
Optimization is always the big problem for F2P games, no exception for this one. This, of course, is not a problem at all if you are using a high-end computer or laptop. But when you know that your laptop can run Black Ops 3 at 100FPS but only 50FPS for this game, you will sure realize that there is something wrong.
Watch where your bullets go. Headshots do a ridiculous amount of damage. If you put an entire magazine into an enemy and he still killed you using one bullet, that's why. Aim for head, ALWAYS.
Like I said, overall a very interesting and addictive game. This may not be those games that you can play non-stop for several hours, but you just have to play it every day once you started. If you do not feel spending too much money for video games, check out this one and maybe Dirty Bomb (which already became semi-P2W since cases with better chance to get more powerful stuff can only be purchased with real money). You won't regret.
Finally, they added NX Points, a.k.a. cash currency. Yeehoo, P2W garbage! No, not really, look at what you can purchase with NX Points. Weapon skins, purely cosmetic; character skins, purely cosmetic; operative (just to say character in a fancy way) licenses, not cosmetic. Well, you don't really know which operative is the best, do ya?
Also, you can now obtain "super rare" after-match rewards. If you happen to get one, the capsule (or whatever you want to call those three things that contain after-match rewards) will show in the middle of the screen and you need to click on it one more time. The one I got was a 500% EXP boost. Result? Levelled up after that game.
Auto-balance system is now fully functional. Before each match this system will rearrange players in the lobby so that both teams have similar competence.
But also, the update screwed my graphic resolution up. I had to change the resolution to the native resolution of my screen, but then the game just crashed. But after restarting the game, resolution just showed correctly.
Another flaw? Oh yeah yeah, optimization. This update also made the optimization much worse. Severe frame drops happen every single minute. Maybe you think that I'm being picky, but I'm really not. My laptop can run Black Ops 3 much smoother (like, 100-120FPS) on highest graphic settings, but after I changed all graphic settings of this game to highest, I can only get like 40-70FPS. That does not mean that this game is unplayable, but think about severe frame drops when you are shooting an enemy, yeah, it's THAT annoying.
Let's talk about something good. 3 new weapons has been added into in game shop. Again, GP purchase only. 1 new map has been added. Also, a new operative has been added into the game, with defense shield equipped.
Overall, a pretty solid update.
Ping number was added into game, really nice. Also, the optimization is worse. I wonder how they made that.

I've enjoyed this game and it is easy to recommend to try as it is free without having pay to win elements, since everything except skins can be unlocked through play.

Good things are that it is a mix of CS and TF2, where special talents can create some fun tactical depth and teamplay. Ultimately, it's a good fast shooter that allows you to quickly play a fun match and that's why I like it.

However, there are significant issues caused by attacker-client-side hit detection which will eventually irritate you. For instance, even in a recorded video I've died to a single body shot from an AR when I had 110% health... which is impossible, but the attacker's client must have disagreed due to latency. Events like this will occur regularly and it will continually frustrate players.

There are also class balance issues that will continue to get worse until corrected. You may play against an entire team of characters that have indicators of your position(Saito), essentially a legal wall hack. This will suck. Also, when such a skill exists it is hard to determine when someone is really cheating. One character will not receive points at all for using their skill(Maven) which is really confusing. Some gameplay elements are completely countered by some characters(Batou vs Tachikoma.) Some skills(invis camo) and items(smoke grenades) are completely countered by cursor targeting showing enemy names.

Of course, at this point it is in 'open beta' phase, so there is hope things can be improved... but on the other hand there are already worries about power-creep with some of the recently released weapons. Despite all this I still recommend you give this game a try, as there's nothing to lose.

It's a real shame, I really did love this game, even though it had many flaws and annoyances. But after this latest patch, I really can't recommend it. For people who have been playing the game for a long while, most of us are likely going to disapear now. Because this latest update broke so many things and just straight up screwed people over on other things.

Millions upon millions of GP wasted. Many many hard hours of grinding and working for your weapons. Only to be broken/wasted because they wanted to revamp everything, and didn't have the common courtesy to give 'early adopters' some kind of compensation for such a massive change to how the game functions.

We ruined our own game. So now, rather than just giving back the version you all love, we are going to have a little fit and then take the game away. We've got your money anyway. HA! HA!

How to become rich in 7 simple steps:
1. Release a good concept of a game.
2. Charge money for the game.
3. then release it as F2P and sell microtransictions.
4. abandon the game then cancel it completely.
5. change the development studio name.
6. release the game again after changing it's name and some graphics.
7. Repeat from NO 2.