I would not recommend this game to any new player.

Asides from the outdated default settings that put you into an objective disadvantage, you will be denied any form of communication for free to play and new player accounts, Valve has neglected this game for almost a decade since the jungle inferno update and has only been pushing out community made content updates, usually in the form of poorly curated lootbox cosmetic crates (because it makes them money).

The main line casual servers are usually infested with cheater bots, and youll often be queued into games that only have about a dozen or so real players, with a decent chance of atleast one of them also being a cheater.
A significant percentage of the real player base resides within community servers due to not having the aforementioned issues described above, however, these community servers have their own quirks, plugins, rules, ping, population, settings, and map rotations that makes choosing one a pretty narrow choice.
This issue is compounded by a statistical guestimate of the real active player base being about 20% of what's reported at any given time, due to this game being heavily botted. You will find hundreds of empty community servers, and only a few dozen with an active player base.

That being said, is this game fun in its current state? It can be, if you like playing on one of three maps or want to play on the mainline psudeocompetitive community server. (Daneatopia)
Since the game was abandoned, there's some unaddressed balance issues with what can be described as problematic or even useless weapons. Its long past its glory days and is not likely to get a second chance.
However, this game is timeless. The amount of skill expression this game allows and the unique player interactions and expressions are unmatched by any other game in its genre.

If you get good and committed to this game, it can be worth its while, however, the golden days are so far behind us and and the game will most likely remain in its current state.

I would not recommend this game to any new player. Asides from the outdated default settings that put you into an objective disadvantage, you will be denied any form of communication for free to play and new player accounts, Valve has neglected this game for almost a decade since the jungle inferno update and has only been pushing out community made content updates, usually in the form of poorly curated lootbox cosmetic crates (because it makes them money). The main line casual servers are usually infested with cheater bots, and youll often be queued into games that only have about a dozen or so real players, with a decent chance of atleast one of them also being a cheater. A significant percentage of the real player base resides within community servers due to not having the aforementioned issues described above, however, these community servers have their own quirks, plugins, rules, ping, population, settings, and map rotations that makes choosing one a pretty narrow choice. This issue is compounded by a statistical guestimate of the real active player base being about 20% of what's reported at any given time, due to this game being heavily botted. You will find hundreds of empty community servers, and only a few dozen with an active player base. That being said, is this game fun in its current state? It can be, if you like playing on one of three maps or want to play on the mainline psudeocompetitive community server. (Daneatopia) Since the game was abandoned, there's some unaddressed balance issues with what can be described as problematic or even useless weapons. Its long past its glory days and is not likely to get a second chance. However, this game is timeless. The amount of skill expression this game allows and the unique player interactions and expressions are unmatched by any other game in its genre. If you get good and committed to this game, it can be worth its while, however, the golden days are so far behind us and and the game will most likely remain in its current state.