THE GOOD: After the big relaunch, the game feels fantastic. I liked the previous version as well, and 1.0, but this has as much cleaner feel with modern graphics and a better focus on Arena shooting. I don't know of another Arena shooter that is equivalent. The Finals is pretty good but it's not really an Arena shooter, I like this gunplay a lot more (although destructible environment vs portals is a bit of a toss up). Infinite is only okay and personally my group lost interest a long time ago in that.

So right now, this is my Arena shooter of choice!

THE BAD: The monetization of this game uses some bad practices that don't respect the player's time and cut down on, at least for me, how much I can support them.

- They use FOMO in their main shop to hide what options there are for cosmetics, so you can't look at all available skins and then buy the one you want, you have to decide each and every cycle if you want that set more than every other set you've seen and if it's good enough to not want to buy another right after. In practice this means I don't buy any skins directly from the store.
- The battlepass expires after X weeks, which means if you don't play through the entire battle pass you are losing out on stuff you paid for. The main way of progressing is daily quests, which means after you finish them you're progressing at a very slow rate. They want you to play every single day to make it to the end. This means 2 things, this game is now competing with every other game when it comes to "do I buy the BP or not" and now even if it's winning that fight every session - once you finish your dailies - you're incentivized to switch games because the game is telling you your time is now less valuable here. In practice this means I am not buying the BP AND although I'm playing more frequently I'm playing for less time. Because the dailies change how you play enough to be annoying, I'm gradually resenting the reward structure so even the extra frequent play sessions will quickly dwindle.

Not buying skins is not the point, supporting the Devs is what I want to do, but they're demanding I do it in very unsatisfying ways and so I'm encouraged to just not support them. Each of the games I would argue are a part of their competitors have better monetization practices, helldivers, the Finals, Arc Raiders, Halo Infinite. If they'd change these practices, especially the dailies and the BP expiring, they'd be *the* standout indie arena shooter, but until then they're catching flak normally reserved for like EA or Ubisoft because they're acting in similar fashion.

Easily the best extraction shooter (/adventure) game out right now. It's easy to get into, has multiple ways to play for fun, and is rewarding the longer you stay in it. The sound design, the combat, the arc robots, everything except the skill tree is fantastic lol. It's really the whole package.

I would highly recommend this to nearly everyone who likes any form of shooting game. Hopefully this game has a long lifespan because it's truly something special.

The game needs to be more GAME-y. With Arc Raiders on the horizon, Gray Zone needs to match that energy when it comes to:
- Getting into the game and playing the game
- Loot being cool, wanting to find rare loot, feeling like the loot changes the gameplay not just the size of my backpack or the size of my ultra special bullets
- meta progression being compelling and complex, requiring focused runs at times and cushion for non-stellar finds at times.
- pve content being compelling, exciting, and challenging. Give me a complex with booby traps and hard combat puzzles and then give me the gear to solve it.

Like, I'm gonna stop there, the bones here are good. The game looks great. But it needs to PLAY great, I need to want to find better loot, I need to understand how to do that more clearly, I need getting that loot to be more fun to do. If modding guns is the whole concept of the loot system, make the mods feel drastically cooler, meaningful. Make them clearly better for different purposes. Looking down sights faster or more recoil control only goes so far and your competition is Scifi Post Apoc, Super Sci-fi, Middle Ages Fantasy, etc etc. If Gray Zone is going to be vaguely modern day, it's got to nail complex combat choices with tools, expendables, etc.

Edit after getting a dev response: I don't like writing negative reviews. I know games are often passion projects for hard working devs. I will update this review the moment this game makes updates and is fun for me to play. That being said, I have more than 100 hours in Arc Raiders less than 3 weeks after launch. They are not equivalent games targeting equivalent communities but having played it now thoroughly my review of Gray Zone is twice as relevant and I stand by it twice as much. Maybe I'm the wrong person for the mil sim extraction shooter, but I know I'm not the wrong person for the fun to play extraction shooter genre and I have a ton of capacity for more of these style of games (Hunt Showdown was great for a couple hundred hours, Hunger is coming out, Marathon is coming out (although doesn't support linux at this time through proton so maybe DOA)). So if Gray Zone is trying to attract me to this game (they don't need to, I've already bought it), I'd say make the game more gamey. If we're stuck in the mil sim genre, I want to feel like tom clancy spliter cell while I'm playing with my friends, with each mission feeling like a fast paced covert operation, where the loot matters or the combat puzzles matter or the gameplay is so engaging it's undeniable. Ideally, all three. If we can veer into the fantastical, I think seeing better pve elements added to the game, besides generic foreigner with a gun, would go a long way. Seeing gear that drastically changes the look, feeling, and style of the gun play would also be huge. The legendary weapons in Arc Raiders kinda suck right now, but A) they're legendary B) you get them from killing a cool ass boss C) they look and feel and play like nothing else in the game so even if they're undertuned or highly niche they're still awesome to bring out from time to time. There's nothing like that in this game. The ~4 or so mod slot system in AR feels drastically more impactful than this games and that seems backwards given how much more complexity this system has. Food for thought. I want this game to succeed, just like I do every game, but right now it's not satisfying any niche super well and there are some heavy hitter that are. I'm available to talk if any dev wants as well. GL and HF.

So much fun with friends!

0.2 Update: It's still great. The hate is unwarranted. They made the game harder as they correct the game from an idol game like PoE1 to an engaging combat system. Unfortunately they aren't doing it in the best way, they're not being clear, and they're not addressing the most important things imo. But ya, I'm still having fun. Still great. Will play a character to end game, will beat the pinnacle bosses, and that's what I'd expect from a league launch.

Full Summary: The best ARPG on the market and for the foreseeable future. The first ARPG with good combat (although shoutout to No Rest for the Wicked), industry leading visuals, the same recognizable depth and capacity for expression as the original, and it's only half the game it'll be on launch. It's unbelievable how amazing this game is today and the fact it'll be doubling in size within the next year, and then continuously supported as the predecessor was/is - this is as easy a recommendation as any other genre defining game we've seen.

Look it, it's Early Access and in a rough state. There's a great story here, the combat is good, the graphics are great, but it's missing like the last 20% of polish before it feels like it's ready to launch.