This is the kind of game that is pretty good when you're a newbie but awful when you're a veteran. Digital Extremes proves time and time again that they only care about bringing new players in with new content that doesn't do anything to flesh out the """endgame""" experience, and the game is full of bloat content that isn't even worth doing in the first place as a result.

The monetisation is pretty solid though, all things considered.

Just stick like 100 - 200 hours in this game and never touch it again. That's about how long it's actually good for.

main story quest requires a mech
to get the mech, i have to craft every individual part of the mech, then craft the mech itself
to craft every individual part of the mech, i need specific resources
in order to get the specific resources, i need to farm the materials from separate instances in order to get them together
then i need to have the reputation to buy the blueprints
then i need 50 of the specific material (but oops the blueprint only makes 20 at a time)
then to get those original base materials from the other instances, i need to run around and mine ore veins - WHICH DO NOT GUARANTEE THE DROP I NEED - instead of engaging with the fun shooting/movement

this is all so i can get to the final chapter of the story. btw, if you complain about this, you'll get stockholm syndrome'd gamers telling you "IT USED TO BE WORSE IT'S FINE NOW" (btw they just added part of the grind to shops as of november 19th 2023 so that the grind is less obnoxious. this content came out in 2020.

while i get the game is grindy, the freemium mobile game shit didnt feel nearly so egregious until i had to do this. ive basically completely lost interest in the game bc i dont want to do this grind.

Feels weird doing some kind of review/journal for a game I'll likely still be playing years from now. But I feel safe saying it will remain a fave of mine. The only F2P that's ever clicked with me. The movement, the aesthetic, the systems, the story, all of it just works for my brain.

Sure it's got problems, everything does. The gameplay loop can be confusing for newcomers, but at the same time you're never missing out on anything. Nothing -bar a frame variant for people who bought DLC when it orignally launched- is locked off. Premium currency can even be got for free by grinding out missions and selling the spoils on warframe market.

I'd encourage anyone to give it a go. Become a Ninja, because we play free.

I’d rather have the 366 hours I’ve spent on Warframe to be curtailed off my remaining lifespan than showing on my Steam profile.

Never seen a game with such a disproportionate ratio of potentially cool tools : content where any of them matter for shit.
40+ characters, each having three skills and one ultimate. A robust card customization system that lets you change their attributes directly so the same healer can be played as a burst white mage on a long cooldown, a wide range party buffer or any other combination of strength vs range vs cost vs duration. Sixteen different elements to attach to your weapons, pretty shallow as they are simple colored bullets that will depleted the bad guys’s bars faster or slower, but they are there. Two firearms and one melee weapon. Absolute fuck all to use all of this in.

You suffer through an inane story for weird people really into reading codex entries for an entire solar system worth of missions where enemies ramp up from “easily one shot with a level 3 weapon” to “the same, but maybe you need to slap some cards on it”, and that’s the baseline of everything you’ll face with your level 1000 robot ninja. No dungeons, no raids, no bosses built around the power level of a midgame player who finished the story, let alone a well specced endgame one. Seriously, imagine a moba where you can only play 5v3 against bots in a single lane.

Okay, I’m only being 98% truthful. There’s a daily mission consisting of a random story quest with tacked on multipliers that resembles something a high level character may face; if you are lucky enough that the winner of the lottery is a boss battle, instead of a stealth mission for the fifth consecutive day, the game suddenly turns out pretty fun. To me, it happened exactly once.
There’s also a never-ending(?) arena, which they put in the game shortly before I dropped it,
where you need to beat a floor before the clock ticks 0 to progress and difficulty ramps up very fast, a genuinely good step in the right direction although these characters SCREAM team based synergies and MMO roles, a difficult DPS check may be appreciated but it will make me wonder what’s the point of Frames like Oberon nonetheless. This game has a weird fascination with infinitely scaling horde fights, before the aforementioned mode got in the generally accepted “endgame build showoff” mode was to sit in the basic Survival mission type, which doesn’t end until you physically exit the map, and sit there for LITERAL HOURS with a near immortal Frame like Inaros until enemies strong enough to put a dent on you popped up. Pure insanity.

At least this grind is alleviated by the much celebrated parkour system, it’s cute but it’s quickly solved by cycling through your three main forms of ground movements of jump, slide, and roll until you hit a slope, jump again pointing your crosshair towards the desired height, and activating your air thrusters to glide robo Max Payne style. Complex enough for a good chunk of the playerbase to get stuck at the “mission required to level up your account you can only attempt once a day” that made you high jump in place lol. What I’m saying is, it could’ve been worse, it could’ve been a cover shooter.

If you walk into any Warframe discussion the fanbase will be super fast to point at the very generous free to play formula as a sign of goodwill from the developers, and it’s admittedly very true: a 15 bucks expense turns you into a millionaire who can snatch any vaulted piece of gear that pops up in trade chat for a good while, and you are only a few good deals away to becoming an oil baron. It doesn’t balance the -10000 points lost from the insane Forma system, a craftable item necessary for high level weapon customization that is locked to a 24(real life)h timer. Either you have the foresight to always have your lab churning them out ever since your first day, in preparation for the endgame where you will burn through them, or 200 hours later you’ll bang your head against the wall as the two hours process of taking a new gun from zero to hero just became a five days endeavor.

Sad game for soccer dads who get excited when the post office rolls the number on the electronic billboards, happy to throw their ticket in the trashcan and go home when their turn is up rather than use the opportunity to make something of that wasted time. I don’t like it.

in the commonly mmo-shaped idea of them as endgame hardcore content, technically there’s bosses and every single mission is an instanced dungeon, but they’re still part of the dozing nightmare that is the main quest

it's at least better than destiny and borderlands. The movement feels great but the actual combat suffers from underpowered guns and overly simplistic melee despite the developers continuously reworking it. it's still just buttonmashing, you just have more contextual animations. This game also has really obtuse progression to the point where you need to have the wiki beside you at all times. But on the flipside, it's the reason warframe has one of the friendliest communities for this type of game.