Marathon

Marathon reimagines Bungie's original 1994 franchise as a stylish, high-stakes PvP extraction shooter set on the lost colony of Tau Ceti IV. This review's sample confirms the studio's signature craft is fully intact — and documents a serious, specific audience-access problem sitting alongside it.

Gunplay, art, and sound that reviewers keep singling out

Across this review's sample, the same handful of qualities come up again and again. "Every gun feels like a Bungie gun, you can just tell it's Bungie DNA," one reviewer writes, adding that "the environments look unlike anything else right now and the audio slaps too." Another reviewer describes the full package in more detail: "Striking visuals, incredible gunplay, stunning soundtrack, oppressive and dreadful atmosphere, and it's all tied together with incredible lore." A reviewer who says they don't typically enjoy PvP shooters describes getting pulled in regardless: "It feels more like a action rogue-like than an extraction shooter to me, with how frequent I get loot. Even if I die terribly, I still feel like I earned something." That craftsmanship shows up consistently enough across the sample that it reads as a genuine, broadly shared strength rather than a minority opinion.

A hardcore design that alienates solo and casual players

Set against that praise, a large share of this review's sample describes the core PvP loop as punishingly difficult for anyone without a dedicated three-player group. "Marathon is impressively not accessible to any audience for four core design decisions: Wipes, mandatory trios, economy, and lategame," one reviewer writes, noting the game is explicitly "designed for trios" by the developers' own description. Another reviewer frames the same issue from a different angle: "The biggest reasons are simple, firstly the actual solo part of the game was clearly an afterthought and the game isn't balanced around it at all." Steam's own partner-events feed shows Bungie responding directly to this pressure: a "Duos Update" arrived on 31 March 2026, followed by a "Dev Update on Experimental Duo Queue" — official confirmation that the trios-only complaint reached the developers and prompted a concrete, if still labelled "experimental," response.

A serious, heavily-upvoted platform-access complaint

The single most heavily-upvoted complaint in this review's negative sample is specific and technical rather than a matter of taste. "Bungie could have enabled the proton use in BattlEye but they decided not to which implies a conscious decision against Linux users," one reviewer writes, in a review carrying over 5,500 upvotes. Multiple other reviewers independently make the identical, specific claim: that BattlEye's Proton compatibility toggle exists and works in other games, but Bungie has not enabled it for Marathon, blocking Linux desktop and Steam Deck players entirely. This review found no Steam-sourced event or patch note announcing Linux/Proton support, which means the complaint appears to reflect an ongoing, unresolved decision rather than a problem already fixed.

Monetization draws pointed criticism

Several reviewers single out the game's premium currency structure as deliberately unfriendly. "The cosmetics all cost 1500 premium currency. You can only buy 1000+100 bonus and another pack of 500 to get enough to buy it, or over pay for the 2200 currency pack," one reviewer writes, framing the bundle sizing as a calculated way to push players toward spending more than an item's stated price. That's a specific, checkable claim about currency-pack math rather than a general complaint about monetization existing at all, and it's worth taking seriously as this review's sample raises it independently more than once.

A regional matchmaking complaint that hasn't gone away

Several reviewers report a persistent problem with matchmaking quality that goes beyond simple queue times. "If you speak English and live in Asia, do not buy this game. The matchmaking is terrible. you're constantly placed in teams with players who don't speak English or communicate at all," one reviewer writes in a review updated after more than 100 hours of play, adding that they would stop playing without a region-selection option. This review found no Steam-sourced patch note specifically addressing regional matchmaking or language pairing in the events feed, despite the general update cadence described below, suggesting it remains an open issue for at least some players rather than one already resolved.

Built-in accessibility options sit alongside the platform gap

Marathon's own Steam listing advertises a genuinely substantial accessibility feature set: adjustable text size, camera comfort options, colour alternatives, subtitle options, and support for keyboard-only, mouse-only, or touch-only play. None of this review's sample raised complaints about these specific features, which suggests Bungie's accessibility work for players who can run the game is solid. That makes the BattlEye/Linux exclusion described above a stranger omission by comparison — a platform-level access barrier sitting next to an otherwise well-considered accessibility feature set aimed at players who already have a supported way in.

Reviewers acknowledge a genuinely troubled reputation

Several reviewers reference Marathon's difficult public history explicitly, without this review being able to verify the specifics through Steam-sourced material alone. "Marathon has been a PR nightmare and quite a rollercoaster," one reviewer writes, while another pushes back on comparisons to a notoriously failed rival launch: "Don't know why people are saying it's Concord 3." This review reports these as reviewer perceptions of a rocky pre-launch period rather than confirmed specifics, since no Steam-sourced material in this review's research directly documents what that history involved.

Achievement data and ongoing support

This review's own check of Steam's achievement data shows a steep drop-off across the game's 14 tracked achievements, from 71.9% for the most common down to 5.6% for the least common — consistent with reviewer reports that the steep skill and coordination requirements push away less committed players before they progress far. Set against that, Steam's own partner-events feed documents genuinely sustained post-launch support: a "Cheater Update," a "Networking and Security" post explicitly describing "the forever war against cheaters," two full content seasons, and a near-weekly patch cadence running from launch through September 2026 — evidence against the "the game is dying" framing some reviewers raise, even if it doesn't resolve the platform-access or design-accessibility complaints above.

Final verdict

Marathon succeeds completely at the thing Bungie is best known for: this review's sample confirms exceptional gunplay, art direction, and sound design that reviewers across the spectrum single out for praise. But a genuinely hardcore, trios-mandatory design, a specific and unresolved Linux/Steam Deck platform exclusion, and pointed monetization criticism combine into a real, well-corroborated set of barriers. This is a strong extraction shooter for the specific audience it's built for, and a hard sell for everyone else.