How I came to love Warframe, 10 years later

A long time ago in.. Well, ok, we're not doing the Star Wars bullshit here, that's way too overdone.

Anyway, somewhere around 10 years ago, I decided to give a free-to-play game - Warframe - a go.

It was fun initially, but if you play it as a purely free-to-play game, well.. There is a sense of disappointment at just how much you have to grind.

You see, I wanted to earn a new Warframe besides my starter one (basically the powered suit/bot/whatever you play, of which you can have many), and discovered.. Holy hell, it can take a lot of work to grind out what you need to build out some warframes.

So, I left the game behind and played other things.

10+ years later after shutting down Ghost Gamer News, I wanted something different to play.. And figured, hell, let's give Warframe a shot again.

I've now got around 150 hours in, and a collection of some great Warframes.

At first I didn't spend any money; I wanted to be sure the game was worth playing for the longer haul.

It didn't take long until I decided I was ready to buy a Platinum pack (my personal recommendation is that you ONLY buy Plat packs).

Here's the deal: You can certainly pay-to-win to a limited extent. You can buy maxed out warframes, mods and more with real money.

Instead, I chose to buy platinum (a special currency used for trading and getting stuff inside the warframe market).

This way, I could trade for things like blueprints and mods from other players, as well as buy upgrades, warframe slots and more.

I was still playing the game; Most blueprints I actually did my grinding for, only trading for a handful just because I was having really bad luck with drop rates on some Prime warframe blueprints. I did trade for some rarer mods, just because realistically trading is frequently the best way to get a mod you haven't personally gotten yet.

Ultimately, I've been having fun. I just got the final blueprint for a Wisp Prime, and am now currently waiting for the parts to build before I assemble them into the final Warframe.

The story of Warframe is.. Cringe. It's just plain bad. I really am not digging it, but thankfully, the game itself is just plain fun without the story.

As well, thanks to the variety of warframes, it's relatively accessible.

If I'm having a bad pain day and my reaction time is down, I'll rock my Ivara Prime warframe, which I've kitted out for maximum stealth: I just trigger my Prowler skill (which makes me invisible) and can sustain it through the entire mission as long as there are enemies I can sneak attack to gain more energy.

If I'm not feeling the stealth gameplay and need to run some defense or survival missions to farm materials or Void Fissures and the like, I'll rock my Nekros or Revenant Prime.

Wanna snipe and tank from the air? Zephyr.

I've got a crap-ton of frames now, and have at least two that work well for each mission type.

The game has a slow start, but once you get a feel for it you'll find it's a lot of fun to play.. And I won't feel bad if I decide I'm done and want to play something else, because the game will probably be around for a long time still, and well worth playing.