It’s been 6 months since the Warframe expansion Fortuna was teased at Tennocon. It’s finally here and it’s the biggest update the team over at Digital Extremes has ever done. Fortuna released in 2 parts. The first part in early November and the second part…

Set in a Fortuna, a mining colony on Venus in which it’s inhabitants are augmented with mechanical parts all thanks to the villainous Nef Anyo forcing everyone into a cycle of debt they can never pay off. You see NPCs with mechanical arms, legs and even heads replacing their actual limbs. After a brief introduction the miners start staging a rebellion against Nef and Corpus threat in a desperate attempt for freedom.

It’s an incredibly dark set-up that immediately drew me in thanks to an introductory cutscene that is both catchy and sets the stage wonderfully. Compared to last years Plains of Eidolon this is so much better. Everything from the design of the hub to the NPCs scattered around are much more enjoyable compared to Cetus. Each character is much more memorable thanks to their unique and sometimes quirky personalities. Eudico, the leader of Fortuna is trying to do the best for her people but is scared to do anything to put them in more danger.

The first quest, “Vox Solaris” starts as soon as you enter Fortuna was quite interesting but did suffer from some decisions that felt like it was wasting your time. Every time that you completed a step you would have to head back into the hub, talk to someone that immediately leave. Sometimes there was a good reason to go back to the hub for story reasons but a lot of the time it felt like padding. The quest overall was pretty solid with this exception, it introduced us to a range of characters, new mechanics and set up a story-line that could end up running for the next few updates.

Back in Plains of Eidolon bounties were the way to pass the time but having to go back to Cetus every single time you do something made it a bit of a chore to play. This time however you don’t need to keep going back to the hub to pick up bounties, you can grab them anytime in the field now. They are structurally similar to those in PoE but improved to make them more fun and much more rewarding to do. They give you a lot more standing so leveling up Solaris United doesn’t take near as much time as it did before.

Fortuna is arguably the most visually stunning part bit of content in Warframe. The hub of Fortuna looks stunning with great use of colours and textures. Once you head out into the open world of Orb Valis I was blown away with how good a free to play game can look.

Caves have been expanded and serve much more of a purpose than before. They are much larger, have miniture puzzles inside them and just look visually stunning.

Garuda is the latest Warframe to join the roster. To be honest I think the crafting requirements are a little too high requiring you to achieve rank 4 with Solaris United to get the blueprints for the crafting resources. Even with the faster progression this does take a little too long. The frame herself is one of the most fun they’ve released since Octavia last year, she is a hybrid of support and DPS.

The K-Drive is the most exciting new gameplay feature in this update, it’s a hoverboard that allows you to get from point to point in style. You can do stunts and races that are tied into it’s own progression behind it and best of all, it’s compatible in the Plains of Eidolon as well.

Fortuna is yet another brilliant update to the long running game that keeps getting better every year, it doesn’t innovate much but it refines on the core Plains of Eidolon laid out. The future is strong with promised updates to Fortuna as well as Railjack and The New War coming next year.

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Final Verdict:

Warframe: Fortuna (Update 24) is available now on PC.