Concord continues to thrive on being the best mechanically sound team shooter on the market, but is restricted by a lack of content on launch.
Very rarely are “early access” betas ever utilized to correct mistakes in games. You might get some servers shuffled, or minor updates to the game, but these beta’s are just ways for publishers to demo games and garner pre-orders. Gladly I’d say Concord did the opposite and listened to a lot of the feedback from the beta period and improved the game greatly with added features, but sadly didn’t take into account the imbalance in heroes.
Concord
Developed By: Firewalk Studios
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PC(Steam)
Release Date: August 23, 2024
During my beta experience with the game I had an array of complaints that simply dealt with the ease of use with the title. With the final release I’m glad to say basically every issue I had has been dealt with. The game has a quick re- queue option if you’re in a team (it oddly disappears if playing solo), heroes don’t blurt out their one liners every time you respawn, and cross-play is addressed right at the beginning screen. Cross-play is naturally enabled, but you can (thankfully) turn it off easily.
It’s interesting how quickly certain other changes were added so swiftly as well. You now have a practice range to test out the characters, something desperately needed to learn their abilities. Character selection screens also showcase the Freegunner perks you will unlock by switching characters mid match too, something that was a hidden perk in the beta.
Other odd things were also ironed out. Like if a player quits you are no longer stuck without a teammate the rest of the match since the team opened the ability to join mid match games. Also added was a leaver penalty, so not only can people join late, but the people leaving will be penalized for it too. Other odd glitches I had are now avoided with input delay during certain loading sequences, like trying to pull up the lobby menu just as the character spawns.
Overall Concord did what it does best, it created a hub for multiplayer that simply functions better than any other game out there. The ability to add friends to your squad, or join them, and the quickness to get into matches easily, it all just works amazingly well. The only issue I have is that, being a PlayStation Studios game, it needs to utilize the PlayStation network for its community. So creating a block list, messaging, etc… it’s all done through PlayStation, and honestly I hate that. I would rather have an in-game experience that doesn’t open an outside app.
Character Balance
One thing that absolutely wrecked the beta for me was a character named Lennox. He isn’t exactly overpowered, but there is something with his character that makes him hard to hit. I’ve laid out entire bursts of bullets at him and done little to no damage. I could take out an entire room of enemies, and he will still be running away. I’ve asked the developers numerous times what his “gimmick” is, but I can’t figure it out. The more popular the game gets, the more people are going to swing towards abusing characters like this.
And he isn’t the only one with a slight imbalance of use. If you’re working in a team, basically any character is good and very fun to use, but there are some characters that truly become OP (overpowered) if a team backs them up. Character 1-OFF, for example, basically becomes a giant bullet sponge that can soak up enemy projectiles infinitely. While 1-OFF’s attacks are mostly avoidable and weak 1-on-1, if a team is sitting behind him it’s nearly impossible to penetrate their barrier. His main ability is to create a vortex to suck up all enemy projectiles including grenades and other gadgets, and then use that to throw a trash bomb back at you. The problem is he can continue to suck up everything non-stop, so he never really needs to throw the bomb, and can instead let his teammates do the dirty work. I’ve tried flanking and he still soaked up everything I put out, and getting close just leads to getting stomped or shot by close teammates. It becomes troublesome because in most portions of any map, his vortex engulfs the entire area in front of him and his teammates. It’s a really cheesy way to exploit the team mechanic, and he isn’t slow enough to warrant his ability.
Another character, Lark, has an ability to leave plant spores everywhere that can strengthen your team or weaken an opponent. There is also an option to leave behind transport pods, so Lark can simply duck out of the area when nearly killed. The problem here is that there is no limit, or real reason to place the plants in specific areas, and the more you place the stronger the passive ability gets, which is damage reduction. So basically anyone playing Lark can just spam empty areas of the map for the passive or spam choke points, which is already happening quite often this early in launch.
This aspect kind of leads to an overall mechanic that I’m not sure if I enjoy or not. All the map placement perks characters have don’t seem to have limits. Once you place a healing pad, it’s there until it’s either used up or destroyed. Some things can’t be “used up” and will just sit till triggered or destroyed. Even if you switch characters, everything you placed still stays on the map. I like it because it allows you to maybe play a character to set up a zone, and then switch to someone more offensive, but at the same time why are there 50 plant pods everywhere? Shouldn’t there be some type of expiration? This could go with basically any perk in the game. I don’t think 1-OFF should be able to simply continue sucking in projectiles if his bomb is ready to throw….for example.
But overall it’s a few character in a bigger line-up that I have an issue with. I love basically every character in the game, which is not something I could say about other hero shooters. I could literally pick any character in Concord’s roster and be decent, if not good, with that character. Which says a lot about how much effort went into balancing making sure the characters are fun to play. I am a little disappointed there are no ultimate’s, but it’s not “that” big of a deal.
The Future Looks Bright
Overall it’s some nitpicking with the mechanics, and the more people play the more data there will be to balance characters and their abilities, let alone actual gameplay. Overwatch is known for outright switching abilities and toning down popular characters, so hopefully Concord does something similar if something is abused too much.
