Look, I think we can all agree, the energy in the proverbial room when PlayStation and developer Firewalk revealed Concord, was tepid. The reveal was met with mostly apathy.
The one-two punch of a cinematic trailer painting a sci-fi adventure as part of a group of possibly scoundrels followed by gameplay which paints a very different picture was not the best idea. The reveal for Overwatch was like that and it was met with adoration, but you can’t capture lightning in a bottle. And that was nine (nine!) years ago.
It’s 2024 where paid multiplayer-only games, especially with only PVP modes, is a hard sell. Overwatch 2 pivoted to free-to-play. Exoprimal isn’t getting new content updates anymore, and who knows if the days of Foamstars are numbered or not.
The demand for non-free-to-play hero shooters, or any multiplayer shooter that isn’t Call Of Duty, is low from how I see it.
And despite the low buzz the game has going for it with one month to go before release, Concord is actually pretty fun. Sure, it is a bit Destiny-coded in a lot of ways, but its take on a hero shooter is filled with fresh ideas.

Meet The Freegunners
First of all, a hero shooter lives and dies on the appeal of its heroes, the Freegunners as they are referred to here in Concord. The game will launch with 16 of them, all playable during the beta.
I’m taken aback, in a good way, with how these heroes are categorised and classify as. Rather than a strict trifecta of damage dealer-tank-healer, the five roles Freegunners are split into are more of a suggestion where these character should operate on a map.
It’s more like football where a defender is usually expected to hang back but right and left backs can go up the pitch to aid on the attack rather than their roles being strictly to win the ball back. And Concord is a football manager that lets players have creative freedom- you can play how you like in this roles, even transition from one to another.
Here are the roles in Concord:
- Wardens have capabilities to strike at long ranges, so they’re good at holding chokepoints.
- Breachers are best when initiating fights with their ability to carve an opening in the other team’s formation.
- Haunts thrive in chaos and are best out of sight lines and wreak havoc on a team by exposing their flanks. A bit like a Jungler is in MOBAs.
- Rangers are the midfielders, the jack-of-all-trades as their kits are balanced for all sorts of encounters.
- Tacticians require some setups and are best in the hands of a player with the best map knowledge.
- Anchors are imposing in size and can be the proverbial anchor of the team to center around.
As such, there’s no rigid team compositions in Concord. All five players have to play a different character, but a team without a healer or a tank can still work well and that’s refreshing. A healer can be a Tactician due to how much setup they require (like Lark) but the Tactician role isn’t just for healers (like Kyps, that can set traps to spot enemies and disable their skills).
In fact, you are even incentivised to rotate your character picks. There’s no ultimate ability, so the opportunity cost of losing an ult charge when switching characters doesn’t exist here. Rather, you’ll gain a crew bonus based on what role you previously played as. Play as a Haunt first and you’ll get a boost in speed, which should make the Anchors move a tiny bit more faster when you switch to that.
The more “sweatier” game modes in the “sweatstrum” (“sweat spectrum”) will demand players to all be flexible in various roles and characters, though for the hardcore one-trickers, there are mechanics that allow you can stick to your main. One-tricking isn’t ideal, but Concord still throws a bone should you remain steadfast in that playstyle.
That said, the specificity of how much the crew bonus is worth isn’t specified or even felt in gameplay. It’s a good idea on paper that I’m not sure if it’s translated well in execution.
Kitted Out
Another thing I find Concord to be pretty good is the kits each Freegunner has. You have a weapon (sometimes two), two active abilities, and two different passives. And that’s it. No ult, as mentioned before.
And within that relatively small box for a character kit, Concord manages to get its Freegunners to all be fun to play, while not necessarily be a one-to-one copy of existing hero archetypes.
Roka is the flying rocket launcher wielder of Concord. She can hover and air dodge, the rockets don’t hit as strongly in one hit, but spam the full clip and it can get a kill. She can also divebomb to the ground, but it’s risky, which is why she is classified as a Haunt.
Then you have Jabali, the healer in the Ranger role. His rifle is really good in the hands of a pro FPS player, but his orbs are what makes him so potent. One orb that can latch to a team member which then procs a healing area-of-effect for a short time. Another to proc a debuff on enemies. Interestingly, Jabali’s healing orb isn’t on cooldown. Rather, it replenishes when he gets an elimination (a kill or an assist will do) or if the debuff orb hits an enemy. Some characters have what the game calls “skill loops”, or “sloops”, which is a positive feedback loop that rewards skillful play. If you are good, you can start snowballing.
