Warframe | a Review
originally published on 13/12/2024;
Hello everyone, I am the flipping space ninja, G.E.M.Simov, a being whose mastery has not yet been tested, and today I am going to tell you all about “Warframe”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Warframe is a game about being a flipping space ninja who also happens to have guns and weird, funky magic spells. In it, the Player takes control of a particular Warframe (for new Players the three out of which the Player gets to pick are Excalibur, Mag and Volt) and goes on missions.
As a mission begins, the Player is shown an animation of their ship flying toward the mission site, and then another animation of their Character arriving in the area the mission will take place in. The Player Character(PC) is situated, roughly, in the middle of the screen, while the Player gets to move their mouse around and move the camera, which pivots around the PC. Everything occurs in a 3D environment that is not only horizontal, but also quite vertical in many cases.
The Player gets to control their Warframe with the WASD keys (for movement around the map), whilst also being able to spring by holding down the Shift key, being able to Crouch by holding down the Control key, being able to jump by pressing the Spacebar and a plethora of other mobility options that rely on combining others.
The Player can, while sprinting, press the Control key to make their Warframe slide. The Player can, while standing or moving, tap the Shift key to roll in the direction that their Warframe is facing, or the direction in which they are moving. If the Player presses the Spacebar while already in the air, their Warframe will perform an air-based jump. If the PC is crouched and the Player presses the Spacebar, the Warframe will launch itself at high speed in the direction the camera is pointed at.
Additionally, if the Player is holding down the appropriate button to move towards a wall, and has either issued a jump command previously, or their PC is in the air for another reason, can press the Spacebar again to perform a wall jump, which can be repeated any number of times as long as the PC is up against a wall and the Player is issuing the correct command.
On top of that, while the PC is in the air, the Player can press the Right Mouse Button(RMB), and hold it down, to make their Character glide through the air, slowing their vertical movement considerably but not reducing their horizontal movement, allowing them to move a lot more.
Those are just some of the movement options that the Player has at their disposal, and they are all the most important element of Warframe. This game is, as mentioned, about being a flipping space ninja, and it has put in as much work as possible in ensuring that the Player can make their Character move just like a ninja. As a result of that, the sheer act of moving around in Warframe is one of the most enjoyable and entertaining parts of the game, period. That is, already, a very, very good sign.
What comes after that, though? After that comes combat, which is the second most important part of Warframe (and being a flipping ninja). The Player has, at their disposal, a Primary Weapon, a Secondary Weapon and a Melee weapon. The basic idea of them is that Secondary Weapons are treated as side-arms, featuring mostly pistols, and can be used with one hand, or when downed, whereas Primary Weapons can only be used with two hands and are, generally, the main force in the Player’s arsenal, the main feature among them being rifles.
Lastly, there’s the Melee Weapon, which is, actually, the most powerful out of the three, but is limited to being usable only in proximity of an enemy, thus making it less safe to utilize. Those tend to be swords, katanas, and other, funkier alternatives.
By default, every mission starts with the PC holding onto their Primary Weapon - it is equipped and in use - and to fire, the Player needs only press the Left Mouse Button(LMB). The Player also gets the option to use the RMB as a means of looking down the sights of the weapon, zooming in and making it easier to aim at distant enemies. To reload their weapon, the Player must press the R button.
If the Player wants to swap weapons, to their Secondary, the Player must press the F key. The Secondary Weapon works in the exact same manner as the Primary Weapon. Regardless of which Weapon is in use, the Player can always perform an attack with their Melee Weapon by pressing the E key. The Player can also swap to their Melee Weapon by holding down the F key until their Warframe procures its Melee Weapon. Upon doing that, the Player cannot fire with either their Primary or Secondary Weapons by pressing the LMB, but can enter a guard stance by holding down the RMB, which allows them to block projectiles, shockwaves and attacks that they are facing.
Additionally, by pressing the Middle Mouse Button(MMB), and having their Melee Weapon in use, the Player can perform a Heavy Attack, which does more damage than a normal attack but has a long windup animation, leaving the Player open for attacks.
On top of that, there are options for combos while attacking with a Melee Weapon - those are relatively simple, but they still work, allowing the Player to utilize different attacks that might affect enemies who would, otherwise, not be within reach. That happens by holding down a particular movement button (out of the WASD quartet) and pressing the E button at nearly the same time, which will make the PC start performing the combo. The combo can be finished by continuing to press the E button, or it can be started again by waiting for a bit and then performing the same maneuver.
There are many types of Melee Weapons, each with different move-sets, which allow for different combos.
Lastly, but not least, when it comes to things that the Player can do in combat, they can use their Warframe’s Abilities. Abilities require Energy to use, of which the Player’s Warframe has a limited amount that, normally, does not regenerate by itself. There are 4 active Abilities per Warframe (activated with buttons 1 through 4), and one passive, with each doing something different. As an example, the Excalibur Warframe’s abilities allow it to: dash in a direction and deal heavy damage to an enemy, and if there is another enemy in the vicinity repeat the process until there are no more undamaged (by that Ability) enemies left; blind enemies in the vicinity, stopping them from attacking for a short duration; deal massive damage to enemies in the vicinity; equip a special Melee Weapon that deals VERY high amounts of damage, has a special moveset and fires off a projectile with each attack, which projectile can hit multiple enemies and does similarly large amounts of damage. Lastly, the Excalibur’s passive Ability is to attack 10% faster when using swords and to deal 10% more damage when using swords.
