2024-11-27 (still Season 4): I think the matchmaking has some severe flaws.
If I play solo, I'll often get matched with people who don't even understand when to take a fight or when not to, when to use a respawn token or when to wait for a team mates to revive them and such... but I'll still win because the enemies are just as bad. My team mates are so inept that I genuinely sometimes get upset at winning because it feels so undeserved.
And then I play with a friend (just one, meaning we still get one random team mate) and we get put in matches where we just have to try our very hardest to stand a chance.
The matchmaking is basically discouraging me from playing with friends. But I don't want to play this solo usually, so I guess I'll just not play at all...

2024-11-08 Season 4 update: The game still sucks. The concept is great and you can have fun with it but holy jesus do they ever bother fixing any bugs? Except of course for the ones that allow you to do contracts quicker.
The new weapons are actually decent, the map is confusing (to me at least) but not horrible and they changed the ranked mode back to cashout (instead of budget Counter-Strike). They even managed to not have the servers lag every single match anymore.
However there's still balance problems that existed since season 1, frequent server performance issues (less than S3, still ridiculously bad!) and super old bugs that don't get fixed. Hitreg seems to have actually gotten worse (I've almost regularly had situations where point blank shots didn't register). The Halloween event offers a bonus cosmetic set for collecting all the items (which is entirely up to chance) - but of course you can buy the items with the premium currency! And the mere existence of the Halloween event screws your battle pass progression because there's less experience to earn during the event. An event should be an exciting bonus, not a tradeoff.
So overall it's definitely better than S3 but I still would advise people to not get invested in this game.

Original review from 2024-07-08: I can not in good faith recommend this game to anyone as of right now.
It's really great in theory (the destruction makes for very unique gameplay, great movement and it has other positives) but calling this game a mess would be more than generous:
* The servers are regularly (as in "on average once a match for several seconds" with a match being around 10 minutes long) lagging. It got even worse with the season 3 update (June 2024). Getting killed around corners is especially fun
* Separate from this the hitreg is sometimes randomly quite a bit off
* The game is quite buggy with items. For example mines randomly not going off or an RPG doing no damage to an enemy despite hitting their foot (but you of course take full self-damage) or a set of stairs (whose collision is a slope for angled jump pads) randomly making your jump pad face upright
* Certain stairs in the new season 3 map are simply modeled as stairs (not as a slope, despite that being the case for stairs in all other maps) (this is an issue separate from the previous point!). They fixed some of those in an update (without putting it in the patch notes), but not all
* Matchmaking has been genuinely awful since season 3. Towards the end of season 2 I'd win a majority of my matches (in a non-competitive mode) without much effort. Since season 3 basically every single match I have to go full tryhard to have a chance. It's insane. I'm not asking to win a majority of my matches (like in S2), I'm just asking to stand a f*cking chance (IN A CASUAL MODE) without sweating my ass off
* Some items are incredibly overpowered (since release!) and still have not been nerfed sufficiently. The classes overall might not be overpowered but having 1 out of 3 items be a must pick is not particularly good balancing
* Sound bugs like hearing a cashout being initiated (think like a bomb planted in Counter-Strike)... despite that not having happened. And my teammate heard the sound as well
* Holding a barrel (something you can throw and then it explodes)... and then it just detonates for no reason. Nothing was shooting at it or anything
* You can capture an objective through certain walls
* Throwing a barrel at the vault (an objective) sometimes just deletes the barrels (without triggering its effect)

The last 4 points I've noticed across only 3 matches, that's how frequently I encounter new issues with this game

And with season 3 they swapped out ranked mode. Instead of the (fitting, but chaotic) 3v3v3v3 cashout mode where 4 teams fight over (usually) 2 objectives simultaneously (whichever team holds it at the end gains points) it is now a 5v5 round based bomb defusal mode (which was added about halfway into season 2) with limited health regen and no revives mid round, similar to how it is in Counter-Strike.
You might like such modes, hell even I do (I played CS for over a thousand hours!) but oh my god it is AWFUL. It does not work at all with the flow of the game. On top of that it locks out the healing beam and defibrillator for the medium class (something support players or Battlefield players might enjoy playing with). It feels like such an afterthought slapped onto the game and then forced as "the new ranked mode".

So in summary since season 3 they took out my preferred ranked mode, ruined the matchmaking, got even worse servers, fixed none of the relevant bugs and didn't nerf/rebalance longstanding must pick meta items. In other words: the game is worse in almost every single regard.

You'd think that over half a year after release a game would be in a somewhat decent state in terms of bugs and balancing but nope. This is also why I don't really have hope of it improving in the future.

The game is free to play (and the monetization is quite good by modern standards) but currently I'd argue that it's not even worth your time.

I hope you enjoy upscaling because you can not turn it off. It's always on. Hope you enjoy occasionally mistaking an upscaling artifact/shimmering for an enemy in the distance.

Achievement hunters beware. There is an achievement that requires you to collect 50 million dollar lifetime (basically just objective score, not an "actual currency" you use). How much is 50 million? Well, I've played since early December 2023 (shortly after release) and I'd say I'm an above average player, playing mostly with at least one, often two friends (team size is 3 in this game for anything but the "bomb defusal" mode) and throughout most of season 2 I played for maximum money gained (instead of "playing smart" and not risking a loss). I am currently at 47 million... after 400 hours.
There is no shortcut, just pure grind. And thanks to the way more punishing matchmaking in season 3, gaining money got (without exaggeration) about 5x more difficult for me.

As a final note: Many people who write reviews tend to exaggerate, sometimes extremely ("worst game ever"), sometimes slightly ("I hate this game"). I am doing neither in this review.

