A few months ago I finally gave Warframe a try, and despite some grievances, I found myself really enjoying it. And so I kept playing... A LOT. And now, 300 hours later, the best way I can describe Warframe is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of a situation.

The things it does well are so unbelievably good that I just can't stop playing. I'll finish a mission and then immediately queue up another one. It's like instinct at this point. But at the same time, there's a bunch of awesome-looking stuff in here that is so poorly implemented that I'm genuinely confused how it all came from the same team.

So join me in this retrospective as I show you where Warframe excels, where it kinda muddies the water, and where it straight up falls flat on its face.

Video version of this retrospective (~23 minutes)

The Steel Path

And let's start with what is probably Warframe's simplest yet most important feature for me: the Steel Path. It's essentially the game's hard mode, and you unlock it by beating literally every single level on the star map. And suddenly enemies become tough as nails, their guns can obliterate your health, and there's enough of them to make an average Black Friday crowd look reasonable by comparison.

But wait, there's more! Every couple of minutes an edgelord will appear out of the darkness to assassinate you. And they're pretty dang good at it, as I very quickly discovered. Getting used to the Steel Path was a bit of a hellish struggle for a beginner like me, but also a very rewarding one.

Because in return for all this pain you get loads more resources and mods, extra rewards from quests, and even a new currency from the edgelords you slice up that can be used to unlock cool stuff for your characters.

But most importantly of all, the Steel Path gives you a reason to actually care about your character and build. Because once you have a couple of mods leveled up, the basic Star Chart is a joke. You can just press one button and wipe out all life in the universe. Some people might enjoy that, and more power to them, but I've always liked it when a game has a bit of attitude and is not afraid to slap you silly.

And The Steel Path is exactly that - a bit of pushback, a bit of resistance. It's hard enough that you have to actually mod your toys properly and give the enemies a modicum of respect, but not so hard that the space ninja game turns into a space CBT game. You can still go on a massive power trip and wipe out entire rooms with a single wiggle of your mouse - you just have to earn it first. And in my opinion, that's what makes it all the more satisfying!

That's a lot of extra loot!

Building a Build

This is unfortunately where Mr. Hyde comes into play. Because while the Steel Path is awesome, the game does basically nothing to prepare you for it. Like I said, normal Warframe is very easy. You can have a build that's so wobbly a particularly loud sneeze could topple it, yet never really notice because the game never forces you to roll around in the grass.

But even if you're like me and you know that your build sucks, you have basically no chance of making something good on your own. Why? Because most of Warframe's higher-level balance hinges on a handful of absurdly overpowered mods, arcanes and upgrades that you just kinda have to know about... somehow!

My absolute favorite weapon is the Ocucor, and it's the perfect example of Warframe's communication problem. So what do I like about it? Well, it's basically weaponized hentai. Whenever you kill an enemy you'll spawn a tentacle that then goes after their neighbors, and this gets out of hand quick.

The problem? At its core, the Ocucor does basically no damage. And so despite copying a supposed meta build, I couldn't for the life of me make it work in Steel Path missions. I just couldn't deal enough damage to kill my first enemy, which meant no tentacles, which meant no bonus damage, which meant I was just kinda shooting a pee-colored tickle beam at the angry space monsters.

What I eventually learned - the hard way - is that the Ocucur relies heavily on a very specific item: the Cascadia Flare. It's an arcane that gives you bonus damage whenever you burn an enemy, and having a highly upgraded version of that is absolutely instrumental to getting the tentacle fun time started.

And you might be wondering why I'm spending so much time rambling about this. It's because the Ocucur is frikkin awesome, and I'm here to spread its gospel. Because once you get it through those awkward teenage years, it blooms into a room-destroying superweapon.

You can fly around at Mach 10, randomly wiggle your mouse, and even high level enemies will turn into nondescript goo on the floor. I've tried a lot of different weapons, and nothing compares to my beloved Ocucur. So if you're a new player and want something that's both fun and powerful, give it a bash.

And I found that sort of thing is the case for many, many weapons. They all need some bizarre combination of upgrades to make them shine, but the game never even attempts to teach you how to do it yourself.

Some mods are just absurdly powerful

Cool Community

Which means you have to rely on the community to get anywhere, and as luck would have it, Warframe has an awesome one.

Now things are generally a bit quiet, as flying around at supersonic speeds doesn't exactly leave much room for talking. But even when you do find chatty people, it's never bad. In fact, in all my 300 hours I've never run into anyone that made me do an audible sigh like I would in Dota 2.

Nobody bitched about someone else's build, nobody threw a hissyfit over which relics you used, and nobody yelled at newbies when they had no idea what to do - even when three of us were falling over face-first while trying to figure out Eidolons for the first time. Everyone was just happy to run around and shoot things.

So if you're just starting out like I was and you find someone whose build you like, you should absolutely ask them about it. You might be surprised by how much people are willing to help you out, and just how easy it is thanks to the ability to link your entire build.

The Warframe community really is quite lovely

Grinding is Fun

But regardless of what build you end up going for, there is one fundamental truth you need to understand about Warframe - this is a grinding game. If you want to pimp out your Warframe and make a truly outlandish loadout, you're going to be doing a lot of grinding.

