First, let me start off by saying I am NOT sponsored by Warframe or Digital Extremes at all, I just enjoy the game and feel others should too!
You ever look at something like ninjas and go “Yeah, they’re cooler, but they’d be even cooler in space with guns and abilities and robots!” Do you ever want to play a game that pisses you off so much you want to destroy it, but then end up enjoying doing something else in it right away? Yeah?
What about watching TMNT and going “Wow they’re so cool, but what if they were robots in space?” Then this is the game for you. You can be a space robot ninja and slaughter millions. Millions of Grineer clones, Corpus goons, or infested monsters.
It’s called Warframe, and it’s hard to describe this game. On one hand, it’s a run-and-gun. On the other hand, it’s an MMO. But on ANOTHER hand it’s a single-player experience. But with people too? Google calls it:
Warframe is a free-to-play action role-playing third-person shooter multiplayer online game developed and published by Digital Extremes.
Yes, free to play. This game is “Pay to look good” not “Pay to win”. Even without spending real money, you can still acquire the game’s most powerful frames, called “Prime”, for free. So what’s this all about? Let’s find out.
Warframe is a fast-paced go go go type of game, the total opposite of a Matty Ice FFX speed run which is slow slow slow. It’s fast, much like DTG playing the game. (Don’t worry people, I always give Matty shit, and have for years now. If I don’t, he knows something is wrong!)
You are a “Warframe”, an instrument of destruction. A heavy metal sentient body that wields guns, bows, scythes, pistols, etc.
Each frame is vastly different from the others. At one point they were all sentient beings it seems like, with each frame having its own gender, voice, abilities, and story. Inaros was a protector. Garuda was born from hate and blood. Revenant from Eidolons, large scary monsters that roam the Plains of Eidolon on Earth at night. Titania was a protector, built in secret from a batch of killing frames. Some frames have their exclusive unique backstory, some much more in-depth than others. Quests help you unlock some of these frames, such as Octavia, the songstress, Limbo, who travels the void, Mirage, who is sort of like a circus clown, Inaros, who has a beautifully sad story, and more.
Octavia, the songstress
The game also has a main overall story going on, split between quests, and helps you to understand things a bit better. The Old War and New War quests are, for lack of a better word, insane. New War alone is about a six-hour quest if you rush it. But the lore in it is incredible, and you learn so much from it. From how Lotus, affectionately known as Space Mom, fits into the story, to an all-out siege on Earth, the story spans several years, but only moments at the same time. This is one of Warframe’s most ambitious undertakings, as, unlike most games, the choices you make here will have long-term effects that will affect your game going forward. You are presented with several options during the quest, and the game is very clear “Hey, this choice is going to stick with you forever, there’s no turning back from this.” New War is the most in-depth lore that Warframe has had to date, and to even start it, you must unlock a Railjack, introduced not long after Fortuna on Venus, and the new Necromech as well. Of course, you could just buy them with the game’s premium currency, platinum, but the rail jack quest tells you a lot about the Cephalon, which is what the AI in the game is called, that drives it. I’ll be doing a deeper dive into New War on another site, so look for that soon-ish.
You meet several Cephalons throughout warframe, but two of them are with you at all times. One drives your rail jack and is the onboard AI for it, and the other is Ordis, your lovable glitched companion on your ship and on some missions where Space Mom is absent. Ordis has a few fantastic lines, such as
“If I may say, operator, your chosen warframe..suits you! Ha. Ha.”
“Operator, please return….COVERED IN BLOOD….safe!”
“I’ve been counting stars operator. all accounted for!”
“Calculating the intelligence levels of the Grineer. Error! not a number! did the operator enjoy this witticism?”
His best lines are in the Howl of the Kubro quest line, but I won’t spoil those.
Now going back, I said warframe is not paid to win but pay to look good. What does that mean, exactly? Well, dear reader, it’s called Fashion Frame, and much like FFXIV’s “Glam” system, it’s the true Endgame of Warframe.
You start with a couple of color pallets, and others can be unlocked with the game’s in-game currency called Platinum. Some are unlocked by various other means, such as the current Halloween event. At one time there was a Twitch color pallet that could be unlocked via a drop. But most are unlocked with 75 platinum. But you don’t HAVE to unlock them to look good. You just…want to. Trust me, the itch will get there. Soon you’ll want your WF to have this color or that color, and the urge will set in. But unlike most F2P games, in Warframe, you can earn that Platinum without spending a dime of real-life money. All you have to do is sell some things on the marketplace, warframe.market (Not affiliated with warframe, but it’s a site to sell your parts at).
So what you can do, is earn things through a wide variety of missions and other means called “Relics”. Inside those relics is a list of things you can earn. You go into a special fissure mission and get a special reactant drop. Collect 10, finish the mission, extract, and you get a list of what everyone has earned. Some items are called “Prime parts”, upgraded “premium” versions of the warframe, or weapon. Things such as Trinity warframe have Trinity Prime, Frost Prime, Wukong Prime, etc. The exception to this is Excalibur whose Prime frame is unobtainable, only a select few have it. The obtainable unofficial “Prime” version is called Umbra, and is acquired through a fantastic story and is hands down the most unique Warframe 
So you crack a relic, and you get some prime parts. What now? You either head to a relay, a gathering point for players, ask in chat or slap it up on that website I mentioned earlier. Sell it for some platinum, and voila. You’re all set! Keep doing this, and you won’t have to buy plat at all! Of course, if you’re like me and hopelessly addicted and give yourself a small budget for games, you probably will end up buying some anyways. Nothing wrong with that, it helps support the game development.
