(Disclaimer: I was a Beta Tester for the Steam version of the game and have been involved in TF2C's closed beta since September 2022)

I put nearly 3000 hours into regular TF2 before quitting in March 2020 due to the bot crisis. A few months later, I hear about this TF2 mod that trims a lot of the fat and takes the game in a new direction. I try it out after finding out it's a standalone thing and not a server mod, and...

My god, where has this game been all my life? No matchmaking, no bot crisis, no horribly broken weapons, servers are (generally) moderated, updates aren't workshop cosmetic/map slop, it pays respect to the original vision of the world of Team Fortress 2 before the updates/comics/lore got out of hand...

And, of course, new game modes, weapons, and even a new class that's so well designed it's 1:1 with how the original TF2 dev team's class design philosophy that was used to design the 9 pre-existing classes. It needed a lot of tweaks to get it to feel "right" in the world of TF2, but Civilian/VIP mode is extremely fun! Provided the Civilian on your team knows what they're doing...

This has been my go to way to play Team Fortress 2 for the past 5 1/2 years, and I can't wait to see where Team Fortress 2 Classified goes from here, especially now that it can reach a much wider audience. Kudos to all the hardworking Eminoma devs that made this game happen!