There are, of course, even more things that the Player can make use of - such as consumables that they access by pressing the Q button, which brings up a wheel that features all equipped consumables (by default there are none), which can grant the Player and their allies Energy, grant them Health, summon friendly units to help in a fight, and so on. On top of that, following the completion of a particular mission, the Player unlocks the Ability to use Transference, which allows them to momentarily whip out an entirely different Character, with entirely different Abilities and attacks, to wreak havoc upon their enemies, which requires a fully charged Transference bar and the pressing of the button 5.
In short, there is a lot of stuff that can be done in Warframe, but that is not all. Already, the reader might be noticing possible avenues for improvement - and indeed, Warframe features many Primary, Secondary and Melee Weapons for collection, as it does many Warframes, and a plethora of consumable items.
Many of them are obtainable by doing missions, however not directly. While playing through a mission, the Player might discover a Blueprint - which is an item necessary for the actual collection of a Weapon, Warframe or consumable. Once obtained, the Player must successfully finish the mission, otherwise anything they might have collected while on the mission is lost, and must return to their ship.
There, they must interact with their ‘Foundry’, and navigate a number of menus to find the Blueprint they have collected. In the Foundry, the Player can use a Blueprint to craft an item, if they have all the necessary items required for the crafting process. Some items, such as consumables and some Weapons, might only require resources. Other items, such as Warframes and some Weapons, require special parts, which parts are crafted via other blueprints which, in turn, require resources.
How are resources obtained? And how are blueprints obtained? As mentioned, some blueprints can be obtained by killing enemies, or completing objectives, during missions. Other blueprints are awarded upon successfully completing a mission. Others yet must be purchased from the in-game store, but the way that they are accessed is so convoluted that it is possible for a Player to be unable to figure out what to do. That is a Presentation related issue, but it is also an indication of the issues that plague Warframe’s Gameplay.
To buy a blueprint from the in-game store, the Player must navigate through the store’s many menus, find the desired item, notice that the currency beneath it is the Premium Currency (Platinum) - of which the Player is likely to not have enough - and then click the item itself. By doing so, the Player will be presented with the option to buy the whole, finished item for Platinum, or the option to buy just a Blueprint for the item, with the normal currency (Credits).
This is far too convoluted for it to be reasonable, and more on that will be said in the Presentation segment of this review, but for now - it’s not very user-friendly.
Resources, on the other hand, can also be purchased in the in-game store, in exchange for some Platinum, or they can be obtained by killing enemies and completing mission objectives. There are many types of resource, and some are only found on certain missions.
Now, a bit more about that - the first available mission is on the Planet Earth. The subsequent so-and-so missions are also on the Planet Earth, and then the Player is able to unlock access to another pair of Planets. Unlocking access to other Planets requires the performance of certain tasks, such as the completion of a particular mission or a particular quest, as well as, sometimes, the achievement of a slightly challenging endeavor.
By unlocking new Planets, the Player unlocks new resources and new opportunities to obtain blueprints. That acts as a progression system - which planet has the Player reached? - as each mission has a level, and the further along the progression line the Planet is, the higher the level of the missions on it. As an example, while missions on Earth might be level 6, missions on Neptune can be level 30.
So, resources are tied to the Planet the mission is located on, but they can also be tied to mission types themselves - as the only source of the Cryotic resource are “Excavation” type missions, regardless of the Planet they are on, but then no other type of mission will net the Player any Cryotic.
Now, back to crafting - now that the Player has resources and Blueprints, they can craft something… But the process lasts anywhere between 1 minute and 72 hours. Consumables get to be most lenient, with some of them kindly becoming crafted after 8 hours, while most Weapons and parts for Warframes and Weapons take 24 hours. Warframes themselves take a staggering 72 hours. Why is that so? Because the Player can spend Platinum (the Premium Currency) to instantly finish the crafting process.
But we are not done yet. The fellas behind Warframe have devised a devious plan that literally necessitates the purchase of Platinum if the Player wants to progress - because aside from there being progression through unlocking Planets, there is also progression through “Mastery”, which relies on the Player leveling up their items.
So, when killing enemies and completing objectives during missions, if the Player’s Warframe and Weapons (as well as Companion) are not at level 30, they will earn Affinity. Affinity is earned by using the Weapon or Companion to land a killing blow on an enemy, and it works in a very odd manner. There are certain sources of Affinity - such as pickups that might drop from killing enemies or opening some containers - which grant their Affinity quantity to all non-level 30 equipment the Player has. The same happens with objective completion bonuses.
However, Affinity earned via kills does not work like that - it is exclusive to the Weapon used to kill the enemy, even if the Weapon in question is at level 30. That is an incredibly odd, and incredibly bothersome mechanic that forces the Player into using their level 0 Weapons, which are impressively weak due to a number of factors, and which are, most likely, also just bad by default (again, due to a number of factors I will get into later). To level up a new Weapon, the Player is forced to play in a very particular manner, to do particular missions that they might have no benefit to doing aside from the Affinity they will be able to get for their Weapon, and are also forced to ignore the good elements of the Gameplay.