And that's pretty much exactly what I've been doing for the past 100 hours. But you know what the crazy thing is? The grinding is actually fun. Not 'oh I can grin and bear it' kind of fun, but rather 'I want to do it all over again!' kind of fun. Which, I must admit, is not something I ever expected would happen given how much I hate games that waste my time.

And I think that's the key, really. Aside from a few things - and I'll get to those in a moment - Warframe is genuinely good at respecting you and your time. You're rarely forced to do something until the thought of doing it again gives you PTSD flashbacks. There's no time pressure. Or any pressure at all. You can do what you want, when you want to, for as long or as little as you want.

But what really sealed the deal for me was the sheer variety of it. You're not just doing the same thing over and over again. You're bouncing from straightforward extermination missions to roguelite action, from tower defense to frantic Easter Egg hunts.

And even if you want to grind exactly one specific thing - like faction reputation - there's usually a bunch of different ways to do it. You can do bounties which are essentially little quests, collect materials, be super-lazy and just do it through rewards you get from other activities, or my personal favorite - rescue cute and cuddly animals! It all works.

Because of this variety you're never stuck skinning bears for hours in the hopes of finding a pristine bear ass. There's always something else you can do, and that's what makes the grind feel less like you're doing homework, and more like you're... well, playing the game!

Messing around with different playstyles is always a ton of fun

The Forgotten Ones

But, speaking of butts... there is unfortunately a 'but' here. Warframe is a very old game, and some of it has aged about as well as fine milk. In fact, there's a surprising number of cool-looking systems that feel like they should be incredibly important, only for you to discover they've basically been abandoned in a ditch.

Take for example Rivens. They're randomized weapon upgrades that can roll some truly outrageous stats. On paper they should be the ultimate endgame chase item, because who wouldn't want something like that. And yet... most people just don't care.

Why? Because finding the exact Riven you want is an enormous pain in the butt cheeks due to all the randomness. In the end the system feels more like a lottery than something cool and exciting. It's just kind of an endless money pit.

Or how about Necramechs? Do you like Warhammer 40k style mechs? Good news! Warframe has them, and they're frikkin awesome! So why are they on this list? Because they're essentially unusable in most content, and haven't seen any notable additions in ages. They're basically dead content, yet the game, to this day, still pushes you to get one.

The mechs are cool, but basically irrelevant in any serious content

Railjack Regret

But all of this pales in comparison to the most neglected of stepchildren - someone so ignored they weren't even chained down in the basement. They were just abandoned at a random gas station bathroom and left to fend for themselves. Naturally, I'm talking about the Railjack.

Because on the surface the Railjack is the coolest thing ever. It's your very own bloody starship that you can fly around, engage in massive space dogfights, do boarding missions, and in general just kinda live out every child's space adventure fantasy. It really is cool, yet there's very few people that actually interact with it.

Why? Because the game doesn't tell you ANYTHING about how to use it.

Oh, it'll happily make you spend literal hours building it as a part of the main quest and really build it up as this next big thing. But as soon as you're done, so is the game. It just... leaves.

And so now you're stuck with a space ship where you have no idea what you're supposed to do, how the systems work, which upgrades matter or how to get them, or even how to keep the damn thing alive. So when a bunch of newbies pile in for a Railjack mission, the only thing that's going to happen is that they'll immediately crash into an asteroid and explode. And how do I know this? I was one of them!

The Railjack is sooooo cool. I wish it was better supported.

Gotta Go Fast

And that honestly makes me sad, because a big reason why I'm still launching mission after mission is that Warframe just feels so damn good to play. Even at its very worst, it's still more addictive than hard drugs.

In my original video I mentioned how much I loved zipping around the levels, and that's only gotten better with time. Because once I finally got my hands on those delicious, lemon-flavored shards, even the chonky Saryn became as nimble as a butterfly.

If anything, the biggest limiter to my speed right now isn't my choice of Warframe, but my lacking brain RAM. Because once you pick up serious speed, it becomes seriously hard to actually parse what's happening around you... all the way until you slam face-first into a wall.

But that's not a complaint at all. Warframe promised me a space ninja game, and it sure as hell delivered. And at the end of the day, that's what really matters. As long as I can push a button that lights the entire world on fire - over and over again - I'll happily keep coming back.

Warframe is a strange game

Technical Sorcery

But do you know what the craziest thing is? No matter how fast you go, no matter how much you pummel the enemies, no matter how many of them are lining up for your light show - the game never seems to struggle.

Warframe is honestly a technical marvel. It's old enough to watch some of those weirdly violent movies on late-night TV, yet it runs better than a lot of the modern games I played recently. It even runs on my ancient laptop, which leads me to believe there may be some kind of dark sorcery involved.

But most shockingly of all is just how polished it is. In all my time I've only run into a couple of bugs - mostly minor stuff like Valkyr forgetting how to use her weapons after a particularly enthusiastic melee rampage - but even that is one of those once-in-50-hours kind of things.

