I've played this game since launch (ignore my Steam playtime, I have just over 300 hours in it), and this is what you need to know:

First, this game is a fixer-upper, and the devs are very active in engaging and listening to the community. So far they've added a lot of QoL features and fixes, and they've been very up-front with the issues that people have or have had with the game and their desire to fix them. Patch notes and fixes are frequent, at a rate of 3-4 times a week right now. This is good. This is VERY good.

About the gameplay, it's anime Warframe. For some of you, that's all you need to know. The gameplay loop is satisfying, the characters are powerful and interesting, and the story is engaging. The music is FANTASTIC. I find myself humming it frequently.

Graphics are hit-or-miss, but they're working on it. The game runs well on my system (30-60fps depending on the situation) but the main issues are with the art style.I liked the way it looked at first, but apparently some people didn't and they changed it. Now everything looks flat and they say they're changing it again. Like I said, it's a fixer-upper.

Melee weapons are sadly useless right now. They do next to no damage compared to character skills, and you'll find a majority of people use the same scythe because of its ability to make you zoom across maps at a high rate of speed. They need rebalancing. Ranged weapons are fun but their use depends on the character.

The event loops are a bit long, being about 40 days between major story content updates with a few mini-events in-between, and new characters are introduced one or two times during that period. This is all subject to change, and they're probably doing long event loops while they fix some of the more glaring issues.

Also, if you like grinding -- this is your game. Some people AFK grind, I just like putting on a podcast and getting it done. Since there's no stamina in this game, you can play as little or as much as you want. If you want to spend eight hours in a day unlocking characters and increasing your player level, you're only constrained by your own time.

I can see this being the next No Man's Sky or Warframe in that the devs put in some hard work and make it an incredible game. All in all, I'm very glad I gave this game a chance. I hope you will be too.

edit: Addressing some comments.

The economy system is great and very F2P friendly. Every character and weapon is unlockable through grinding for coupon-like items. You use those coupons to play a short 5-10 minute mission to gain parts for crafting weapons or shards used to get characters (or rank them up). You CAN pay real money to unlock characters/weapons early, but it's not required. The only gacha in the game is for cosmetics, like character skins and costumes. There are also weapon skins and effects for your character, like auras and character emotes (like dances or cute things like a giant cardboard box).

The only thing you spend for characters and weapons is your own time.

I also updated the section about graphics to clarify that I meant the art style.

edit 2:

Anyone who says the devs don't listen isn't actually reading the patch notes. Many (but not all) complaints that were listed in the discord or other official channels have been fixed or addressed. There was a very large in-game message in the patch notes around the end of December that addressed a lot of things and mentioned plans for several fixes. So saying the devs don't listen simply isn't true.

Also, I'd like to recommend that people actually read the negative reviews for the game. Some of them make several legitimate points, especially how the game's balance is off for a lot of the release characters (I'm lucky that Lady Nifle is my favorite, but seriously -- please buff Hellfire and Sibylle) and that there's pretty much no endgame right now. However, every F2P game gets to the point where you just log on, spend ten minutes doing dailies, and then log off unless there was a content update, so that complaint is moot.

The grind for gold-tier demon wedges does suck but at this moment you don't need them so there's plenty of time to fix the issue.

I've been playing since it released. The game isn't perfect, but the devs are actively trying to improve the game.

Something is in the air. I woke up 3 minutes after it was officially released on steam, three hours before my alarm clock.

I know I must write this detailed review.
Torn between a negative review and a positive review, I eventually said "Yes, I would recommend it because it's free and the story is great."

Incomplete version of anime warframe. Okay gameplay, great story, decent graphics, phenomenal music, English voice acting and sound design. Terrible communication from devs.
Was planned as a gacha but suddenly swerved into not being one. You can see the after effects.

Pick male or female based on who you like the voice acting from. Check youtube.
If you are totally stuck,
Suggested balanced pairing: Female for first MC, Male for second MC. You can only put cosmetics on the first MC at the moment.


Powerful, tragic, and well voice acted. Even as someone who usually uses JP VA, I encourage you to leave the EN voice acting on.
The quality, I dare say, is around Reverse 1999's current level right from the start.

The story is told from a dual perspective from two main characters, one from the feared and oppressed Charon race (For good reason. It's a spoiler.) and one from the not-oppressed Solaris race.
While numerous characters from both sides operate in a grey area, the story does not preach and hammer into you how grey some of them are. It simply shows you the motivations, actions and consequences of the characters' actions without asking you to judge them in a way the developers want you to.
The playable roster features kind hearted individuals from both sides, people who have operated in grey areas and committed immense violence (yet still likeable), and certain genuinely deplorable characters. Check a certain jellyfish's story logs, for example. Many characters have intriguing lore that I genuinely want to see resolved and brought to full use in future stories.

