Concord review: promising PS5 shooter is lost in space for now

I thought the life of a Freegunner would be more exciting.

The hired guns of Concord, PlayStation 5’s new 5v5 shooter, are certainly a colorful bunch of misfits that look like they get up to some galactic hijinks. Miles of written lore even allude to the potential dangers they face while traversing the deep reaches of space. Every planet, and even the routes connecting them, are filled with the kind of high-stakes treachery that only the boldest mercenaries would take on. So why am I spending so much time controlling zones in musty warehouses like I’ve done in countless other games?

Concord isn’t a poor multiplayer offering by any means. It has fun hero-shooter bones, an eclectic cast of characters with distinct strategies, and rich world-building that’s set to dribble out consistently over time. It’s just that Firewalk Studios’ debut lacks original ideas that elevate that promising foundation. The result is a perfectly fine, though imbalanced, live service shooter that doesn’t feel long for this universe.

Building a galaxy

Concord is a fairly boilerplate hero shooter filled with familiar modes that pit squads of five against one another. What makes it unique, though, is Firewalk Studios’ approach to narrative. Most multiplayer games simply toss players into battles with the slightest bit of set dressing, sometimes in the form of content found entirely outside of the game. Concord looks to change that trend by loading up on lore logs and cinematic scenes that roll out once a week. It’s an admirable approach, though one that will need to prove itself.

At launch, we only get a brief introduction to that strategy with a few cutscenes that introduce its Freegunners. The tone draws clear inspiration from Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy with sardonic quips and eccentric characters. In theory, that should make players excited to log in at least once a week to get a new piece of the story or to learn about their favorite heroes. It doesn’t put its best foot forward, though. The early cutscenes I’ve seen make me feel like I’ve been thrown into the middle of a sitcom season. I don’t see the wider story and feel more like I’m there to chuckle at a few gags.

Time will tell if those scenes get stronger, but for now, I do expect to keep up with them. That’s largely thanks to Concord’s secret weapon: its vibrant cast of characters. I love the look of the suave Kyps, and 1-Off, a bright yellow robot that almost feels like a colorful nod to Chrono Trigger. Those distinct designs are inviting; I was eager to try every single one and found myself sticking with some even when their playstyle didn’t initially suit me. That isn’t simply an aesthetic strength either. The strong designs are functional, as it’s always easy to read an enemy team at a glance and know exactly what tools they’re working with. A roster this varied is crucial for a legible hero shooter, an area where Concord excels.

While the magnetic cast makes for a strong hook, Concord struggles to build out its world beyond them despite being very invested in that goal. Most of the world-building is found in the Galactic Guide, an enormous lore log that evolves the more rounds I play. This gives me exhaustive — and exhausting — blurbs explaining the backstory of every single corner of the galaxy. I learn the history of specific trade routes, how multiplayer maps fit into the universe, and the nuances of intergalactic business. I respect the commitment to the craft, and I’m glad it’s in the game itself rather than a companion app.

What quickly becomes clear, though, is that the set dressing is far more inventive than the game underneath it. I could spend hours getting invested in the politics of space, but none of that has any weight on the hundreds of deathmatches or zone control battles I’ll play. The narrative feels entirely removed from the game, as if it’s there more as a lore bible for whoever gets tapped to turn it into an Amazon show.

Concord’s narrative setup is constructed to keep players logging in, but its progression hooks more effectively get that job done. Players have a mess of bounties (your standard checklist of goals) to complete that refresh on daily, weekly, and seasonal cadences. That large stack of objectives always makes it feel like I haven’t wasted my time, even in a loss, and gives me a clear idea of what to work toward to get a big chunk of player experience to unlock light cosmetics for my crew. Each character levels up too and has their own rewards to unlock, so there’s a good incentive to play with everyone (even if the unlockables are a bit humdrum so far). For those who want to tick boxes off, collect lots of gear, and sign in every week for refreshed challenges, Concord has that enticing loop down.

Teetering off balance

As a hero shooter, Concord is more run-of-the-mill than its bold narrative strategy and character designs suggest. It contains six modes at launch, including a handful of old standbys from team deathmatch (Takedown) to king of the hill (Signal Hunt). Its most high-level playlist shakes things up with two tense round-based elimination modes, that mash Destiny and Valorant together. I immediately feel like there’s something missing from the offering, as Concord lacks anything resembling a signature idea. Every shooter doesn’t need to include an entirely original mode, but the lack of one shows here. It doesn’t feel like the characters or gameplay were tuned around any specific idea; it’s all built to adapt to as many modes as possible.

Sometimes that approach works well enough; other times it clarifies why games like Overwatch are built the way they are. The core action is largely unremarkable, but I’ve carved out my niche thanks to its diversity of character playstyles. Lennox has become my go-to, as I’ve grown to enjoy peppering enemies with pistol shots, finishing them off with an exploding knife, retrieving it from their body, and self-healing. Once you discover a character kit that fits your style, Concord settles into a groove as a suitably fun shooter.

