Concord Review – A Solid Shooter With an Identity Crisis

Concord on PlayStation 5 & PC

As someone who never bought heavily into hero shooters during the heights of the Overwatch craze, I was more than a little intrigued by Firewalk Studios’ take on the genre with Concord. It’s one of PlayStation’s earnest attempts at breaking into the live-service space, a feat met with great success with the release of Helldivers 2 in early 2024.

With Concord, PlayStation is doubling down on its recent live service push, hoping to reach the same lofty heights and persistent popularity as other shooters in this now overcrowded genre. Will this live-service experiment succeed or will it be a quickly forgotten failure? Only time will tell.

It would be a massive understatement to say there was a mixed reception to Concord when it was unveiled. Its initial flashy teaser trailer gave similar vibes to Destiny and No Man’s Sky, showing a brightly colored ship zooming through the outer reaches of space.

Fast forward a year to Concord’s first gameplay reveal, showing off a game that heavily borrows from various preexisting beloved IPs to cash in on fanbases from more popular games. It immediately received quite a poor reception from players, with some labeling it as generic and uninspired right off the bat. This sentiment seemed to carry through to Concord’s open beta period, with meagre player numbers for a flagship multiplayer title from Sony.

One of the main reasons for this initial negative reaction seems to be due to the game’s payment model. Rather than adopting a free-to-play multiplayer experience like most of its contemporaries, Concord requires you to fork out $40, which leaves a lot of players, myself included, confused. Why should I pay upfront for a hero shooter that might not have legs when I can play the likes of Overwatch 2, Valorant, and the upcoming Marvel Rivals for free? Firewalk Studios’ answer to that question seems to be by offering players a more premium experience, with high production values, slick visuals, and a persistent story and lore.

While the initial reaction to all that Concord has to offer has been regrettably sour, I don’t believe all of it is completely warranted. Beneath all of the confusion, there is a great multiplayer shooter experience at its core. The only question is if it will last.

As soon as you boot up Concord for the first time, you will see a cutscene that introduces you to a handful of the game’s 16 possible Freegunners. Just as with the cinematic trailer, Concord’s cutscenes have very high production values. The visuals are striking in all the right ways, with brilliant lighting, textures, and animations across the board. The character designs are a little generic, however, as there isn’t anything particularly unique or interesting about each Freegunner. I don’t believe they quite deserve the amount of hate and vitriol they have been getting online, but I can also empathize with the disappointment at the lack of uniqueness on offer.

This fact is made even worse by Concord’s similarity to Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy in its themes and general tone. Star Child is a carbon copy of Guardians of the Galaxy’s muscle-bound Drax, right down to his persistent lust for battle and humorous off-color remarks. Lennox, the trigger-happy green-skinned alien with an easy-go-lucky attitude bears a lot of similarities with Guardians’ Star Lord. He also seems to be somewhat of a leader of the North Star vessel that serves as the backdrop for most of these small narrative snippets you’ll see when loading up the game.

As of the writing of this review, there are only two short cutscenes available, with more coming weekly. Touted as one of Concord’s main unique selling points, I’m not yet sold on the game’s lore and narrative chops. It currently amounts to a couple of scenes featuring a handful of snarky characters embarking on their journey as newly appointed Freegunners (think space bandits). Having only just met the crew of the North Star in these brief glimpses, I have very little reason to care about who they are and their goals at this point, though they seem likable enough.

To help flesh out the context and background lore of Concord’s narrative, Firewalk Studios has implemented an in-game codex (the “Galactic Guide”) to give players more info regarding the game’s universe. You’ll become aware of this immediately. There are a laughable number of notifications that pop up during cutscenes prompting you to check it out at the mere mention of any character, location, or previous battle.

In theory, having a codex is a neat idea as it gives the option for more lore-inclined to delve deeper into Concord’s world. However, upon opening the Galactic Guide, you are greeted with a convoluted mess of a galaxy map, with each node offering some form of lore tidbit. After hovering over a node, you’ll get “Lore XP” unlocking further nodes across various paths.