For, while leveling up a Weapon, the Player should not be dashing around like a maniac, nor does the Player get to experience any sort of power fantasy or challenge - instead, the Player must stand still and shoot at enemies until the enemies die, with there being no real possibility of the Player dying if they are doing a low level mission, and instead they are just wasting time.
Why is that so? In part because the game wants to sell Players Affinity boosters, which double the amount of Affinity received, in part because it is just poorly designed. But here we have another instance of creating an inconvenient, or straight up bad mechanic, with the sole goal of forcing the Player into paying to circumvent it. We had a look at crafting at the obtuse wait-times, now we get to see leveling up being inconvenient and bothersome - next up, the cake.
So, the Player has leveled up their equipment to level 30, and as a result they have earned some Mastery Points. Upon obtaining a certain number of Mastery Points, the Player can take on a Mastery Rank Test, which, once completed, increases the Player’s Mastery Rank. Oddly enough, if the Player wants to do another Mastery Rank Test, they must wait 24 hours… And there is no means of skipping the wait, so there’s just a great oddness on display.
Regardless, the Player advances in Mastery Rank, which, in turn, allows them to craft (and subsequently use) more Weapons, allows them to do some missions which were previously unavailable, allows them to take on new Quests, and allows them to engage with more of the game’s mechanics. Here’s the funky thing, the bad design choice - the Player needs to be able to get new equipment, be it Warframes, Companions or Weapons, to level it up, so as to get Mastery Points, so as to then increase their Mastery Rank and to access more of the game.
The Player has a limited number of inventory slots for everything. The Player starts off with 2 Warframe slots, when there are 98 Warframes total, 8 Weapon slots, when there are 526 of those, and a similarly tiny number of slots for everything else that there can be a slot for (there are 7 types of slots that can be purchased).
At one point, the Player will run out of inventory slots, which will then mean that the Player will either need to buy new inventory slots for Platinum, or the Player will need to destroy some of their Weapons (and Warframes, which have taken them at minimum 96 hours to craft) so as to make room for new ones. This destroys the prospect of engaging with the game through the collection angle, as in order to amass enough inventory slots to collect all Warframes and all Weapons will cost the Player a staggering 5116 Platinum, which costs at least 225 Euro, or nearly 250 dollars. And that’s paying for the OPPORTUNITY to engage in collecting those items - nevermind the fact that the Player will still need to spend 96 hours per Warframe, WAITING, and 24 hours per Weapon!
This is absolutely baffling. This is clearly a mechanic, a limitation, designed with absolutely no gameplay related reasoning, with the pure goal of making the game actively worse, so as to then be able to sell the Player a solution. Warframe does not actually have some kind of programming issue that makes inventory slots difficult to come by, it’s literally just made that way - that is bad, predatory design. It is, simply put, horrible.
Fortunately for the Player, there is an opportunity to obtain Platinum without paying real money. Instead, what is required is a lot of time spent. Warframe features the opportunity to trade between Players, and Players can sell things - such as Blueprints - to other Players… For Platinum.
So the solution to all of the Player’s problems (which are all artificially created and very unpleasant to deal with) is to do missions, do missions again, then sit in their ship and wail in the trade chat that they are selling something, only to then get to sell the stuff they are selling for what is essentially chump change, and afford a single Warframe slot.
Naturally, the price of things on the Marketplace is staggering - for the low-low income of 50 Platinum, the Player must obtain 4 particular items of a matching set (as an example the Revenant Prime set), with one of those items having a 25% chance of being obtained by the Player, another two having an 11% chance of being obtained, and the last one having a staggering 2% chance of being obtained. In addition to that, each attempt at obtaining one of those items requires that the Player expends a particular item that they have a limited quantity of, and which, also, has AT MOST a 14% chance of being obtained.
Thus, to obtain those 50 Platinum by selling all four components of the Revenant Prime set, the Player must get lucky in at least 4 different instances, to first get the option to even attempt getting the items, then must get lucky on a 1 in 50, a 1 in 4 and a 1 in 9, twice, to be able to get that. Mind you, each of those takes anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes, so already we are looking at at least 1 hour of playtime and unseemly amounts of luck. However, as is known, the Player is not going to get lucky 8 times in a row. Thus, the Player might need to do a lot more work - an even if operating with the highest chances of getting what they want, the Player still has to win a 1 out of 4, a 1 out of 5 two times, and a 1 out of 10; but to get those odds, they must first do at least 20 minutes of playing, so as to obtain the resource that allows them to boost their chances ONCE. So we need at least 3 chance boosters. Already, we’re looking at more than 2 hours of playtime for, let me remind you, 2 Warframe slots (and a half), if the Player getting those items is lucky enough to win the lottery on their first attempt!
So, on average, we’re not looking at a 2 hour farm session, we’re looking at something along the lines of, at least, 5 hours. 5 hours during which the Player is doing nothing productive towards their progression. Alternatively, the rate of progression in Warframe is so slow that it takes tens upon tens of hours to go from Mastery Rank 20 to Mastery Rank 21, because the Player needs to buy a slot for each piece of equipment they need to become eligible for Mastery Rank 21.
