On a micro level, it’s very easy to jump in and out when you feel like it. Each mission usually takes under 10 minutes even for fresh players, while a veteran can blitz through some missions in under 90 seconds. You can choose to play either solo or in up to a four-player squad, and if you are in a squad you can get a share of the xp from kills your mates get. Loot is instanced so you never have to worry about fighting to get what you see on the ground.

On a macro level, it’s a free-to-play looter shooter, with all the good and bad that entails. You have about a billion different types of resources you need to craft new weapons and frames, and almost every time new content is added new resources are too (to force veterans to engage in that content). Some things in the game are timegated heavily- for example, once you have the parts and resources to craft a new frame, it takes at a minimum 3 and a half real time days to craft it (unless you pay to skip that, or just buy the frame outright from their shop). The drop rates for some of the things you want might mean you’d take a while to get them if you’re not playing a lot- DE has a published list of the drop chances and the wiki lists the expected number of times you’d have to do an activity before you’d get that item, but I do want to stress the grindy looter-shooter part of the game.

Most of the real-money transactions are in the form of skipping time gates or pure cosmetics. I personally feel their monetization is fair for the most part.

All it all, it’s a F2P game. Go ahead and try it if it sounds fun, and if you don’t like it all you’ve lost is some time.