A couple of years ago, if you would have told me that one of my favorite games of all time would be a free to play game, I would tell you to use your abilities to predict the lottery, not tell people what their favourite games will be. But you would have been right. The Free To Play model used to be synonymous with an unfair Pay To Win System, where the player who spends more money is going to win. However, There has been a shift in the industry over the last couple of years. And Warframe is one of the big examples of that. Today, I will tell you why I feel that way, and most importantly, if warframe is something you should check out.
In Warframe you have your own ship that acts as your central hub. From here you can access most functions without having to go through menus to get there. You can start mission with the starmap, customize your equipment from the arsenal, build new weapons in the foundry, etc. From here you can also access your Clan Dojo. If you have any experience with online games you can guess what a Clan is. But for those who don’t know, your clan is just a group of players that got together to reap the benefits of being in a clan. The clan Dojo is basically the base of your Clan. Most games only have a menu where you can access the functions of your clan, guild, or whatever it is called in that particular game. And you even get to customize these Dojos to your liking. Don’t get me wrong, this is not some game selling feature that can make or break the game, but it’s this attention to detail that takes Warframe from being a good game to being a great game.
Once you start your mission from the star map, you get thrown into a semi-randomly generated level on the particular planet you chose. That means that there are multiple areas that get grouped together randomly to give some variety. There are several different mission types, but I won’t get into those in this video. But what I will talk about is the amazing movement and combat system that is in place in Warframe. Warframe does an amazing job at making the player feel powerful while still not robbing him of his freedom. The movement is free flowing and there are loads of ways to get rid of your enemies. You have a lot of variety in your weapons that influences gameplay. It’s hard for me to describe the gameplay with just words, but just know that it definitely is one of the best a game has to offer.
Progression is a lot of times overlooked as a huge part of games today, especially games with RPG elements like Warframe. There are games that are solely based on progression. Take Clicker Games for example, the reason these games are popular is not because of amazing Gameplay or a deep story, but because of the constant sense of progression. Getting progression right is very difficult but it could ultimately make or break a game. You have to provide enough so that the players don’t get frustrated but you can’t give the player too much or otherwise it’s gonna get boring. Warframe gets it right for me. Different people will have differing opinions. As for me i like games where you have to work for what you get. While Warframe can be very grindy, I still think it’s fair. Even the free to play model is fair but more on that later. I will now tell you a little bit about how progression in warframe works. Your Warframe is basically your class. There are 34 different ones, not including the prime versions which are just better versions of the normal ones. You also have over 300 weapons that you can collect. They are split into 3 categories, primary, secondary and melee. You can level your Warframes and your weapons up to level 30. after that you can’t level them anymore. You gain xp from leveling your weapons and warframes which in turn levels your character. Leveling your character allows you to use more weapons. But to get the most out of your equipment, you have to use mods. There are around 840 mods in the game that allow you to customize your loadout. If this sounded complicated, then that’s because it is. And this is just scratching the surface. I strongly recommend watching some beginner guides and keeping the wikia page open while playing helps as well. The learning curve is steep.
If I was your typical reviewer, I would have played the game 20 hours, called it a day and
told you that Warframe doesn’t really have a story. But since I’m not and I actually played the 2nd Dream and War Within I will tell you that the Story and Lore are surprisingly interesting. I can’t give away too much because you have to experience these yourself and I would strongly recommend not looking up anything regarding those quests. It will take a long time to get them but It’s worth it. But let’s talk a little bit about the world of Warframe. Warframe is set in our solar system sometime in the future. There are 2 main factions fighting for the system, namely the Corpus and Grineer. You are a Tenno, an ancient race of warriors that have been awakened after being asleep for a long time. You are neutral and will work with and against these to factions for the overall good of the system. That just the gist of it. It’s hard to say a lot without spoiling stuff. You should definitely make your own opinion but just know that it is going to take a while for the story to get going.
If this game wasn’t free to play, I would now talk about whether It’s worth the price. But instead I will talk about the Free to Play model and whether It’s fair or not. As I said before, I do believe that the free to play model is very fair. You have a premium currency that you can purchase with real money. Platinum, as the currency is called, can also be acquired by trading with other players. So once you get platinum you can buy pretty much anything. The only thing that you have to play real money for are the community made skins, where the creators get a cut from the earnings through steam. But It does give you incentives to spend real money. Which may be a pro or a con for some people. One of which are the inventory slots. Players starting out will have it harder to earn platinum that is required to buy inventory slots. You have 2 Slots for your warframes, and I believe 4 weapon slots. If you want to have new weapons or warframes you have to sell old ones. Selling warframes is not something you should do as a beginner, since all of them have their special use case and you will be happy to have them if you discover that use case.
Warframe is a multi-player game, so of course we have to talk about It’s social aspects. First of, it’s a PVE game. While there Is a PVP mode, most people don’t play warframe for that. As a result of the game being mainly PVE, the players aren’t competing against each other. You are happy when you are matched with a good player with great gear. While in a PVP game you wouldn’t like playing against stronger opponents. This leads to a less toxic and generally more helpful community. There are loads of players who are willing to help beginners. Your best bet is joining a decently sized clan that accepts beginner players, since those players will be able to answer most of your questions.
If you commit to a game long term you hope that the game will have good developer support as long as you are playing. You want more than the devs just keeping the servers alive, you want improvement of the core mechanics and content expansions to keep the game fresh. Warframe definitely has that. The game that went into open beta 5 years ago (and still hasn’t left it btw), is completely different from, the game we have today. You want this kind of support from all of your games. Unfortunately you do not get this with most games. Ultimately, there are few Developers left that commit to their player base like this, so we have to appreciate the ones that do.
Thanks for reading! I will be posting a video review of this in the following days.
Here is my youtube.