This is bafflingly bad game design. It is horribly unpleasant and the obtuse slowdown from getting 10 levels in one mission, and with them getting a Mastery Rank Test unlocked in 10 missions which would be around 3 hours, to getting a Mastery Rank Test unlocked in 20, maybe 30 or more hours of constant grinding? That’s inconsistency on a level high enough to be competitive with Prince “I can’t sweat” Andrew.
But let’s dial it down a bit and go to some good places. Talk about things Warframe does well, and is a good game as a result of them, rather than things that Warframe does horribly and threatens to make itself a bad game as a result, okay?
Combat - combat involves not only the PC, but also enemies. And in Warframe there are three types of enemies, those being the Grineer, the Corpus and the Infested. Each has different means of attacking, with many types of Grineer, Corpus or Infected enemies who assail the Player in different ways, and each having a different set of defensive properties. As an example, the Grineer are generally weak to Slash damage, due to being fleshy, while Corpus enemies are generally weak to Impact damage, due to having and relying on shields.
Then there are also other types of damage - the elemental types - and certain enemies are weak to certain types of damage, while others are weak to other types. This creates a very interesting and entertaining possibility for the Player to go on with being a “flipping space ninja”, by selecting and preparing a particular set of Weapons that are effective against a particular type of enemy, prior to starting a mission. Not only does it mesh well with the theme, it also actively makes the mission easier on account of the increased damage the PC does.
But that is not all. Enemies, aside from having different basic varieties, also have an empowered “Eximus” form. Eximus enemies appear once enemies are level 10 or higher, and they are characterized by having a lot more health than normal, having a funky shield that makes them immune to crowd control, and a special ability that they can use. As an example, the Grineer get an Arson Eximus, who fires off a huge shockwave of fire that not only knocks the PC down and does massive damage, it also sets them on fire. The Corpus get the Guardian Eximus, who makes all other enemies take tiny amounts of damage and have three layers rotating around them, blocking shots completely and rendering them impressively sturdy. Then there are the Infected with their Venomous Eximus, who has an aura around them that applies the toxic status effect at maximum efficiency, doing heavy damage and ignoring shields.
Killing those grants a LOT of affinity, seeing as they are, generally, a lot more challenging to deal with. However, the sheer existence of these Eximus fellows brings up a very odd thing about Warframe. In it, on every Planet, there is an Assassination mission. The Assassination mission is not about being a flipping space ninja, it’s about going and duking it out with a boss.
Why is there no opportunity for the Player to engage in subterfuge and steal, to sneak to the assassination target and just kill them… Like a ninja? Instead, it is always a boss fight, and almost every single one of those boss fights is bad. They are bad, because they rely on making the Player incapable of damaging the enemy, but allowing the enemy to continue damaging the Player.
And that invincibility is not bound to something the Player can do - there is no funky switch that the Player can flip or funky enemy that the Player can kill to make the boss vulnerable again, no. Every single type of invulnerability that shows up in Warframe’s boss fights is timed. The Player must wait for the boss to become vulnerable.
That’s another failure on the design team behind the bosses - not only are they boss fights that cannot be avoided via stealth, thus somewhat running a perfectly enjoyable mechanic and distancing themselves from the theme substantially - but they are also boss fights that simply waste the Player’s time. They do not involve strategy, they do not involve checking to see if the PC has high enough stats, they just require that the Player patiently wait out the invulnerability of the boss.
Now, if the bosses were all 1 and done experiences, this would have been permissible. However, every single boss drops something special. Every single boss, on every single Planet, either drops Warframe part Blueprints (which can only be obtained from that very boss), or some other kind of exclusive Blueprint. Thus, these bosses must be killed multiple times.
On top of that, the way the drop-chance for the items they drop is done is horrible. Instead of making it a good random chance system - such as having a 33% of getting one of the three, if the Player has neither, and once the Player has one of the three, increasing the chance of getting the other two by half of the chance to get the already owned item, so that the Player gets to keep moving and having fun via progression - no, the Player has a chance of getting the item… And that’s that. Did you, dear reader, know that to get all 3 blueprints for the Warframe Rhino, I had to kill the boss that drops them… 19 times? And did you know that each kill of that boss takes at least 10 minutes, because of just how immaculately fun the fight is, on account of the fact that it has 3 invulnerability phases and an unskippable cutscene in between?
Did you know that, to get all 8 pieces for the Equinox Warframe, I had to kill the boss that drops them 45 times? And he has 2 invulnerability phases, as well as one that funky phase that spawns goons who ALSO become invulnerable after damaged and must be killed before the boss can be killed, and those goons happen to break the game and teleport behind locked doors, thus rendering their killing impossible, which in turn makes every single kill of that boss take at least 10 minutes as well?
So I spent 450 minutes farming a certain funky Warframe, whom I then had to wait 24 hours to build 6 of its components, and then another 72 hours to build another 2 of its components (requiring the previous 6), and then another 72 hours to build the Warframe itself, requiring the former 2 components? And to get to use it, I need to destroy one of my other Warframes, or I need to spend at least 2 hours grinding away to get enough Platinum to buy myself a Warframe slot so that I may actually get to play the Warframe in question?
Alternatively, I could have just bought the Warframe from the in-game store with Platinum, and it would have cost me around 18 Euro, and I would have gotten it instantly, and it would have come with a slot AND an installed Orokin Reactor (an item that takes 24 hours to make, has a rare-ish blueprint and essentially doubles the strength of the Warframe it is installed into, which can also be conveniently bought from the in-game store for around 1 Euro?