2024-11-27 (still Season 4): I think the matchmaking has some severe flaws. If I play solo, I'll often get matched with people who don't even understand when to take a fight or when not to, when to use a respawn token or when to wait for a team mates to revive them and such... but I'll still win because the enemies are just as bad. My team mates are so inept that I genuinely sometimes get upset at winning because it feels so undeserved. And then I play with a friend (just one, meaning we still get one random team mate) and we get put in matches where we just have to try our very hardest to stand a chance. The matchmaking is basically discouraging me from playing with friends. But I don't want to play this solo usually, so I guess I'll just not play at all... 2024-11-08 Season 4 update: The game still sucks. The concept is great and you can have fun with it but holy jesus do they ever bother fixing any bugs? Except of course for the ones that allow you to do contracts quicker. The new weapons are actually decent, the map is confusing (to me at least) but not horrible and they changed the ranked mode back to cashout (instead of budget Counter-Strike). They even managed to not have the servers lag every single match anymore. However there's still balance problems that existed since season 1, frequent server performance issues (less than S3, still ridiculously bad!) and super old bugs that don't get fixed. Hitreg seems to have actually gotten worse (I've almost regularly had situations where point blank shots didn't register). The Halloween event offers a bonus cosmetic set for collecting all the items (which is entirely up to chance) - but of course you can buy the items with the premium currency! And the mere existence of the Halloween event screws your battle pass progression because there's less experience to earn during the event. An event should be an exciting bonus, not a tradeoff. So overall it's definitely better than S3 but I still would advise people to not get invested in this game. Original review from 2024-07-08: I can not in good faith recommend this game to [b]anyone[/b] as of right now. It's really great in theory (the destruction makes for very unique gameplay, great movement and it has other positives) but calling this game a mess would be more than generous: * The servers are regularly (as in "on average once a match for several seconds" with a match being around 10 minutes long) lagging. It got even worse with the season 3 update (June 2024). Getting killed around corners is especially fun * Separate from this the hitreg is sometimes randomly quite a bit off * The game is quite buggy with items. For example mines randomly not going off or an RPG doing no damage to an enemy despite hitting their foot (but you of course take full self-damage) or a set of stairs (whose collision is a slope for angled jump pads) randomly making your jump pad face upright * Certain stairs in the new season 3 map are simply modeled as stairs (not as a slope, despite that being the case for stairs in all other maps) (this is an issue separate from the previous point!). They fixed some of those in an update (without putting it in the patch notes), but not all * Matchmaking has been genuinely awful since season 3. Towards the end of season 2 I'd win a majority of my matches (in a non-competitive mode) without much effort. Since season 3 basically every single match I have to go full tryhard to have a [i]chance[/i]. It's insane. I'm not asking to win a majority of my matches (like in S2), I'm just asking to stand a f*cking chance (IN A CASUAL MODE) without sweating my ass off * Some items are incredibly overpowered (since release!) and still have not been nerfed sufficiently. The classes overall might not be overpowered but having 1 out of 3 items be a must pick is not particularly good balancing * Sound bugs like hearing a cashout being initiated (think like a bomb planted in Counter-Strike)... despite that not having happened. And my teammate heard the sound as well * Holding a barrel (something you can throw and then it explodes)... and then it just detonates for no reason. Nothing was shooting at it or anything * You can capture an objective through certain walls * Throwing a barrel at the vault (an objective) sometimes just deletes the barrels (without triggering its effect) The last 4 points I've noticed across only 3 matches, that's how frequently I encounter [b]new[/b] issues with this game And with season 3 they swapped out ranked mode. Instead of the (fitting, but chaotic) 3v3v3v3 cashout mode where 4 teams fight over (usually) 2 objectives simultaneously (whichever team holds it at the end gains points) it is now a 5v5 round based bomb defusal mode (which was added about halfway into season 2) with limited health regen and no revives mid round, similar to how it is in Counter-Strike. You might like such modes, hell even I do (I played CS for over a thousand hours!) but oh my god it is AWFUL. It does not work at all with the flow of the game. On top of that it locks out the healing beam and defibrillator for the medium class (something support players or Battlefield players might enjoy playing with). It feels like such an afterthought slapped onto the game and then forced as "the new ranked mode". So in summary since season 3 they took out my preferred ranked mode, ruined the matchmaking, got even worse servers, fixed none of the relevant bugs and didn't nerf/rebalance longstanding must pick meta items. In other words: the game is worse in almost every single regard. You'd think that over half a year after release a game would be in a somewhat decent state in terms of bugs and balancing but nope. This is also why I don't really have hope of it improving in the future. The game is free to play (and the monetization is quite good by modern standards) but currently I'd argue that it's not even worth your time. I hope you enjoy upscaling because you can not turn it off. It's always on. Hope you enjoy occasionally mistaking an upscaling artifact/shimmering for an enemy in the distance. Achievement hunters beware. There is an achievement that requires you to collect 50 million dollar lifetime (basically just objective score, not an "actual currency" you use). How much is 50 million? Well, I've played since early December 2023 (shortly after release) and I'd say I'm an above average player, playing mostly with at least one, often two friends (team size is 3 in this game for anything but the "bomb defusal" mode) and throughout most of season 2 I played for maximum money gained (instead of "playing smart" and not risking a loss). I am currently at 47 million... after 400 hours. There is no shortcut, just pure grind. And thanks to the way more punishing matchmaking in season 3, gaining money got (without exaggeration) about 5x more difficult for me. As a final note: Many people who write reviews tend to exaggerate, sometimes extremely ("worst game ever"), sometimes slightly ("I hate this game"). I am doing neither in this review.