At this point, most people are aware of 2024’s biggest flop. A brand new PvP hero shooter at a time when hero shooters are falling out of favour. A game that launched with very little fanfare almost like it was swept under the rug. But is Concord actually any good?

It’s hard to explain, but this is some lame character design.

Set in the Concord galaxy, you play as a mercenary group of freegunners for the ship known as Northstar. They travel across the galaxy to take on dangerous bounties for cash, Often times running into rival crews or factions to deal with. Or something like that, to be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention. Upfront, Concord‘s story is very thin.

Concord is a PvP-only game as such there is little story here. Apparently, it will unfold over the weeks with weekly cinematic cutscenes, but this approach is just lazy. In many ways, it’s reminiscent of Destiny 2‘s weekly story missions that don’t do anything interesting. I find it hard to care about anything going on. In case you do want to delve into the lore there is a galactic map with extensive lore entries about the planets and state of the galaxy. There’s some interesting stuff, but none of it will ever go anywhere anyway. Nothing is really presented in gameplay. And a weekly cinematic is arguably the worst way to get me interested.

At its core Concord is a 5v5 team-based hero arena shooter. Movement is a little slower than you’d expect, but I honestly found myself really enjoying Concord most of the time. The gameplay, shooting, and movement are pretty enjoyable. It doesn’t break any new ground, but plays well enough that I didn’t care too much. Also worth noting is that this is a team shooter that relies on playing as a team, and running in solo most of the time is a bad idea. I’ve seen this happen when solo runners tend to get very few kills and a lot of deaths. Bringing in a good tank class, healer and some high-damage heroes can have some satisfying moments but even then there’s enough flexibility where you don’t need dedicated healers.

I see you.

At launch, there are sixteen distinctive “freegunners” that fill a variety of roles ranging from tanks to snipers and even a few support classes. Each hero has their own unique weapons, movement, and abilities that put in an effort to make them stand out. I find myself leaning towards the faster characters such as the gunslinger, Lennox, with dual pistols he can swap to for quick reloading. Then there’s Itz-I for her fast movement and teleport abilities, making it easy to get the drop on someone, feeling like a hybrid of Tracer and Sombra.

The generic soldier, Teo, can throw frag or a smoke grenade that he can see through with his scope, allowing you to set up some ambushes. Or my personal favourite, the mystic, Haymar, with her ability to float above the arena like a Destiny Warlock and drop fire attacks below. It’s an incredible rush when you can wipe two or three opponents in a single devastating combo from the sky. To me personally, these characters ended up being my go-to.

Then we have the other heroes on display, and outside a handful, none of them are particularly bad. The powerful Star-Child can rush into an area and demolish every squishy hero, whilst others can drop area denial abilities or even healing resources; there’s something for everyone. Health is an especially valuable resource in a game with no health regeneration by default. Health kits that scatter the maps recharge once every 15 seconds.; leaving you completely vulnerable.

As a whole Concord‘s hero offering is mostly just fine. Whilst I did enjoy the faster characters, for most there’s something that simply feels off. I found the biggest issue is with reloading. Hitting an animation or sprinting even a frame before the reload finishes restarts the whole animation. Switching heroes often is also recommended, as you will gain new passive buffs every time you swap to a new hero. It’s a nice way to encourage switching, but I’ve seen few people actually use it.

At launch, we also have six game modes split across three different playlists. The Brawl playlist contains a standard Team Deathmatch and Kill Confirmed; nothing exciting here and they play exactly how you would expect. It’s your dumb fun mode where you can just run around killing people. Then we have the objective playlists that give you your standard “stand in a circle” to capture modes, such as King of the Hill and Domination.

The third playlist does attempt to do something a little different. Acting as this game’s ranked playlist, this will be more akin to your Counter-Strikes, keeping the 5v5, but having no per-round respawning. The team to completes the objective or wipes out the enemy team wins, and the first to five wins the match. In my experience, there are not a lot of people in the “ranked” mode, and with no ranking system, there’s little reason to play unless you are a fan of Counter-Strike-style modes.

The twist here is that for every round you win, you are locked out of that character. This forces you to step out of your comfort zone and really work on your skills. No more one tricking a particular hero and if you synergise with your team, a victory is in sight. As a whole, Concord‘s mode offering is as basic as it gets: two varieties of Team Deathmatch and a small handful of standard objective game modes. The latter of which have a ranked playlist. There’s no real standout unique mode that the game focuses on and the ranked mode is pretty much dead leaving us with Brawl as the most populated. I love Team Deathmatch as much as the next person, but I do want something different.

To go alongside the uninspired modes on display we have some also equally uninspired map designs. The maps in Concord are very cookie-cutter, large, and inoffensive in their design, but very little stands out, from a visual or design perspective. Maps here have plenty of flanking routes and are reasonably sized reducing the chance of spawn killing. You certainly won’t hate the map design, but you won’t remember them either.

Okay, the UI actually looks great.

The big elephant in the room is the character designs. Even though their gameplay is very different from a hero shooter the comparisons to Overwatch will be completely unavoidable, especially regarding the characters. Even in its weakest form, Overwatch‘s incredibly diverse roster of heroes is one of the best in the genre. Every character in the game has their own personality, which is reflected in the armour designs, weapons they use, voice lines, and even the animations.

In Concord, however, this just doesn’t exist. Every character looks and feels lifeless, there’s little creativity and the designs often come off as boring, like they were just checking off a checklist rather than creating fun and interesting characters. There’s no getting a sense of these character’s personalities during gameplay, with no real unique animations or introduction, no pre-game dialogue, or anything. This extends out to the world design which feels like a mix-up of a variety of locations.

However, on a technical front, the game actually looks pretty solid. Whilst the designs are questionable the characters and levels themselves hold up nicely, having enough detail with some solid effects that don’t distract from the core gameplay. Best of all, the game surprisingly runs like a dream on PC, with not even a hitch in the frame rate and plenty of graphic settings to tweak.

Similar to sound design, whilst voice lines are generic and as unimaginative as can be, you don’t get a sense of who these characters are or their relationships. In gameplay, it’s surprisingly well done. Footsteps can be accurately pinpointed allowing me to set up ambushes and everything sounds just punchy enough.

Concords cinematic cutscenes don’t offer anything interesting.

I think there is a place in the market for another high-quality premium PvP shooter, however, Concord just ain’t it. Costing £35/$40 there’s very little on offer here and doesn’t provide anything truly unique. As of the time of writing, Concord has dropped to a player count of below two hundred at any time consistently making this impossible to recommend to even the most hardcore hero shooter fan.  Whilst I believe launching in a free-to-play model would help initially, I think we would see similar results. Concord just doesn’t offer anything worthwhile. Its barebones offering doesn’t even have a solid sense of progression or customisation with only really a few re-colours instead of fresh skins.

If you are in the market for a new shooter then there are so many better choices out there: Overwatch 2 despite its current issues is still the best hero shooter out there, Hunt Showdown is my latest addiction and something I never thought I’d like. Same with Valve’s recently revealed Shooter-MOBA hybrid that I’ve been playing for the past few weeks.  The competition is strong and even if the game had a much bigger community I can’t see myself playing this beyond the fifteen hours I’ve put in for this review.

Despite the red flags, I was actually rooting for Concord. It could have been a fun new hero shooter, but it just feels lifeless and soulless. It plays well enough but there isn’t anything in here that would keep you busy for long stretches. It’s a shame as there is a solid enough core.

Concord is available now on PC and PlayStation 5.

Reviewed on PC with a RTX 4070 and Ryzen 7 7800x3D with 32GB RAM.