There’s something incredibly unsatisfying about Warframe that I don’t even need to point out - it’s right there. The game is purposefully made inconvenient and unpleasant to play past the 10th hour, because that’s how it makes money. It does not just sell power, it makes getting power without buying it a hassle. It also features countless cosmetics, but those could be excused… Had they been the only thing on sale.
But, well, maybe we can go back to trying to talk about something nice in Warframe. An example would be its potential for complexity, achieved through Mods! At one point, the Player’s Weapons stop getting stronger - that would be when they reach level 30 and their stats stop increasing, period. However, that’s when it’s time to install an Orokin Reactor or a Forma in them, to then re-level them up and reap the rewards. The rewards? Increased Mod capacity.
Mods are things that can be inserted into a Weapon, and they have various effects. Some simply increase the amount of damage the Weapon does by a percentage, others add a type of elemental damage equal to a percent of the Weapon’s damage. Others yet make the Weapon swing or shoot faster, some can make the Weapon reduce an enemy’s armor, or they can make attacks with the Weapon give the PC movement speed, or they can make the Weapon’s zoom more powerful, make the Weapon reload faster, make its shots pierce through enemies and hit other enemies behind them - in short, Mods make Weapons stronger.
So the Player goes on to collect Mods. Once the Player has a Mod they want to use, they should rank it up - since Mods have ranks. To do so, the Player needs a unique resource, Endo, and Credits. Lower rank increases are cheap and manageable, but some Mods have many ranks, and the last one can cost upwards of a quarter of a million Credits and 5000 Endo. For reference, a quarter of a million Credits, if they could be bought from the in-game store in that quantity, would cost around 6.50 Euro. However, due to the way Platinum bundles are priced, the Player would need to spend at least 9 Euro to get two bundles (and thus get the Credits needed). Now, Endo? That would be 250 Platinum, which is, due to Platinum bundle prices, 13.48 Euro… Or, of course, hours of grinding.
But that’s just one Mod, and there are many mods - at least 8 per Weapon, Warframe and Companion, so the Player is looking at, at minimum, 40 Mods that they need to grind for. Then there’s also the fact that Mods have different rarities, and some mods are incredibly difficult to come by, being available for purchase from a shop that is available for a small amount of time and is then gone for two weeks… And even then the Mod is not guaranteed to show up, because that shop sells like 3 types of Mods at a time!
There is something that allows for handling the issues. Mods can be found in great quantities - one can have many duplicates. So, what can the Player do with those duplicates? They can be sold for Credits, they can be sold for Endo, or they can be merged into a different, potentially new Mod. Unfortunately, the way the system for merging Mods works is very bad. Normally, the Player can click a stack of Mods that they have, and is then asked to select how many of the Mods in that stack would they like to select.
The selection can be however large the stack of Mods allows for. As an example, I have 180 “Pressure Point” Mods. I click and select 160 of them, because I can merge 4 Mods into a new Mod. I then try to click the button that will do the thing, but I get an error message. I can only do this if I have selected 4 Mods. Thus, to engage in this mechanic (called transmutation), I need to click a Mod stack, input a number, click that I agree, click the button to perform transmutation, then click the “okay I got the Mod”. That’s me having to perform 5 actions to do ONE transmutation… And I have more than a thousand duplicate Mods that I’d like to transmute and see if I can get a Mod that I have not previously had.
Why does the game have a selection system that can select more than 4, which system is used when it comes to selling Mods for Endo and Credits, but which system is totally incomprehensibly useless when it comes to transmutation? Is that a design oversight? Is it purposeful, as a way of making the Player go and spend real money?
Because yes, instead of farming for Mods, or giving oneself Carpal Tunnel Syndrome by transmuting Mods, or waiting for the bi-weekly shop to appear… Just visit the in-game store and buy one of the Mod bundles. Granted, there is some restraint shown here - some of the Mod bundles do not offer any particularly special Mods, but then there are some that sell rare Mods that one is not likely to have found even after getting through roughly 4/5ths of the available missions. Even so, that does not explain the faulty User Interface interaction with being unable to perform more than 1 Transmutation at a time.
But that is not all, dear reader. The Player can also find super unique, super strong Riven Mods. Those are special in the sense that they work for a certain Weapon, rather than Weapon-type, and they need to first be unlocked via the completion of some challenge. Naturally, the Player can find a “Complete challenge for 20 Platinum (roughly 1 Euro)” option in the in-game store, but that’s not the main issue.
Unlike all other Mods, Riven Mods have their own inventory slots, and they take up space. And the Player only has 15 of them (getting another 30 upon reaching Mastery Rank 30). Now, with there being more than 40,000 possible Riven Mods, 45 slots do not seem enough. Even odder is that the Player can buy slots for Riven Mods, but only 135.
Ultimately, this is what Warframe does to itself. It is a game with very good movement, with a satisfying combat system, which winds up introducing countless other systems into itself that constantly undermine the quality of the two good systems, making the experience, as a whole, worse. It does not even end there - I mentioned the word “Prime” in conjunction with the Revenant Warframe.