The plot twist of the first chapter dives straight into a sensitive topic that I seldom see games use for a first chapter. If you feel bored, please play until the twist. It won't take too long. Some have criticized it for being "boring", many others like me, fell in love with the game because of it.

I've been playing live service anime games for 8 years now, from little school all the way to my college years, and a chapter 1 of THIS intensity... I have only seen it once in Project Neural Cloud.

The game is not afraid to kill. Some of the playable roster are dead, horribly mutated or in a coma
The game is not afraid to let the playable characters do terrible things and let terrible things happen to them, but this is heavily hampered by the unpolished animation and graphical details. Mouth animations are the worst I've ever seen in today's games, and characters who are severely hurt, tortured or shot look no different. The effects of those are carried by the impressive voice acting, but should not be.

A part of CN has heavily criticized the protagonist for being weak and stopped from saving people. This is because in gacha games, the hero is usually strong and capable of facing up against the game's most severe threats. What's going on here?
The reality is that the game is telling a pragmatic tale. As a stranger, washed up as a newcomer to an unforgiving city with budding abilities, are you going to be capable of flipping an empire over from the start, killing millions of innocents in the process?

The potential is huge. We must FORCE the devs to improve the gameplay.

The story matches this epic release song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkvTZdLYG6s


PHENOMENAL and DETAILED. In the asphodel (a tavern) I heard a plate clink, and thought that my family members were eating at an ungodly hour. Turns out it was the game doing it!
The characters' voices are treated differently IN REAL TIME by the environment they're in. In a theatre they sound like they are in a theatre, and in a cave they echo.

Music is heavily Nier-series inspired. It's haunting, tragic and epic. You know it. Leitmotifs fill the characters, your heart sinks while taking (redacted) out for a stroll. This game features a boss battle song (English) at the very end of the Icelake arc. It still starts playing in my head every now and then, and is available in both english and japanese on youtube.

While the game is nowhere as good as warframe in combat sound design, they've shown that they are trying to implement it. The 1.1 update added punchy reactions to whenever you kill an enemy with certain skills and they're a good step.

They changed the login screen in the huaxu update and I don't appreciate that misrepresentation of tone.
here's the ACTUAL tone of the game, well represented by the login screen and music in 1.0:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qllA_ovGA04

The story team is on a completely different level from the gameplay team. It's nowhere as good or polished as warframe, but I hope it will become as good.
This is a hack and slash co-op ARPG game. You can choose to play as different charcters with different skills, and choose one ranged weapon and one melee weapon to bring into combat. The bulk of the fun comes from character abilities: one active skill, one ultimate and some passives. Some are mindless and straight rips from warframe, some are genuinely fun to play with a high skill ceiling. Unfortunately, in order to appeal to the mobile audience, the game does not have a third and forth skill to expand and create more utility for each character. I want that to change.

Melee weapons at the moment are basically stat sticks with little damage as they feature all the same combos unless you put on a mod (demon wedge) on it to change the animation set. ranged weapons are slightly better, we have grenade launchers, assault rifles, different types of bows (we even have naratuk at home). Still, they HAVE to be made as unique as warframes' in order to feel good.

Yes, we have warframe's bullet jump and aim glide, but they are missing what makes it great in warframe: skills to boost that speed from other characters and polished inertia, sound and camera effects that make it FEEL good.

Non story missions, which is most of the grind, borrow heavily from warframe's missions and relic system but strips some good and bad parts out of it.
Normal grind missions are so-so. It was kind of fun to play defense missions with strangers and dance with each other using emotes during downtime between waves, but it gets kind of stale when endgame is highly unpolished.
While you can get all characters and weapons for free (there is no prime stuff), there is no player market to sell your unused weapon parts and things you don't want. This HAS to change.

At the moment the game is incentivizing AFK and solo play instead of being the dream anime warframe coop game. Why make it such that it's better NOT to engage with the gameplay? Many players and I have laid out much feedback that goes completely unheard.

Ho lee sheet. The 2D art is incredible and mesmerizing. it's like looking at the artwork of angels. The 3D NOWHERE matches that.
but it's still pretty nice and beautiful.
Oh, you can buy cosmetics by the way. Check out my custom main character in the artworks section.

DEVELOPERS
As mentioned, the story team is on a completely different level compared to the gameplay team. The outreach and feedback response is also pretty terrible. They are practically STONEWALLING our feedback ever since the beta.
It would be so simple to just announce that "hey we are gonna fix stuff" vaguely every now and then without promising anything, but they don't even do THAT.

Sigh. it's like watching your genius best friend, who could have saved humanity, slowly start taking drugs and shut out everyone who tries to help.
The gameplay isn't BAD. There's just nothing tying you to the game if you don't love da story.