Shooters like this are not my cup of tea. I honestly didn’t know that it was a bomb defusal shooter until I booted it up. I was drawn to the graphical style and the card system seemed interesting, but is it really anything special?

Honestly, FragPunk is kinda fun. At first I was turned off by the myriad of notifications, menus and currencies. I can’t handle constant notifications in my face when I’m trying to play a game. It takes me out of the experience and I have to get rid of them all as soon as I see them. These types of systems keep me in the menus more than in the actual game. I understand why they’re designed this way; it’s all marketing. I actually uninstalled the game after a couple of hours because I was super overwhelmed. After taking some time away, I came back the next day to give it a fair shot. I spent the next couple days playing some matches to moderate success. My skills in these types of games are severely lacking, but I figured I should try my best anyway.

There are some interesting ideas here that keep the game interesting, whether your team is winning or losing. The card system was initially underwhelming. Most of the modifiers were pretty simple with increases to movement speed or better defenses when crouching. Eventually though, you unlock some crazy ones like “everyone can only use knives” or “swap attackers and defenders.” The “shard cards” really helped keep gameplay interesting in every match. There were still games where one team completely swept the other, but there were a lot of matches that came down to “duels.” This is another system that I thought was cool, if not nerve wracking. If each team makes it to three points, the winner will come down to one vs one duels where the winner progresses with their current health into the next round. Each team picks the order in which their members will participate and it really makes the team come together as everyone roots for one another in their round. (I even won one for my team!)

On top of the cards are the character abilities. Many of them have “block this line of sight” type abilities, while some are way more inventive. One character can teleport himself or others to him if they get in range of his traps. Another’s special move is just a rocket launcher. Their designs are really cool aesthetically, but most of the kits are uninspired. They went crazy with some of the cards but the kits are a bit too safe. Maybe this was to keep the focus on the card system, but I think if they went all out it would be more interesting.

Another aspect that I think was relatively dull were the guns. You have the standard assault rifles, shotguns, machine guns and snipers. Though they’re customizable, they lack any real character. Again, I think they wanted the focus to be the cards, but it’s still pretty lame. Pistols though are a bit more inventive, if just a little. Many have alternate firing modes that lob explosives or smoke grenades to provide the option to characters that don’t have any in their kits. It helps the team benefit from some of the shard card modifiers that these options are available for anyone to use.

There have also been rumors that the game uses AI for some of their cosmetics. I despise this practice and if it’s being used here, I will uninstall the game and never play it again. The customization options here aren’t anything special in the first place. Most of it is generic weapon skins and charms or character portrait decorations. I didn’t see anything that was obviously stolen by AI, but I really didn’t care about the cosmetics anyway. It’s the way they monetize everything that’s a big problem.

There are so many currencies in this game. There’s a currency for character unlocks, battle pass progression, real money, event passes, ranked coins and more. You can also throw some money into their gacha system if you want to try your luck! It’s a free game with an egregious amount of the elements that free-to-play games bombard you with and I still find this practice unacceptable. The constant reward stream can really hook unsuspecting people, so be careful with your wallet around beasts like this.

Overall, this game has some really interesting ideas with its card system but that’s about it. They didn’t go far enough with it and the other systems at play here are either generic or predatory. I can’t really recommend it as it’s a slippery slope with these kinds of games. Especially if they’re generating assets with AI, there’s no way I’d recommend this. It tries to present a tactical, hero shooter with a competitive atmosphere sprinkled with ridiculousness, but the monetization is the most ridiculous aspect of all.