Well, that’s another funky scheme that the game has in store for the Player. Every Warframe, and every Weapon, has a Prime variant. The Prime variant is a lot harder to come by than the ordinary one, but it is stronger. The main way to obtain Prime variants of Weapons or Warframes is by using Relics, which must be equipped and unlocked during special missions that change by the hour, and then the Player has a chance at getting a component for a Prime Weapon or a Blueprint for a Prime Weapon or a Prime Warframe or a Prime Warframe Part.
As mentioned earlier, in the Revenant Prime example, the Relics themselves are not guaranteed drops from missions. The Player must farm Relics, get lucky, and then use their Relics to farm Prime items (and, naturally, get lucky again). Alternatively, the Player can just buy Relics from the in-game store, 50 Platinum for 5.
Fortunately, and oddly enough, the game does not sell Prime Warframes or Weapons to the Player - with one (or, rather, three exceptions). There is, constantly, a Prime Access pack on sale, which features a Prime Warframe with two Prime Weapons. That Prime Warframe is the newest addition, and the cheapest version of that Prime Access pack costs a measly 72 Euro (it includes a bit over 2500 Platinum and a set of borderline worthless cosmetics.
So what happens in the end? This is a game that features a lot of content (emphasis on content), with a lot of it being enjoyable, particularly the more out-there and experimental parts, mainly the Open World Areas and the Duviri Spiral. However, at the same time, the game undermines itself at every opportunity it gets. It constantly forces the Player to wonder if they really do want to spend time working towards getting that particular set of Blueprints, only to then spend four days waiting for them to get crafted, so as to then destroy one of their items, or would they rather do something else?
The game starts off incredibly strong, and as I said - the first 10 hours are an undoubtable blast - but as they pass and the Player’s ability to progress is walled off by kiosks that want money, as any meaningful reward from playing the game is stripped of its meaning, because to receive it the Player must sacrifice something that was previously a reward, only to know that this new reward will, similarly, also need to be thrown away in favor of something else down the line…
It’s ultimately gameplay without meaning. It’s ultimately farming for crops while knowing that the crops will never be sampled by the farmer. It’s building a house and then not even getting paid for building it, let alone being able to live in or use it for anything. Warframe is incredibly full of stuff to do, but at the same time it desperately wants the Player to be unable to do anything if money is not involved.
As such, no matter how funky the mining mini-game is, no matter how much better done the fishing is, than literally any other implementation of fishing in any game ever, no matter how incredibly fun it is to run through levels at blazing speeds, no matter how neat it is to solve puzzles in the Void or in the Duviri plains… It just doesn’t want itself to be played. It’s actively fighting against the Player.
For that, it fails as a game. 1/3
Presentation
Warframe is astonishingly beautiful, especially considering how smoothly it runs on old machines. Its 3D environments manage to appear enchanting, in some cases, especially when talking about the Relays in which one gets to observe many factions and their styles, or in particular Earth itself. In addition to that, the open world spaces, in mainly the Plains of Eidolon and the Cambion Drift, as well as Duviri, are absolutely amazing.
The varied locations, the thickness of the things spread around within them… There’s something simply great about them, and, in a sense, manage to recapture the magic of an Open World game, in particular that feeling of being free to roam about and do whatever one wants. That comes in a slight contrast to what most other Open World games do in recent times, that being the fact that they do their best to put points of interest on the map and to constantly urge the Player to go in a particular direction.
Warframe, at least with the Plains of Eidolon, the Orb Valis and the Cambion Drift, does the opposite. It spits out the Player Character in what is, essentially, the middle of a huge, open space, and lets them go wild with exploring. The Player is the one who has to figure out that they can actually do all sorts of things, aside from just running around and killing creatures.
Sure, there are opportunities to pick up a quest here and there, but they are neither mandatory nor conveyed as such. In fact, it is quite easy to miss them, especially in Orb Valis, which further amplifies that feeling of freedom and the sensation of wonder that the world itself conveys.
When dialing things back a bit and heading off to the more closed environments of the missions themselves, there is still something special about them. Areas are distinct, not just visually, but also in regards to their sound. A place that is under Grineer control features these dark greens, the splashes of red and the mountains of crude, almost ugly looking machinery. By contrast, Corpus controlled spaces are sleek and appear clearly high-tech, with there being an air of cleanliness and efficiency that’s not present in the Grineer based locations. Then there are the Infested, or rather the Infestation, which takes either Corpus and Grineer and turns them into something far more vile, far more wretched and misshapen.
That’s not all, though, for there are also the Orokin ruins in the Void, either filled with such unimaginable splendor and wonder that they render the Player awe-stricken, or run down and ravaged by the Infestation in a manner similar to what happens to Grineer or Corpus vessels, yet still maintaining that elegance and alien air.
Visually, the game is fantastic. It looks great. However, at the same time, it has some problems - mainly with clarity. It is, at times, very difficult to figure out whether something is alive or dead, or whether something is an enemy or just part of the scenery, especially when talking about stuff in the distance. On top of that, the overall darkness of some levels, and the inclination to have enemies in the same color as the environments, makes it unreasonably difficult to actually differentiate an enemy from the environment itself.
Fortunate as it is, there is an accessibility option that allows one to add an outline to enemies, but should that not be the default, especially considering how important in some missions it is to be able to see the enemy before the enemy sees the Player? However, the same applies to containers that can be broken open. They are almost seamlessly merged with the environment, with some exceptions that manage to stand out, and on the darker maps there are many cases when the only reason a container is discernible is the white flash it performs every so often. There is no accessibility option to highlight those, though, which is a bit of a missed opportunity.
