Exteel does not really have any of that story nonsense. No, it is a game about robots killing each other in the most awesome ways possible. No explanation is given as to why you are fighting, or who you are fighting against, but honestly, who cares? It's an action game. You need very little justification for doing anything in action games, least of all anything that involves dramatic explosions and high-octane combat. The intro tells you all you need to know about why you are playing.

Exteel's basic gameplay is much like you would expect for any retail PC shooter or action game. You have a selection of servers, which all run different gametypes and have different populations. You can join them and play, with players of any skill level being able to play in most servers. There is no dedicated server system, only the lobby system other games of its ilk use. While this is great for players to connect with each other, it does affect latency as much as one would expect. Don't be keen on having the perfect ping. The netcode is decent, though, which alleviates some of the strain.

Before you join or start one of these games, you are invited to customize your robot. Here is where the developers make their money, as Exteel uses the microtransaction model that free MMO players are used to. The higher end stuff is either micro-transaction only, or micro-transaction with an exorbiant in-game currency fee. Nothing in the game is permanent except for the basic armor, weapons, and skill, and players are given the option of either 7 days or 30 days for their duration goodies, with weapons usually requiring repairs after battles instead. Repairs are bought in packs, and if your weapons ever run out of durability (which is thankfully applied at the end of a battle), they will be destroyed.

You can customize any part of your robot, as well as the guns you wield, backpack you wear, and skills you equip. Customization is broken up into the normal slots, although you do have two sets of weapons that you can switch between at any time. This is important, as diversity in Exteel is important. If you want to be a strong melee attacker, for example, you might take SMGs as your first slot and an SMG and sword in your second slot. If you want to be balanced in both, you might take an SMG and a shotgun in one slot and a cannon on the other. Skills are equipment dependent, which means that you have to use skills that fit your weapon loadout. However, when you stab an enemy in the chest, and then shoot him in the face, you hardly care about such worries. It's just so awesome and kinetic!

There are several characteristics that are also important to your pilot. The first are your weapon skill levels. Weapons are broken into four categories: melee, ranged, siege, and rocket. Melee weapons are things such as swords and spears, ranged weapons are things such as rifles and SMGs, siege weapons are things such as shotguns and cannons, and rocket weapons are rock launchers. Each weapon selection offers distinct bonuses to the player that is using them, but also has sharp detriments that contrast with the benefits. For example, shotguns and SMGs are great up close, but can not lock on to anything at a significant range. By contrast, cannons and rifles can shoot at a good range, by can not be used up close. Swords are stiff and leave the user wide-open, but deal tones of damage. And rockets have a large range and damage, but must be manually aimed in order to hit their target. Skill levels determine how well the weapons function, and increase as you deal damage with them. Simple.

The second set of characteristics are the things that you spend your points on. Points are earned every time you level up, and can be used to increase attributes such as your movement speed, your health pool, and other such base statistics. If you want to compete later on, upgrading these are absolutely essential to your survival and continued domination. After a while, attributes become more expensive, which limits your options as you play.

Exteel offers several game modes, none of which are particularly out of the ordinary. Capture the flag, point control, deathmatch, and last man standing are all represented here. An interesting side-effect of this is that every map has control points, and depending on the team that controls them, the player can spawn there or capture it after killing the AI guards to let their buddies spawn there. In a deathmatch map, this is obviously waived, which leads ot players spawning pretty much everywhere and general chaos.

Exteel is hardly a groundbreaking game, and it suffers from a few major flaws. The listen-server based system is incredibly unwieldy, and players with the money to afford better weapons completely steamroll newer players. Since there's not a large newbie contingent, it can be intimidating for the new player. It's a decent game, however, and those looking for some fun, competitive, MMO-like action should not pass it by.