The Finals is the Best FPS You’re not Playing – Season 9 is a Great Time To Change That

The Finals, a game that dropped in December 2023 to a fair bit of hype, but at a time when the industry seemed awash with so many games trying to do the same thing. The Finals was never one of those games, however, and two years on it stands alone as an FPS, doing its own thing, and carving out a path in a sea of hero shooters, battle royals and extraction shooters.

But what IS The Finals? It looks like a hero shooter on the surface, and if you take a glance at some trailers, you might just think it backs up that point. But below the surface, it’s so much more than that.

The Finals is very much doing its own thing. In an industry where you fight mirror matchups of the same hero in the same skin, The Finals strips that back, giving you one of three roles to fill. But in doing so, it gives you all the customisation options you could ever want.

Yes, The Finals is a free-to-play game, so it has a store full of skins and a battle pass full of even more; however, the game is generous enough with its unlocks, and if you can avoid the FOMO, you can create a unique character for every battle.

The Finals – What is it Really?

We always want to put a game in a hole. It’s an extraction shooter, a squad-based hero shooter, a battle royale, etc. The Finals really does just feel like an FPS. In the same way, a title like Counter-Strike is at best a tactical FPS. The Finals sort of carves this unique place. It is team-based, but it’s not always 3v3; sometimes it’s 5v5, 3v3v3, 3v3v3v3, or even 8v8.

So, it’s team-based, we can agree at least, but apart from that, it’s hard to pin down. So The Finals is a team-based FPS, with abilities, but not heroes, with respawns, but without traditional round timers.

To explain a little and define it somewhat, let’s take a look at how the game’s “World Tour” system works, as it’s the most “on brand.” As a side note, the game’s ranked mode uses this same format, but with ranked play locked behind the need to play a lot of games first, it’s best we start here.

The setup for World Tour is weirdly unique for an FPS title. The game puts your squad of four in an eight-player bracket, similar to what you’d see in an FPS title’s competitive scene. These eight sides are split into two groups of four, who play a knockout round against each other. The two sides that earn the most cash advance from each side, with the bottom two ending their match.

The format then goes again with these four winners, before pitching the top two in a Finals (get it), where they face off in a 3v3 to decide who wins that World Tour event.

It’s such a simple format, it takes around 20-30 minutes to complete, depending on whether you get knocked out in round one or win it all, yet it’s satisfying to face off against sides and know how the team in your group wants to play. The gameplay is the same in World Tour, though with double the amount of Vaults and Cashouts, allowing for unique situations where three teams might fight for one Cashout, leaving the fourth team to play solo or even have all four fight for the same one, depending on how the scores are looking.

The Gameplay Loop

A key part of the gameplay loop in The Finals revolves around its spin on reviving and respawning. If your squad is alive, and you die, you can be revived, or after a certain amount of time, you can use a credit to respawn. The number of credits changes with each mode.

World Tour, you have three; Quick Play, you generally have unlimited. If, however, your squad is wiped, your respawn is reset so you can spawn together. This makes wiping out another squad a key tactical play. It also makes reviving a key element of your ability to attack and defend. To add to this, your allies’ “downed” body is represented as a statue, which you can carry around with you and revive in a safe place. Generally, it’s always better to revive your team than it is to respawn.

In the standard modes involving Cashouts, the objective is once again pretty simple. Go to one of the two Vaults on the map (one on quick play, two in World Tour), start the unlock process, and then take the cashbox to the Cashout. Once you do, just defend it for one minute and GG, you get the cash and build your fortune.

If another team gets to the Cashout first, then you need to steal it away from them. The best way to do that is to wipe the enemy team(s) and claim the prize. But The Finals is very unique, and have a feature that makes all of this a little more complicated.

Another thing that doesn’t get a lot of mentions, but is something that just works, is the game’s net code and server hit registration. Due to the high-speed nature of the combat, it’s very satisfying that the game’s hit registration feels really on point, and so far, I’ve yet to feel like I got cheated by any sort of lag during combat.

Destruction

We’ve seen destruction in video games for a long time, and it’s not unique to online FPS titles either. Bad Company 2, every Battlefield since then, Fortnite, etc, all have levels of destruction. However, it’s very fitting that The Finals, developed by Embark Studios, a Studio founded by a number of former Dice (Battlefield) developers, would be the ones to take that destruction to a new level.

The destruction on show here isn’t just “set pieces” either; if it’s a building in the game, you can bring it down. This adds an element of tactical play around the Cashout objective, because you can literally destroy the ground it’s sat on.

So if the defending team has set up turrets, C4, mines, etc, you can blow the floor up, dropping the box down a level or two and completely changing the defence of the objective in a matter of seconds. This level of destruction means that how you attack and defend a location changes based on your setup, and what the enemy is using.

As a note, in Quick Play, people can change Playstyles (class?) when they like, but in World Tour and Ranked, you are locked into what you started with, with a few exceptions to some reserve items slots to change up your active weapon and gadgets.

Playstyles and Customisation

This is where The Finals shines, and separates it from a hero shooter. The Finals uses three archetypes to separate you from everyone else. The Light, The Medium, The Heavy. Each of these has its own Playstyles.

• The Light
  • Grappling Hook
  • Evasive Dash
  • Cloaking Device
  • Thermal Vision (currently removed for re-work)
• The Medium
  • Healing Beam
  • Guardian Turret
  • Dematerializer
• The Heavy
  • Mesh Shield
  • Charge ‘N’ Slam
  • Winch Claw
  • Goo Gun

These, in combination with your weapons and gadgets, a number of which are unique to each class, with a few generic ones such as Frag Grenades, Pyro Grenades, etc, are unlocked to all. This combination of weapon, playstyle, and three gadgets makes for a unique build, allowing you to double down on a specific role or be versatile.

For example, you could play a Medium, use the Healing Beam, Defibrillator, a Goo Grenade (makes a wall), and an APS Turret to create a sort of support character. But that same class, Medium, can also go all-out attack, with grenades, Ziplines, Breach Drills, and mines. The joy here is to experiment with all the options and find the one that fits you the best.

Customisation is a huge part of The Finals, not only in how you play, but how you look while doing it. The screenshot above is one of the game’s latest skins and, frankly, it’s incredible. Every aspect of it is on point, even down to the Autumn Reign nail polish (separate from the bundle). But you can look how you want, be a robot, a samurai, a western cowboy, or just throw together a bunch of random stuff from multiple skin lines and create your own look.

As with many games with a Battle Pass, each one is themed to a point. Season 3 was mostly Japan-inspired, Season 5 was Aztec, and the latest season is mostly Chinese. You can go back and purchase any previous Battle Pass (once they are three seasons old), so if you don’t like the latest one, then just go back and earn rewards from previous seasons.

Esports

Esports and The Finals are a match made in heaven, and the recent Grand Finals in Stockholm were a great showcase of how Embark Studios can take the esports scene to the next level. According to people who went and spoke with Embark, it does sound like the plan is to keep going bigger and better each year.

The recent Grand Major 2025 had a $100,000 prize pool, which is a really strong start, and with some big esports organisations involved in the scene, there’s a lot of scope for the game’s esports scene to grow even more.

2025 was a good start to esports life for The Finals, and with the game so naturally set up for an esports scene, it’s something we will be keeping a close eye on in 2026.

The Final(s) Word

With Season 9 dropping and the Finals in probably its best state since it released, there’s no better time to hop into the action.

If you like fast-paced shooters, with every round feeling unique, alongside one of the most unique ranked modes in the FPS genre, then The Finals could well be the next game for you. To top it off, the game is free and available on every platform you’d expect to find it.