Concord Beta Impressions
It’s fun. It’s clearly a step above a free-to-play title like XDefiant in terms of content from the beta, with a lot of unique classes that have depth to them, and it does have some refreshing modes that are familiar enough to pick up easily. Its central “Freegunners” crew system is its strongest selling point, with movement being a pretty big part of each character in a way that’s similar to another recent free-to-play shooter, The Finals. Some issues do hold it back, like a few technical problems and movement being a bit too sluggish, and the beta is indeed a lot of fun at its best moments.
A hero shooter lives and dies on its cast of characters, and thankfully, Concord has some pretty interesting ones. While their lore is dumped into rather boring walls of text that are slow to scroll through, their designs have a definitive life to them. They’re all bright and colorfully designed with a bunch of variety in their looks. 1-OFF may not be my favorite to play, but his big, tank-looking appearance is fun and reminds me of Bastion from Overwatch and Pathfinder from Apex Legends. Each Freegunner belongs to a class, with there being Anchors, Breachers, Haunts, Rangers, Tacticians and Wardens, all of whom bring something vital to a team and can radically alter one’s playstyle.
Everyone’s used to double jumping in games, but Concord chooses to play it a little differently. Some characters like 1-OFF that are big and tanky only have a single jump to compensate for their big health pools, while smaller, lighter characters have many different kinds of jumps. One of my favorites in the roster for their movement so far has to be Haymar, who has a Hover and an Air Dodge, with the former allowing her to move quickly through the air in whatever direction she jumps in while aiming. Another character I’ve grown fond of is Roka, who has a Triple Jump and an Air Dodge, with one of her main abilities being Hover Thrusters that boost the lock-on speed of her pretty powerful Missile Launcher.
Where things get interesting is in building your own, personalized crew for a ranked match. The round-based system with no respawns for some game modes isn’t surprising, but when your team wins a round, you can’t use the same character. You can however, have multiple copies of that character to use them again later on in a match, at the cost of one of the other original slots. The game requires you to have enough variety in your deck of Freegunners that you won’t run dry, but otherwise lets you run wild in terms of who you can pack into your crew.
Sometimes, shooting will feel a bit too loose but that could just be from the limited time spent with the characters. The TTK also feels a bit weird sometimes, with some characters being able to eliminate enemies extremely quickly compared to others, but then again, more time with the game could make this make more sense. It can feel just right at times when playing with someone like Lennox for example, with his strong main gun and rapidly firing secondary, landing precise shots, but the Destiny 2 DNA (more on that later) definitely feels like it makes shooting a bit too floaty and unwieldy at its worst.
Movement does feel a bit weird at times unfortunately despite its importance. The strong emphasis on verticality and dodging doesn’t quite feel right at times. When it works, it feels absolutely amazing, but when it doesn’t, it feels like the work-in-progress it still is. Dodging doesn’t quite feel as fluid as it should, with some characters’ movements feeling sluggish in a way that doesn’t quite work as intended. The teams’ experience on Destiny is clear with the floaty jumps and shooting, but it doesn’t feel as tight as it needs to be for what it’s going for. There’s moments though where it all does feel really good and as fluid as it wants to be. One of my favorite moments playing the beta was using IT-Z’s ball that she can teleport to in conjunction with a ball that powers up her SMG to sneak up behind enemies and snag a kill while jumping around.
It faces a rather similar problem that XDefiant faced: Longevity. The core gameplay is fun, and the movement at its best does feel unlike any of the other hero shooters it is competing with, but when those competitors are free compared to this one, in addition to some oddly floaty gameplay contrasting its fast and fluid center, it feels like it’s just not quite there yet. With the $40 price tag looming over its head combined with the large skepticism surrounding it, Concord has a major uphill battle facing it as it approaches release day.