Additionally, the User Interface is very messy. On the one hand, it looks sleek and neat, but on the other, it is neither sleek nor neat, on account of just how obtuse it is to navigate it. That much can be shown off by the fact that the Player needs to input three commands before being able to take a look at their inventory, or by the fact that the means of presenting items in the Foundry are by showing them in huge rectangles that allow for just a couple to be on screen at a time, or the fact that the game’s sorting options are horrid, or that there are things that are not in the Player’s inventory, yet there are other things in the Player’s inventory that would indicate those things, which are missing, should be in the Player’s inventory.
There is also no way of telling how many inventory slots the Player has at their disposal currently, nor is there a way of telling how much Affinity a piece of Equipment has - without going through three or four menus, when there could have been an easy “mouse over” option. Additionally, and that’s probably one of the worst thing about the game’s Presentation, it forces the Player to look at the in-game store very often.
Not only that, but it forces the Player to actively walk towards the in-game store, due to the fact that there was an attempt at making some of the menus diegetic - such as the Player’s ship, which is, essentially, a big menu, and most of the options it features are accessible through another menu, but then some options are not accessible through another menu, which is just weird.
Regardless, the fact that the game does its best to make the Player constantly look at things for sale is bothersome. Even more bothersome is the fact that, every day, upon logging in, the Player is awarded something, and that something is, often-times, just a discount on Platinum… A timed discount on Platinum. That’s a bit horrendous.
The game has those issues, but its strengths, in regards to its Presentation, are not to be underestimated. For, aside from being just visually stunning, it also does a very good job at conveying the sound of everything that is observed. The music that is present provides incredible amounts of atmosphere, almost enough to breathe in, and then the sound effects attempt to fully expand… And mostly succeed.
Yes, there are some weird choices here and there, but overall everything feels very impactful and tangible, the hit feedback is great when it comes to Melee Weapons, and the sound of a rifle firing off, or a shotgun blasting, is very satisfying.
The game also has voice acting - and some of it is nice and pleasant, while other chunks of it are… Well, cringeworthy would be a suitable word. It’s a mixed bag that should not be advertised as the game’s selling point. Not only that, but aside from voices being hit or miss, the game also REALLY struggles with human faces. Almost every human face that the Player gets to see is… Well, ugly.
I am generally referring to the Operator and the Drifter, and I am not considering Corpus and Grineer mugs to be human faces, though if they were - they’re ugly. Unfortunately, the same applies for Cetus - everyone there is just clapped, or looks uncanny. In fact, that’s the better way of wording it - the faces look uncanny, as though something is wrong with them. The only exception, or, rather, the only place where that works to a desired effect, would be the Family in the Cambion Drift.
Lastly, the way a lot of the story is presented - via the Codex - is very odd, and very clunky. That is in part due to the fact that the Codex is part of the game’s User Interface, and that is, as stated, somewhat horrid, but also due to the fact that the way information about things is presented, and whether things actually have information about them presented, is very wonky.
As an example, one might open up the Factions tab and look for the Grineer, but instead of finding information on the Grineer, the Player will be provided with Grineer units, and when clicking on one of them, they will receive gameplay related information - such as what kind of armor they have and what kind of damage they are weak to, as well as what kind of Mods they drop, but there will be no lore.
However, going to Cephallon Simaris and doing his quests until the list is full, and taking a look at the Grineer Lancer unit, the Player gets, aside from the gameplay related information, a lengthy amount of lore, which is not accessible through the Codex, or at least not through the means described above. That’s a missed opportunity, and indicates nasty fragmentation of the way things are stored here and there, or a lack of hare for how stuff is presented to the Player.
Overall, though, Warframe looks very good. It also comes with a very comprehensive tutorial, even if said tutorial leaves out some relatively important parts. Though, for its failings and its pretty aggressive attempts at getting the Player to spend money, it does not get the highest possible grade. 2/3
Story
Warframe has a very convoluted story that is delivered in an odd manner that oftentimes directly clashes with the Gameplay and winds up making little-to-no sense in that regard, but is, overall, quite interesting.
Again, however, it has the issue of being unclear and wonky - with the Player only getting snippets here and there, with everything being so shrouded in mystery it’s like a lootbox from before there was a mandatory “What’s in the lootbox?” button. Even so, a number of things are present and understandable for the Player, but then there are some very fundamental things that are quite nonsensical.
In short, the Player takes on the role of a Tenno, and Tenno are funky dudes who can control the energies of the Void, and by doing so they get to use Warframes, which are biomechanical/mostly mechanical pseudo robot suits that can do all kinds of funky things. The Tenno starts off the game awakening from a very long slumber and is contacted by the Lotus, who is a member of a particular faction (presumably the Tenno faction, though that one is so obscure that there’s almost no information about it in the entirety of the game), who winds up being the guide for the Tenno.
There’s another faction, however, and it’s evil - those are the Grineer - and they want to use the Tenno’s blood for something, so the Tenno must fight them. Over the course of the game the Player finds out that the Grineer are a huge spacefaring civilization that’s super militant and has cloning capabilities, but has damaged genetic code so things are very bad, with the Grineer stuff boiling down to some kind of weird totalitarian/fascist/authoritarian rulership and an impressively imperialist approach to any other political entity.
