Warframe is one of the best co-op games out there, but starting it is genuinely terrifying. After thirteen years of updates, the game now has more systems and features than a jumbo jet.

But I finally gave it a try a few weeks ago, and I'll be honest - it was completely different from what I expected. So let me show you what the new player experience is like these days, where Warframe completely won me over, where it nearly lost me, and whether it's still worth jumping into today.

Video version of this retrospective (~15 minutes)

Gotta Go Fast

After my recent experience with Destiny 2, I expected my first few hours to be complete and utter confusion. I mean, there's thirteen years of content to catch up on - something that becomes very apparent when you first zoom out and look at the star chart. And that right there? That's basically just the prologue!

And so I started out with a healthy mixture of excitement and existential dread. That lasted about thirty seconds. Because as soon as I went through my usual 'mash all the buttons and see what happens' routine, I discovered I could chain jumps and dashes together to fling myself forward at lightspeed. That was a very good sign.

But then I finally stopped faffing about and actually did the tutorial - and then the game taught me I could go even faster! As it turns out, I didn't discover some sort of speedrunning trick. Instead, Warframe is entirely built around you zipping across the levels like a coked-up squirrel.

And honestly? That immediately put me at ease... as coke usually does. Because if simply moving around is fun, the game would have to try really, really hard to get under my skin. I'm sure that's not foreshadowing anything.

So as soon as I learned how, I started bouncing around like a pinball and never stopped. Even during cutscenes where some poor bastard was trying to explain why I need to go kill absolutely everyone with a pulse... again.

Once you get good at it, moving around is a ton of fun

Warframe as a New Player

Now this is where I expected everything to fall apart. I figured the moment the tutorial took the training wheels off I'd do the same thing I did when I first rode a bike - drive straight into a wall while screaming.

Instead, Warframe was... weirdly well behaved. While it does eventually turn into a mess, for those first 10-20 hours Warframe was an excellent host.

The main quest simply walks you through the solar system, one planet at a time, slowly introducing new mechanics as you go. Although maybe 'slowly' isn't the right word, because pretty much every mission had some kind of new gimmick. One minute I was clearing out a bunch of enemies, then the next I was defending an objective, and then suddenly I found myself in the middle of an escort quest - something that made me immediately conjure a major sigh borne out of a thousand bad experiences.

But you know what? It was actually fine. Apparently even the civilians in the Warframe world are highly-trained space ninjas, so the guy basically flew through the level after me, barely even taking damage. I honestly don't think he even needed escorting. I think he was just lonely.

Then, as soon as I started thinking I'd figured the game out, the next mission opened with a robot musical number. And then it dumped me into a gigantic open world.

All of these planets on the star chart? As I learned, some of them are 10-15 minute missions, and some are basically an entire game hiding in plain sight. So despite sinking over forty hours into the game, I have a distinct feeling I've barely even scratched the paint, let alone the surface of what Warframe has to offer.

All of this? It's not even 0.1% of what the game has to offer.

A Mountain of Choices

This sort of madness extends to your character as well. To say that Warframe has a ton of weapons would be like saying Mt Everest is fairly tall. My inventory is an endless pile of blueprints, weapon parts and random junk is the very tippy-top of the iceberg. Despite swapping my entire loadout every couple of hours just to try new things, I've barely put a dent in my tiny little arsenal. So yeah, there's a lot of weapons out there. A genuinely terrifying amount.

But you know what's really surprising? There's very few weapons I would actually call bad. Even the ones I wasn't too happy about mostly boiled down to me not wanting to mash my mouse like it owes me money. It doesn't matter if you're using something insane like the staff gun from Stargate or just a plain ol' bow - shooting stuff in Warframe just feels good. Especially when the game throws entire armies at you so you can really revel in your power.

And that's probably my favorite part of Warframe. Just turning off your brain, putting on horse blinders, and spending the next ten minutes ripping and tearing through everything in sight. The sounds, the visuals, the endless flow of random junk the game throws at you - it all tickles my lizard brain juuuuust right.

But all this chaos starts off nice and innocent. You get a choice between three Warframes: a tanky boi, a speedy boi, and a magey boi. Think of them as character classes you can swap between whenever you're not on a mission. Each comes with four unique abilities and plays a lot differently than the others.

Naturally, I picked the magey boi - who turned out to be a girl called Mag, and let me tell ya, I have no regrets! I've tried plenty of other Warframes since then, but nothing comes even close to the satisfaction of throwing a magnetic bubble into a crowd of enemies, watching them all get sucked inside, and then just giggling like an idiot as every bullet they fire just pings right back into their own face.

And if you think that's something I might need to unpack with a psychologist, wait till you see my favorite melee weapon - it's a pair of oversized cat claws. Once those things get going it's physically impossible to even track what's happening on the screen. It's just an endless tornado of numbers and body parts.

So yeah, going in I expected Warframe's combat to be fun, but I was not even remotely prepared for how much it would consume my life. I saw the "you've been playing for an hour" message a lot.

Mag is just waaaaay too much fun

The Messy Part

But... I did promise you a mess, so slather yourself in grease and come roll in the mud with me.