I have my nitpicks with it, though I’m slowly getting used to them. Like many aspects of Concord, gunplay feels just slightly off. Weapons take up an enormous amount of space on screen, but their ammo often feels small relative to that size and their damage equally inconsistent. Sometimes it feels like I’m firing a pea shooter against enemies as I barely chip down half of their health after emptying an entire clip.

That’s a quirk of hero shooters like this. Due to each character being tuned differently, from their damage output to their health, a weapon’s power can wildly vary in any given character match-up. Concord complicates that further by placing buffs on each character decided by their crew compositions, as well as ones granted by certain teammates. It’s never clear when an enemy has those buffs or what they are, so one-on-one face-offs turn into unpredictable shootouts where some weapons just feel ineffective at best. Secondary abilities can suffer the same fate, as something like Star Child’s giant ground pound can barely leave a scratch on even the smallest rival.

At worst, certain characters feel downright useless in specific modes — a problem for a game that has a fairly lean roster of 16 heroes inititally. Since Concord isn’t tuned around any specific mode, that means that utility-focused characters feel like a waste of roster spot in deathmatches. Duchess, for instance, is a powerhouse in zone control modes thanks to a secondary ability that lets her create a wall. Her primary weapon, though, is an incredibly weak submachine gun that can barely put a dent in enemies. Heavy characters like Emari are poor choices in zone control modes that require players to move around a lot due to their agonizingly slow movement speed. It’ll make you understand why Overwatch has always prioritized push and pull objective modes that require teams to stay bunched together over kill-a-thons that neuter half its roster.

Despite those problems, Concord’s unique character abilities help stabilize that shaky foundation. Each hero has their own passive skills and special abilities (though no ultimates, which robs matches of heroic moments that turn the tide of battle). Those skills can lead to some clever strategizing when used well. One of my go-to characters is Lark, a fungal creature that can place buff-granting spores around the battlefield. One ability allows her to drop a pod that she can teleport back to at any time. I found an application for that in a zone control match where I captured point A, dropped a pod, ran to C to help capture it, and then teleported back to quickly defend the first point.

Characters can feel like one-trick ponies with their limited toolsets, but creative moments like that help elevate an otherwise average shooter. Anytime I try a character, I always find myself trying to figure out where I could best use them. The lovable 1-Off may barely do damage with his pressure vacuum, but his ability to suck up deployables on the battlefield can be clutch in a zone control mode — especially since characters like Lark can litter the field with debuffing spores that stay up until destroyed. With some balancing, I know it’ll be easier to find the fun.

A complicated crew

Concord’s biggest swing at carving out a signature feature is in its convoluted crew system. In most hero shooters, I simply choose my character from the same list each round. In Concord, I can actually edit that lineup. Depending on which characters I include in my crew, I get different buffs like increased reload speeds or extra health. On paper, it’s a neat twist that allows players to tweak their power by sacrificing their ability to use certain heroes in a round. In practice, it’s far more confusion than it’s worth.

For one, crew buffs often feel negligible; I have still yet to consciously clock the impact of one. It doesn’t help that the system isn’t clearly explained either, leaving me scratching my head as I try to figure out what the benefit of having a specific hero on my crew actually is. I’d ignore the feature altogether and just use the standard lineup if I could.

I can’t do that, though, and that’s thanks to Concord’s strange approach to character variation. Each Freegunner has alternate versions that have different perks. Lennox, for instance, reloads his gun when dodging, but one of his variants trades in that skill for extra ammo. Each one is considered an entirely separate crewmate that needs to be equipped independently from the other. It’s a seemingly unnecessarily extra step that only serves to confuse me when I’m looking at a Freegunner selection screen filled with multiple versions of the same character, trying to figure out which has the one passive ability I want. It feels like a system built for a free-to-play gacha game, but stuffed into a premium hero shooter.

That’s the sense I get from many of Concord’s off-kilter choices. It’s as though Firewalk Studios yanked its ideas from other popular games, but failed to pull the roots up with them. The end result is several surface-level decisions stapled on top of one another. It leaves Concord feeling like an amateur production from an inexperienced studio punching too far above its ability in its debut, though the studio has plenty of shooter veterans guiding the ship. Perhaps that’s just the danger of developing a game over eight years in a genre where the target is always moving.

None of this is to say that players won’t have fun in Concord. I’ve had plenty of enjoyable matches, and rounds are so short that the bad ones don’t last very long. Firewalk has also proven that it’s committed to hearing fan feedback and making changes fast (to its great credit, the studio fixed the beta’s most transparently rough problems before launch). I do trust that it’ll nail down the balance, rethink slow character speeds, and make the benefits of crew management clearer. But it’s in a race against the clock now. In the crowded world of live service shooters, players aren’t exactly patient — especially for a $40 game. Once they bounce off and hook onto Marvel Rivals or Star Wars: Hunters, winning them back is no easy task.

Concord may have survived a long development cycle and months of underserved online ridicule, but now its fight for survival really begins.

Concord was tested on PS5.