Then, and here’s where things become a bit odd, the Player is introduced to another faction that is in a pseudo alliance with the Grineer, which faction is the Corpus. Those guys are anarcho-capitalists, with the uber trillionaires controlling everything and human rights being non-existent in the face of profit and the growth of capital. They use robots and are made to appear as though they are some kind of entity that is not, politically, on the same level as the Grineer, but is roughly on the same level of power as them.
This is where stuff somewhat melts down. The Tenno is, supposedly, part of some kind of faction that is working to undermine the efforts of both the Corpus and the Grineer, but that particular faction is neither named nor is it really present in the game. There are a number of ‘Syndicates’ that supposedly make up the faction, but aside from those that are related to either the Grineer or the Corpus, there is little explanation as to where they came from.
Then, more stuff uncovers itself. There is a faction that is no longer in play - the Orokin - who are the creators of the Warframes and the Tenno, or so it appears, and they were incredibly technologically advanced. Those Orokin goons had some bad ideas in regards to society, and so they were not all good. Then, at one point, some kind of entity - some artificial intelligence - showed up and mopped the floor with the Orokin, killing them totally, but at the same time the Tenno got to curb stomp it and lock it away.
There was treason involved, someone decided to take on a particular role, something something Natah, and then stuff started happening, essentially way being made for the Grineer to wild out. At the same time, there is yet another faction - the Infestation - which has existed for a long time and is, potentially, the way the Orokin were eradicated (as evidenced by Deimos), which was recently uncovered by the Grineer and, subsequently, released. There’s some kind of weird juju with the Infestation as well, there being a big ol’ hivemind, but it’s all super obscure.
That’s the thing - the lore of Warframe is obscure, purposefully, of course, but it is so mysterious and unclear that it feels as though there is, simply, not enough of it. Sure, the Player belongs to a faction, but how is that faction doing anything? How does it manage to have influence or do anything at all, when considering the fact that there is absolutely nothing of its power shown to the Player?
There are no ships, no settlements, no colonies, nothing - there are only the rare few Relays, and those are more reminiscent of underground conventions for weirdos than the meeting points for an organized, political entity.
That contributes to the curiosity a Player can harbor towards Warframe, and it works quite well when making the situation at hand feel desperate, but at the same time there is never a moment which allows the Player to sit back and think to themselves that “something” has been done, some progress has been made.
The spots that represent settlements that are friendly towards the Tenno, namely Cetus and Fortuna, are incredibly meager and nothing actually moves in regards to the stories of said places, or even if it does move, it makes sure to leave things unresolved so as to allow for the infinite treadmill of content.
There are interesting Characters (Clem wins everything), there are interesting concepts, there are interesting interactions between Characters, there are funky means through which the lore is conveyed, but ultimately everything is so deep that the light being shed on it fails to illuminate almost anything. It’s like there is an iceberg and what the Players are shown is what’s on the surface and a few odd spots under the water.
I wish I could say more good things about the story, but aside from it being captivating and mysterious, and it having some very promising routes that it can go down, it’s ultimately unfinished and, potentially, never going to get anywhere, because then what would be the point of doing the missions, and playing the game, and paying money for it? 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Does Warframe’s incredible moment-to-moment gameplay that is horrendously marred by the game’s monetisation manage to net itself an extra point? Does the game’s phenomenal presentation in some areas inspire enough awe that it gets a bonus? Does the story’s compelling obscurity successfully convince me to award it the best I can give?
I am inclined to say YES, but not exclusively because of those things, although the whole is, in a sense, larger than the sum of its parts, at least in the case of Warframe. At the same time, though, the whole is also very minute and miserable (thank you, Dark Souls!).
But what I’d argue is most impressive about this game, to me, is how long it has lasted, and, in a sense, the potential it has for an even greater future. For, I played it long ago, and at that time there were no Plains of Eidolon. Now that I’ve returned to it, and hundreds of hours later, I’ve had my fill of the Plains of Eidolon or the Duviri Paradox, I am left with hope for what will come.
Sure, it will be heavily stifled by the violent, anti-Player systems that are put in place. Sure, it will be a bit clunky and nearly incomprehensible, but it has the potential to give birth to SOMETHING new, to something amazing and enjoyable. Sure, the game has hits and misses - such as everything related to the Archwing, or the “totally not Sons of Icarus” Railjacking stuff - but that winds up working in a Nietzchean manner, where the bad only makes the good more pleasant.
Yeah, Warframe gets the Legendary Point. 1/1
Conclusion
6/10. Warframe is one of the games of all time, and my take on it would be that everyone should give it a go, play through the first ten hours and get as much out of it as possible, prior to things slowing down to a halt and demanding that the Player start paying.
If the sample has been pleasant enough, maybe keep going, but I would not recommend playing past ten hours to anyone except those sick individuals who like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (people who play aRPGs like Diablo 2 through 4, Path of Exile, Lost Arc, etc).
I consider the belt for a moment, but ultimately I lay it in the bag of mediocrity. There, it shall gather some dust until a few years pass, and I will take it up again to see its future… But until then, and forever more, it’s kinda mid.