So what does this platinum, or plat as we call it, do? Well, you can buy things for your frame. You can buy prime weapons, and prime frames, and before you say “Oh that’s pay to win”, remember, ANYONE can get these, just without plat it takes longer, that’s all. You can unlock more color pallets, you can get things for your orbiter which is your base, and you can Trixify things, which means rush finish them with one minute left. Ok, you don’t have to wait until one minute to rush them, it’s just a joke we have with Trix, a streamer I play with usually every week. Some things cost more to rush than others. It seems to vary by time. Warframe components cost 25 each to rush, for a total of 75, then the frame itself costs 50 to rush, so to fully build a warframe fast, it’s 125 platinum. Keep in mind this is on average, and if you rush from the beginning. The price goes down the further in the build it is.
You can also visit the Warframe Market in-game, where you can purchase blueprints for warframes, weapons, etc. You can also purchase fully built non-prime frames for about the same price it would take to rush them. But that varies from frame to frame, some older frames being cheaper than the newer ones. You can also purchase bundles. Some will include the warframe itself, and its own “Weapons”, primary and melee usually that have specific bonuses for that particular frame. An example is Revenant, if you get him, and his Phantasma weapon, it gives additional ammo in his hands only.
It will also sometimes include a skin, maybe some armor, it varies from bundle to bundle. But again, literally everything in the game you can unlock for free if you dedicate some time. You don’t have to pay anything if you don’t want. It’s pay to look good if you don’t want to grind platinum out, not pay to win.
That’s what makes Warframe so unique. It’s not your typical f2p where it shoves things in your face constantly. Games like Star Wars the Old Republic when you finish a mission are like
“Hey you got this and this, BUT IF YOU SUBSCRIBED you would get this and this as well!” Games like Star Trek Online also have paywalls, though they’re not nearly as bad as most. Star Trek Online is more like Warframe, but it still has plenty of features locked behind a paywall. Warframe has, to my knowledge, absolutely nothing locked behind a real money paywall. Sure there are things like Prime Access that cost actual money, but remember those relics I told you about? The parts are in there.
So I’m going to wrap up here, and end by asking the community I play with, what is your favorite warframe and why?
Freso
There are still a lot of frames I haven’t tried, but currently, I’m in love with Titania. Her 4 is basically a miniature archwing with very good exalted pistols combined with her 1 for status clearing/immunity and her passive healing of both self and nearby allies (incl. defense objects). Her flight and maneuverability make her fantastic for flying around on Jupiter and other tile sets with larger/open tiles, and she has plenty of speed on her own as well—so speed boosts from Volt or Wisp, etc. can be a bit of a bother. I find her to be great for clearing out enemies, for support (esp. with Vazarin focus school), for scouting out locations (e.g., looking for caches or similar), and more. She can be a bit squishy, sure, but there are ways to build/work around that. And she’s a fairy, protecting the natural habitats of Earth.
It was Wisp BC she was a do-it-all frame when I was struggling to clear level 40-50 enemies and she was the first warframe to have a custom walk cycle and dash animation since she has no feet. You can hear little ethereal wisps when she’s just walking and it gets louder the faster she moves. Also, her theme and her kit work so well together. It’s engaging without it being spammy, and I get to use the power of the sun.
1) The graphics are beautiful, I love the style of storytelling DE uses that allows the player to piece the story together themselves, and the music and voice acting is top-tier. The movement feels so good and I love that there is a Warframe for pretty much any playstyle.
2) Second Dream/War Within was probably the biggest “holy shit” moment when I found out that <Redacted for spoilers>. I had been streaming it for about two weeks by that point but no one in the chat had said a word!! After I had finished the War Within quest I was invited to a dojo where a bunch of viewers were there to show off <Redacted for spoilers>*. It was such a neat experience like I had been accepted into a secret society
3) Every frame has a tragic story, but Chains of Harrow brought me to tears. As a neurospicy person with loved ones who are also neurospicy, I saw pieces of our experiences in Harrow’s story. There was so much empathy and truth in how they handled a character on the spectrum. It meant a lot to me to see it represented.
4) The community. Hands down. It’s one of the kindest, most welcoming gaming communities out there. I have made some great friendships here and feel so lucky to be involved.
Wukong Prime. An almost ape-like frame with the ability to clone himself. His “Celestial Twin” does the opposite of you. You have a melee weapon, the Twin will cover you with your ranged weapon. You use your gun, the Twin will run and use melee. He’s pretty cool, and DE recently, thankfully, nerfed the twin so you can’t “afk farm” with him anymore.
That’s why the game suddenly got heavily downrated, all the cheaters started crying about it. Thank you, DE, for nerfing him. What used to happen was people would use his celestial Twin ability, and it used no ammo and used the opposite weapon of you. If you had a melee out, he used a gun, if you used a gun, he was a melee. So people would sit and afk and abuse the hell out of the system. Thankfully now he uses ammo, and he can not pick it up on his own. The player has to do it.
Want to play the game? Go to Warframe, When you use my link and complete 10 missions, we both get something. No idea what, but it’s something at least!