PlanetSide 2 doesn't fit the mold of a free-to-play massively multiplayer shooter. There are no rounds to win, and hard-fought victories are often undone before the next time you log in. It’s tough to learn, progress is slow, and almost everything is prohibitively expensive. However, there are so many other things going for PlanetSide 2 that I keep coming back to it. The epic scale of its hundred-plus-player warfare, the sights of the world, and the variety of ways to approach battle as part of a squad and in vehicles made my experience well worth the growing pains.

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Jumping in for the first time gives you an ambiguous start; beyond their uniform color, logo, and theme song, don't expect to learn much more about the motivations of the three factions. I chose the Vanu Sovereignty solely based on their Mass Effect-influenced design and theme song, but in the heat of battle I sometimes have trouble differentiating between my purple squadmates and the red-themed Terran Republic. The blue-clad New Conglomerate are a bit easier to distinguish, but I’ve grown to rely on the marking system to pick targets, even though my character yelling out the enemy's position and class essentially gives away my position. At the start, there's also little in the way of diversity in the player base, as many of the low-ranked troops have yet to start purchasing new character skins, though some of my more ornately designed Vanu teammates later on had shades of purple on their costumes that almost looked like New Conglomerate's blue duds.

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Other than being a friendly fire-hazard to my team, my first few hours in PlanetSide 2 were a bit rough; I wasn't leveled high enough to purchase access many of the military vehicles, I couldn't afford new weapons or accessories, and going it alone Rambo style wasn’t fun. Since the only way to establish new spawn points is to capture an opponent's base or drive around the lumbering Sunderer combat bus (which are easy targets for heavy weapons), the frustration of a quick death was often compounded by respawning hundreds of yards from the next destination. Adding to the woes of the solo player was the lack of feedback and tutorials provided at the outset. The only time I got concrete info about each class' skill was the first time I chose them, the minimap is confusing until you take the time to explore the large maps in the menus, and controls outside of the vehicles are never explained. It's all stuff I eventually got the hang of within three hours, but if there was a training area or expanded tutorials, I would have learned much faster.When I became more of a team player, my experience improved dramatically; thanks to the usually dependable "Instant Action" option, I got to warp directly to huge battles with player counts in the triple digits, and capturing persistent bases and checkpoints on the giant maps felt like an accomplishment. For as much as moving from one base to another can seem repetitive or meaningless, pulling out to the map of the entire continent and seeing a majority of the land in my faction's control instilled a sense of pride. Being a part of a squad increased my XP earnings, too, and even though people seem to rely more on the simple in-game order system instead of vocal communications, I felt a sense of camaraderie during quieter moments. Packing a bunch of troops into a Sunderer and leisurely caravaning across the plains between bases, or hanging out together exploring an empty base after crushing the opposition and taking ownership of the giant structure were the calm I needed just as much as the storm.

It also helped that after a few hours fighting on the relatively drab newb-only level-15-and-under continent of Koltyr, I moved on to explore the more alien-feeling regions like the arctic plains of Esamir or the arid deserts of Indar. There, the sights are a bit more breathtaking, and the more open layout with multiple paths to objectives didn't put me in the line of fire quite as often. That's not to say any of the four larger continents is anything approaching a cakewalk, since the level of competition in those locales is far greater.

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Likewise, I was impressed by the variety of combat options thanks to PlanetSide 2's diverse set of six playable classes. I started as the well-rounded jetpack-equipped Light Assault trooper, and when I got tired of straightforward running and gunning (and hovering), I could camouflage myself to snipe or do stealth kills as an Infiltrator, or work on taking out the enemy's big guns as a Heavy Assault. Every class has a pretty decent loadout at first, but getting new weapons was a bit of a trial - entirely new weapons cost a whole lot of the slowly earned Certification currency, and while add-ons like magnification scopes or night vision are considerably cheaper, you can't test any weapon or modification before purchase. A few times, something that sounded good in the menu text didn't quite meet my expectations.

Fortunately, my weapon woes didn't matter as much when I went behind the frontlines and helped out as a Medic or a vehicle-fixing Engineer. The change of pace from being actively engaged in firefights and relatively stress-free XP gained from keeping your faction running strong is a great way to decompress after an intense battle – though Medics and Engineers can still hold their own in a fight, should the need to fight arise.

Taking a new approach by manning a vehicle or gun changes things up even more, with everything from ATVs and tanks to aircraft like fighters and dropships. Like the different classes, there's a steep curve to learning the controls, which are shown far too briefly when you get behind the wheel, and I did have some early frustration and vehicular mishaps that cost me a bunch of the slowly regenerating Nanite currency - it’s hard to learn to fly when cockpit time is so limited. However, playing as an armored Max suit and laying waste to enemy troops with dual-wielded heavy weapons and powerful armor was probably my most exhilarating experience in PlanetSide 2, and right from the start I felt like a badass instead of a bumbling fool. It might take a long time to afford new weapons or get meaningful upgrades like flying vehicles and the Nanite-consuming Max class, especially if you don’t pay to speed up your progression, but getting there is a good time.