For those first few hours, Warframe is really good about not overwhelming you with choices. But somewhere around the halfway point the game just completely loses its mind.

Suddenly I had a dozen different systems all demanding my attention. Giant eyeballs wanted me to scan things, random factions expected taxes, Clem wanted his Grakatas, and there were now two open worlds begging to be explored. Were any of these important? Even now, I genuinely have no bloody idea.

This eventually culminated with me going completely insane once I started The Duviri Paradox - a quest that looked like any other. Except, this one asked me to create a brand new character... which isn't exactly usual for a game to spring on you thirty hours in.

And then, five minutes later, I was going through a tutorial for Dark Souls style combat. And yes, I'm actually serious. But that's not even the weird part. The weird part is that this eventually turns into multiple roguelite game modes! And they're actually good!

The whole thing is basically a distilled roguelite where you start as a scrawny loser, power up by smacking enemies and completing puzzles, and then finish 30 minutes later as Killgor, Destroyer of Worlds. And you know what? I absolutely love it... and I also hate that it's here, because it's yet another place with its own currencies, upgrades and rewards that I have no idea what to do with.

And so my inventory now looks like a bomb exploded. It's an endless graveyard of half-finished Warframes and weapons that I don't know what to do with. Who's Ivara? No clue. But apparently I own a piece of her brain, so hopefully I'll get the rest in the next hundred hours or so.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm genuinely having a blast with Warframe. There's a reason I'm already forty hours deep. But having to play with a Wiki permanently open just to understand WTF is going on is probably my biggest complaint with an otherwise fantastic game. And I say probably, because I'm definitely not foreshadowing anything again.

Pro tip: don't randomize your character

Somehow Never Boring

Oh, and speaking of fantastic, can I just say that Warframe looks great. Not because it's pushing the cutting-edge in terms of visuals - it really isn't - but because it's constantly throwing weird and wonderful worlds for me to explore.

It doesn't matter if you're just wandering through the void, or watching gigantic death-worms duke it out, or even flying on a robo-horse through a planet that seemingly imploded - Warframe simply refuses to be boring.

Even places that should be dull and uninteresting - like a grey sci-fi facility - are packed with cool things like underwater sections, caverns and strange bits of tech that just kept dragging me off the main path. The rewards for exploring aren't anything special, but honestly - who cares? How can you resist visiting weirdoes like this guy?

The Grind

In fact, resisting is kind of a big problem I've had with Warframe. Almost every time I sat down for a quick mission, I ended up wasting an entire evening.

And it's because grinding in Warframe isn't like farming dragons in the Wetlands for 6 hours hoping to get that red dragon whelp... only for it to never drop. And yes, I'm still bitter. In Warframe, grinding is actually the fun part.

You're not camping spawn points or searching for rare enemies. You just play the missions where the thing you want happens to drop - which is something you'll have to Wiki - and you'll eventually get it. Sometimes it'll take an hour. Maybe two if you're unlucky. But I didn't really mind that, because very little of what drops in Warframe is actually useless.

And all of that is thanks to the upgrade system. Once you get a big power up, you can re-use it forever. So once you get the basics done, you're good to go until the heat death of the universe... or until you get bored, whichever comes first.

Because of that, I never found myself dreading the grind the way I do in other games. It's just so easy to go 'eh, I'll do a quick mission' and then be in and out within 15 minutes.

You can also grind rails... because why not!

A Serious Problem

And now it's time to talk about something a bit more serious. Something that genuinely upsets me - Warframe's monetization.

This is a free-to-play game, so naturally there's a cash shop full of cosmetics you can buy. You might think that's what annoys me, but it's not. The cosmetics are expensive, but whatever, they're just cosmetics.

The problems start when you decide to build a new Warframe. This requires farming all of the individual parts and the resources to make them - a time-consuming process, but a fun one. After that you have to wait twelve hours for those parts to finish. And when that's finally done, you then get the privilege - nay, the honor - of waiting another three days before you can actually use the darn thing.

And every single step of the way, Warframe very... helpfully reminds you that you can spend real money to skip all that waiting. Or even better, spend nearly 20€ to just buy the thing you want outright. I. Hate. This.

Warframe is far too good of a game to need to resort to crap like time gates and pay-to-skip mechanics. These are the kind of tricks I'd expect from the sleaziest of sleazy mobile games, and not from a game that has actually been really good about respecting my time. Just... why?

I hope you like waiting!

Is Warframe Worth Playing?

So... does that completely ruin Warframe for me? Not even close. In fact, I'd happily recommend it to anyone looking for a co-op game to really sink their teeth into.

When I first started Warframe I expected to get completely buried under thirteen years of content, but instead I found myself completely hooked. Sure, a lot of it could be better explained and sooner or later you will need to crack open the wiki, but the game is never boring.

And that's the reason why I'm already forty hours deep and counting up. Every time I think I've seen it all, the game just reinvents itself and throws some bizarre new idea at me. And with there being more weapons and Warframes to collect than stars in the sky, I don't think that's going to stop any time soon.

So yeah, Warframe is absolutely worth getting into as a brand new player. Just... maybe bookmark the wiki first. Trust me. You're going to need it.