Sometimes these nodes grant access to small paragraphs telling you about a planet’s role in the Galactic system, while others include pages of text going into rich and meticulous detail about how Concord’s universe operates. It’s a great option for those wanting to know more, but as it stands the Galactic Guide is a dauntingly confusing mess. I feel as though a more traditional codex may have worked better here, as I appreciate the amount of effort that went into Concord’s world-building. A high level of care and attention to detail went into it.

However, with only a handful of cutscenes available, I’m finding very little reason to care about it all as things currently stand. I would much rather see and play through what seems to be a well-thought-out universe and characters, rather than wading through countless blocks of text in the Galactic Guide.

This begs the question: why didn’t Firewalk simply develop a single-player campaign to facilitate this? I certainly would have preferred it to be a full-priced $70 game with a decent single-player story to play through. Doing so would have been a whole lot less confusing and would have given fans a more genuine sense of the characters, setting, and overall lore. It is definitely a missed opportunity.

Despite Concord’s narrative woes, its saving grace is how it plays. Firewalk Studios consists of industry veterans with experience in making beloved heavy-hitting series such as Destiny, Call of Duty, Halo, and Mass Effect. All of that talent clearly shows in Concord’s minute-to-minute feel, as the FPS gameplay is punchy and satisfying in all the right ways. The gunplay is twitchy and responsive, with a nice spread of weapon types. The movement is particularly impressive, as it feels appropriately weighty and agile depending on which of the Freegunners you decide to take into a match.

Each of the 16 Freegunners on offer at Concord’s launch plays vastly different from the last. Fans of hero shooters should feel right at home, as there are six class categories with buffs and perks known as Crew Bonuses. This acts as Concord’s unique twist on the genre, as each Freegunner gives certain buffs to the rest of your characters when you next spawn in a given match. For example, Anchor will increase all healing received for the rest of the game, whereas Tacticians and Wardens will increase reload speed and weapon range, respectively. What’s more, you can build and customize your very own roster in Concord’s deckbuilding-inspired Crew Builder system. It gives players a lot more freedom and versatility that sets it apart from other shooters in the same field.

It’s an interesting system that incentivizes you to mix and match your play style in any given match, encouraging you to experiment with new classes and characters. That’s not to say you won’t gravitate to a few favorites, as there is plenty of build versatility and variety on offer that is sure to satisfy any play style. I was a particular fan of the Haunt character class, as these show off Concord’s gameplay at its best. Haunts all have increased mobility, whether it’s Bazz’s impressive somersaults, IT-Z’s snappy teleportation at the click of her fingers, or Roka’s hovering jumpsuit that allows her to deal explosive rocket-launcher devastation from above.

Despite not being as mobile (or fun to control), the other classes offer something unique enough to make Concord matches an absolute blast. For example, Duchess has the ability for you to place giant metal walls, blocking paths and creating choke points for the rest of your team to focus fire on the enemy. Lark is a Tactician who can place deployable Spore Seeds that continually buff your allies, whereas Haymar wields the element of fire to deal devastating damage over time to her foes. Throw in some of your more traditional gunslinging, heavy, and healing classes, and there are plenty of opportunities for synergy and tactical teamplay in a match.

At launch, Concord has a total of six game modes and twelve multiplayer maps for players to try their hand at. Multiplayer is split into respawn and non-respawn modes, with a nice mix between traditional team deathmatch and more objective-focused multiplayer. Concord’s Brawl respawn modes, Takedown and Trophy Hunt, are for players who want a simple team deathmatch experience. Area Control and Signal Chase are a little more tactical, prompting players to capture and control zones while preventing enemy players from doing the same. I much preferred the Overrun objective-based respawn modes as they encourage team play and push you to use a wider range of Freegunners. However, I can see a lot of players being forced to play the Brawl modes, simply because it’s the only one populated with players.