And considering how much is happening on screen at any given moment, that's honestly kind of impressive. So whoever is responsible for keeping this monster going, hats off to you.

It's All About Platinum

And speaking of hats, a lot of people in my previous video pointed out that you can trade basically everything with other players, including Platinum - the paid currency.

Which means that just by playing the game you can eventually buy whatever glowing eyesore tickles your fancy from the in-game store. It'll take a while as the cosmetics tend to be pricey, but it's not an unreasonable grind.

But the best part about this system is that it lets you be laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy.

Instead of having to farm ultra-rare upgrades yourself, you can just buy them off someone that got lucky. Missed the train on cool Warframes like my beloved Saryn Prime? No problem. Just sell a couple of items you don't need and you can buy the whole package off someone else... and for a surprisingly low price, all things considered.

And honestly? I really, really love that. And it ties perfectly into everything I talked about grinding before. There's always another way. You're never forced to do something you don't want to. And that just makes the experience so much nicer... even if there's a dozen different things you need to collect for a new build.

However, since this is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde game, there is a catch here. The in-game trade channel sucks. It sucks more than a black hole. It's slow, unwieldy, and honestly just fundamentally useless as a marketplace.

So if you want to do any kind of serious trading, you'll have to go to the Warframe Market - a third-party website not associated with the developers themselves. And do you hear about this in-game? Nope!

You either get blessed with this knowledge by some lovely person you meet in-game, or you make a YouTube video and have a hundred people tell you you're being a dumbass. Either way, I would've preferred something a bit more elegant given how much of a win-win situation trading is for everyone involved.

The developers get money, players get Platinum, and I get to be unreasonably lazy. Everyone wins!

Platinum is pricey, but you can get it for free

Land of Confusion

And for the finale, I've left what is probably the most polarizing part of Warframe - the story.

I recently played Destiny 2, a similarly long-running space shooty-stabby game, and found the story to be nearly incomprehensible as a new player... despite having some genuinely awesome ideas that I really wanted to dive into.

And unfortunately, I could pretty much copy-paste that segment here. Because Warframe's premise, at its core, is incredibly cool.

A long time ago, there were these big bad badguys called the Orokin whose main hobby was juggling flaming chainsaws and poking sleeping bears. Then, after getting wiped out due to mysterious circumstances, our Solar system was left filled to the brim with angry bears and even angrier chainsaws. And that's what you're dealing with now.

You're basically a janitor trying desperately keep the Solar system from falling apart as everyone just cannot help themselves from tossing a few chainsaws around. Now obviously I'm being intentionally reductive here, but that really is the basic premise... and it's a good one.

But that is only the tippy-top of the iceberg. Because once you start digging into the actual story, you'll run head first into timey-wimey shenanigans, a massive time loop set in an alternate-history version of Earth, multiple dimensions, things existing outside those dimensions, and enough weird shit to make your brain say 'enough, I quit!'

No joke, I only learned what the Orokin were actually doing about 150 hours in. And it wasn't some kind of big cinematic or story moment. It was a random dialogue option where I was explaining it to someone else. Somehow...

But the biggest problem - the thing that gave me actual mental whiplash - is just how much the story jumps around. You're never dealing with the same characters for very long before moving onto the next batch of nigh-immortal, deeply troubled clowns.

And that's a real shame, because it turns a lot of the story into nearly incomprehensible background noise. It's only once I reached the time loop and spent weeks of real-life time interacting with the same few characters that I finally started to care about what was happening.

Because at that point I was no longer a space janitor cleaning up someone's whoopsie. I actually got something tangible to latch onto. Something to really sink my teeth into. Or someone... Elanor is a freak.

So much like Destiny 2, Warframe has a genuinely good story buried under mountains upon mountains of nonsense. And I think it desperately needs a fresh set of eyes. Someone to go through this whole convoluted mess of characters and quests and reorganize it into something that actually makes sense to new players.

Just something to give players a bit of a foundation before the story decides to skateboard directly off the rails... which, by the way, is also something you can do. Just figured I'd mention that.

Would I Recommend Warframe?

So after 300 hours, would I recommend you follow in my footsteps and slide-dash into Warframe yourself? Absolutely.

Now that the honeymoon period is over, I recognize that Warframe is not a perfect game. Not even close. It's confusing, it's bloated, and it's full of systems that feel like you're playing a completely different game that was awkwardly stapled on.

But here's the thing. What Warframe does well, it does unbelievably well.

The movement is incredible. The combat is beyond satisfying. And there's a truly mind-boggling amount of stuff to unlock, build and experiment with. Yet despite this, the grind rarely ever feels like a chore because, like a magpie, you'll always be jumping from one shiny thing to another.

So even after 300 hours I'm still discovering new things. I'm still finding new Warframes I want to break. New weapons I want to try. Completely new builds I want to put together. And even new corners of the game I somehow managed to avoid all this time.

And I think that's ultimately what makes Warframe so special. It's not its size, the fact that it's free, or that it has enough content to keep you occupied until the heat death of the universe.

It's that underneath it all it's just a damn good game. And ultimately, what else do you really need?