All the 16 Freegunners seems to be balanced in these early days. They thrive in specific playstyles, and can be shut down with hard counters. And the maps are perfectly designed with chokepoints, alternative routes and clever health pick-up placements. You don’t need necessarily need a healer when you can roam around the map for health kits.
You can feel it from the outcome how much Concord is made with people experience with multiplayer shooters. Aside from Destiny, you can also spot elements of Team Fortress 2, Overwatch, Valorant, Street Fighter V (or any fighting game that can change one particular character ability- that’s what Freegunner Variants are) and even old-school arena shooters in Concord. And they meld elegantly together.
The fact that the devs themselves have coined some pro-player-esque terminologies (“sweatstrum” and “sloops” are lexicons introduced in the “how to play” option) shows the game has potentially a decently high skill ceiling, but the skill floor is decently low as well. So long as they didn’t take the wrong turn to turn this into an esport too soon, that is.
It also helps that the presentation aspect is top-tier. The music has the perfect mix of synth-to-orchestra ratio for a sci-fi world and that four bar stinger will surely be iconic if the game catches on. The UI is also sleek except for some font choices (the pixely one can appear a bit less legible for my eyes sometimes).

A Long List Of Concerns
The gameplay foundations Concord is based on is undoubtedly solid, there’s a good game, great even, to be realised here. the vision is really strong.
But I do fear the developers still haven’t figured out some things.
Concord is supposed to be a 5V5 team but more often than not a match starts with one person on one team missing. There’s no backfilling, and like football, being one person short really puts that team in a disadvantage (though not insurmountable) with no extra rewards for sticking it out. I’ve also experienced people leaving the match on the character select screen, presumably because all the characters they want to play was already selected.
In some of my matches I had my fair of connection issues, even with my PS5 on wired connection. My last-second dodges are usually not taken account by the netcode which is frustrating.
Concord may be loosey-goosey with its team comps, but this is a game all about team fights still. The second you’re in a pub game where one team couldn’t co-ordinate and the other team does and start picking them off one by one, it’s over. Over time I did get matches where everyone is aware that they should stick together in team fights (outside of Haunts who are usually more effective roaming independently), but it’s hard to co-ordinate unless you’re on voice comms.
On that note, having the ping button on the touchpad is so, so awkward. I rarely see people pinging, When I ping, sometimes the thumb hits the analog stick along the way so the ping that was supposed to highlight an enemy is in my sights registers as a ping that I’m going that way. There are context pings, like a callout for when you spot a sniper is done automatically, and the character will bark out when they heal. And you can rebind every button. But communicating with teammates in random matchmaking, by default, is limited.
I also feel pretty bummed with the cosmetics available. It’s the typical skins, but you can also add in tiny trinkets on the person or on weapons. And that’s it. If this is the carrot on the stick to keep playing every day, I’ll pass. The beta implies that a weekly cinematic vignette will play to engross you in the lore, the world and the characters, but is it sustainable to so? And is it enough to sustain player interest over time?
And of course, the big problem Concord has on its hands right now, the buzz or rather the lack of it. This is a paid multiplayer-only game based on a new IP.
One might say Helldivers 2 was like that before release and look at how people were posting about Helldivers after its launch, but that game already had a cult following from the first game (and from Magicka) that were enlisting on day-1. Even if Helldivers 2 didn’t got explosively viral, it could have settle as a cult hit at the very least from its existing fanbase.
Concord is selling itself less about the multiplayer shooter and more about being part of the Northstar Crew yet I see barely any posts from fans about the characters and the world. I don’t know if Concord has fans. I don’t see them. This isn’t a problem for single-player games, but for multiplayer games where a healthy playerbase is required to keep it alive, then this is troubling signs.
Closing Thoughts
From my time with the Early Access Beta, I can safely say Concord has the potential to be a really fun multiplayer hero shooter. The question is whether people want to play a multiplayer shooter, and the developer and publisher haven’t made a good case why people should want one. The hero kits are fun. The team dynamics are fresh.
And if you have the time this weekend, put your skepticism aside and try the open beta out. Maybe we’ll come to an agreement that Concord being a refreshing new taste of a hero shooter.
Played on PS5. Early Access Beta key provided by the publisher.