This brings me to one of the biggest issues I have with Concord in its current state – there’s no one playing it. During the game’s initial “early access” period it was literally impossible for me to play the more competitive Rivalry no-respawn modes as there simply weren’t enough players to fill up its lobbies. Even the respawn Brawl and Overrun modes could take over three minutes to load a match, which is frankly quite concerning for a flagship multiplayer-only title at launch.

Thankfully getting into a game was far easier once it became publicly available on August 23. As expected, I could get into matches faster and was even able to play some of the Rivalry non-respawn modes, Clash Point and Cargo run. Those familiar with hero shooters such as Valorant and Overwatch will feel at home with these modes, forcing you to pay more attention to the Crew you decide to bring into a given game so you can work together as a team to succeed. These are slower than the other respawn modes, but I enjoyed the more cerebral gunplay and positioning that these modes encourage.

Despite faster load times during Concord’s public launch, it could still take roughly two minutes on average to load a match and even longer for the no respawn modes. I would expect better for the first few days of a launch for an FPS multiplayer title and it has me concerned about Concord’s longevity. The game’s lackluster progression adds to these concerns. Firewalk Studios has decided to forgo a traditional Battle Pass, instead opting for cosmetic unlocks by earning XP through completing Daily, Weekly, and Seasonal missions.

While there is nothing inherently wrong with this system, there isn’t anything particularly exciting to unlock other than weapon and Freegunner skins. These amount to nothing more than a change of color palette and needs improvement. As cosmetic unlocks are the life force behind most live-service games, I would like to see more unique options to incentivize me to work towards unlocking them.

Regarding longevity, Firewalk Studios has revealed a Season Roadmap for Season 1 and Season 2 of Concord. These will bring new Freegunners, modes, cosmetics, as well as more cutscenes to flesh out the game’s story and lore. I have faith that the game will continue to get support for a while and am interested to see what is coming in the future. However, my biggest concern is that when the time comes and Concord gets the content it needs to make things more interesting, its fan base will have already dwindled.

I believe part of the reason for Concord’s meager fan response is due to the game’s identity crisis. This is likely due to its strange $40 asking price, especially considering that players can access other popular hero shooters with healthy player bases for free. Concord’s lore, story vignettes, and multiplayer also feel completely disparate and a little out of place. It’s hard to care about the story when you are seeing duplicates of the same characters face against each other without any context. While this is true in all hero shooter games, those do not pretend to place you in a wider narrative or expect you to follow along with extensive in-game cutscenes.

This could have only worked if it locked certain characters to certain factions and if it gave a narrative reason for these battles. This is perhaps one of the main reasons why Sony’s other live-service experiment, Helldivers 2, became a phenomenal overnight success. That game immerses you in its world and encourages a sense of community by setting wider overarching tasks that players feel like they are working together to achieve. For a game that puts such a heavy emphasis on narrative, it’s a shame there isn’t anything similar in place to give me a narrative incentive to keep playing in Concord.

As a live-service title, all of this can change and improve over time. I do not doubt that Firewalk Studios will work to implement fan feedback to make improvements to these elements, but I do wonder if it will be too little too late by this point. Despite its issues with its disparate multiplayer and narrative, lackluster progression, and a low player base, there is an extremely enjoyable hero shooter beneath it all. Concord’s foundation consists of an FPS experience that is extremely fun and satisfying to play – so much so that I fully intend to keep playing it after this review.

My biggest concern is whether or not others will feel the same, especially with the fairly steep $40 asking price. I expect to see Concord to at least appear on PS Plus’ Essential or Extra subscription service at some point if it doesn’t get the player base it needs. Because of this, it’s hard to fully recommend purchasing Concord without seeing how it fares down the line, as live service hero shooters live and die by its community and fans. Either way, I hope in years to come Concord can do what it takes to make a meaningful dent in the live-service hero shooter space, as it is a delightfully satisfying and fun shooter at its core.