This is what I think I like the most about Concord. The platform is there and with some care it could expand into something truly great. It does need a lot of content, and attention, so this game truly rests on the developers ability to keep at it and fine tune things with the data provided.
However with such swift changes to the core game after one beta period it seems pretty promising. The team did a great job of refining something that was already good, and clearly took player feedback into those decisions. Now it’s just a matter of how far they will go outside of that.
But We Need More Content
This is my one true biggest gripe about Concord as it stands today, it’s missing imagination. I said it in the beta period, but I’ll say it again. The characters are bland. You have two or three that are really neat, including IT-Z which is basically a cool Sombra (Overwatch) variant, and Kyps which is a robotic 007, but outside of that it’s just human-like characters with no real interesting look to them.
Looking further than that there is no depth to a majority of the characters either. I looked through the unlockable skins and most of them are just color variants, which is incredibly boring. There are no new outfits or designs that could make the characters stand out a little more. Heck there aren’t even “gold guns” to unlock for mastering characters. And this carries over to basically anything customizable. The player cards are another example because you can change the icons (which are meaningless), the colors, and add some kinda lame one liners, but that’s about it. No animated features or designs to really make you pop, at all.
And explaining the characters? So far we got the same cutscenes from the beta, but more will be unlocked via seasons, and then we get a “Galactic Guide” which is honestly one of the most disappointing parts of the game. Instead of additional videos, art, or even a comic to further invest you in the characters, we get paragraphs of lore. While written pretty well, it’s not something I want to stand in front of my TV and read. None of it seems to be voiced either, so you can’t even be entertained and listen to it while doing something else.
And stepping further outside of that there are no additional animations or highlights to look at so far. It’s almost like the team kinda fizzled out after the base game and wanted to toss in as many different things as quickly as possible. It’s all really bland. Even the end of game scenes is just a pose that isn’t animated, which sucks because the animations elsewhere are phenomenal. Why not have a quick highlight like other games that show some cool accomplishment? Or at least have the team interacting with each other?
But this is why my review is “in progress,” because so far the season pass hasn’t opened up yet. So we haven’t gotten a chance to see what the team potentially locked away for us to see as seasons progress. Maybe they took the imaginative skins and put them there? Who knows.
If we get new creative characters added to the roster that aren’t just more human-like droids, if we get some super cool (maybe even licensed) skins, and more content is added to poses, guns, and tech…. I think we can forgive the lackluster base content. Much like the game’s overall mechanics, this aspect of Concord relies heavily on the imagination of the developers pulling through. I am honestly interested in this because if the content is good, then it’ll keep me active in the game to keep unlocking it all. It will be interesting to see the reward for grinding out these items will be, vs simply paying real world money.
Maps Are Godly, But Game Modes Are Not
Concord simply built a perfect hero shooter in a sense of gameplay and maps. Every map has great choke points, which elevate the action. More importantly Concord battles are not ground based combat, characters are flying in the air, below you, behind you, everywhere, and all the maps take this into account to allow you to leverage the environment in your favor. The only minor drawback is sometimes the spawn points are very imbalanced, especially in control game modes, and oftentimes leave you far away from teammates.
But with a proper team, Concord is simply the most fun I’ve had with a hero shooter. I love the dynamics of the characters, and the openness of the maps. Flanking enemies, and working with your team to finish off enemies is incredible. When this isn’t happening, Concord kind of gets frustrating and leads to lopsided matches, but it does a good job of pushing you to work with a team because the damage dealt together is substantially better than alone. Not only that, but the game is heavily rewarding towards team based actions vs stand alone stats. The game does a good job of showcasing every character involved in every elimination, and it never really celebrates single character streaks.
The game focuses on 5v5 combat, and every character is tied to specific weapons with no way to change that. But with that comes the benefit of every weapon being fine tuned and adjusted to the characters strengths really well. Support characters tend to fall behind tanks naturally, and DPS characters are zooming all around the arena before retreating to support.
But the one thing Concord doesn’t do well is game modes. I’m honestly more sad about this than anything else in the game. I want Concord to have a “Payload” style mode, or something more team focused overall, or even a “total mayhem” style mode where it’s just chaotic. I’m curious to see if the game will see rotating arcade playlists or not in the future. But for now we basically have Team Deathmatch and Domination style modes, and nothing else. Again, not imaginative in the slightest.
Combine the lack of game modes with how fast each game mode goes, and it’s grueling in a sense. Games are over before you can really “counter” your team. And the whole passive ability of switching characters for an overall team buff is useless if you’re not dying often. By the time anything really builds up, or a comeback is nearly complete, the game ends.
Overall
I can’t say it enough, the gunaplay in Concord is phenomenal. The mix of heroes needs a tiny bit of fine tuning, but overall it’s a fun team based shooter with a good blend of mechanics unique to the character selected. The only thing Concord lacks is overall imagination in a sense of being too “grounded” to human-like characters, when they have a whole galaxy to explore. The deciding factor for Concord is where the developers go from here, and how much support it gets in the coming months. It’s kind of a shame the first season doesn’t start until October.
