Why yes, yes it is. From a new player standpoint that it.

Coming from 3 years Summoners War, and 1 year Epic Seven experience (as well as a bunch of other gacha games i've tried and played f2p and not) i expect a lot from each new game i try.  Raid has to offer by far worst new player experience i've seen so far. There are no free scrolls to summon, basically no free energy to have, no free silver to get you started to boot.

The scrolls:

As any other gacha game you are expected to summon. A lot. Because it is random and you are not guaranteed to get anything. Fine, i get it. I even get one of the worst drop rates in any game i ever tried. But where am i supposed to get the summons from? Quests and challenges barely give any (i managed to get 3 so far i think), not to mention that various quest become immediate currency sinks at very and i mean VERY early levels. Drop rate from dungeons is terrible as usual, not to mention my inability to venture beyond level 5-6 at most with the heroes and gear i have and there is an energy issue on top of that, but i'll get to that later.

Maybe i was supposed to get summons with crystals? Clearly not. Because clearing quests, challenges, dungeons and scenario doesn't give you ANY crystals. I mean, are you insane? This is the worst design and marketing i've seen in years. Sure, you occasionally get maybe one or two worth of refills in event or challenges milestones but it is clearly not enough. You can not physically get or farm enough crystals to buy a summoning pack for Christ sake. All you get is a BUNCH of pop ups every f-ing minute begging you to buy something for a low low price of 54,99. But why? Why would i want to buy something from a game that doesn't give me anything at all in the first place. Every other game i played basically bombards you with free crystals and free summons to allow you to summon a bunch just to hook you in the process and make you want to buy packs. But not here, oh no. Raid just tells you to give it money or gtfo. And i can tell you that 95% of new players will happily gtfo.

The energy:

God damn, can you be any more steep with energy? I mean yes, yes you can, as one can see in E7, for example, but it's quite bad in Raid. When you first get free reins over your actions and beat the tutorial you are immediately hit by insane amount of things you can do: a lot of dungeons with 20 stages each, a lot of scenario maps with rewards (extremely bad rewards as it turned out) at the end, some sort of faction thingie, clan boss etc.  You click on a dungeon and are amazed, not in a good way, by the amount of different gear sets you can acquire. I mean do we need this many? Does one need or ever use Cursed set? I highly doubt that. Do we really need two different counter sets? I highly doubt that. A sleep set?! Are you out of your mind, what kind of garbage is this?! To the new player this immediately tells that this system was created with the sole purpose in mind - to milk you for crystals to refill. Less chances to get that specific gear you need = more money in need of spending. Sure, the company needs to make money, i get it. But all you end up with is frustrated potential player base with immediate desire to quit the game. You don't even have a clear progression scheme lined up in front of a new player, good job. 

So a new player does what worked for other games: sees a campaign with rewards in need of completing and then tries to complete it. Wasting a lot of energy just to find out that most of the rewards are a sword and a shield of different, mostly useless for progression, sets. Why those parts? Why not a whole set? I don't have that many heroes in need of a sword and a shield. What were you thinking? Are you out of your mind? In other words there is no point in having that kind of a campaign other than summoning that one void crystal to get a 3* 99,9% of the time (i actually got a 4*, seems like it's even not garbage). I bet people reset a bunch in this game also just to get a void nat 5*. Pointless.

Then i would start to think about amounts of energy required to get a specific 6* artifact gear, add a bunch of rings, banners and what have you. But then i remember that game doesn't give you any crystals, refill cost is 40 crystals and energy cost of a dungeon for example is sky high. All of this kinda a dead giveaway that the game is heavily pay 2 win and i don't want to be a part of that (as a new player, of course). I want games that allow you to be f2p as much as you want because that way i am more inclined to spend, not the other way around. Not throwing a player a bone doesn't make him want to spend, it's that simple. If i can't farm 24/7 being f2p - game is garbage. And i may be missing something, having two days of play under my belt, but Raid heavily seems like garbage so far. Sure, these free heroes and summons during the month look sweet and juicy but whats the point if i can't spend the amount of time i want in your game? I will never get to the point of harvesting these free rewards if i quit within a first week. And i probably will, as will 90% of other new players do. Good marketing indeed.

The money (silver):

Amount of silver coins you need to do anything in this game is plain god awful. This is hands down worst amount of money sinks presented within first day of play i've ever seen in a game. Every second mission is enchant two things to +12, wasting a couple of hundred thousand coins, if not more. Every action with gear swapping is an ungodly amount of silver. Every summon is unnecessarily expensive. Hero leveling is expensive. EVERYTHING in this game costs a ton of coins. I didn't think i would ever see worse money sink game than Epic Seven, but here it is, the new champion - Raid: Shadow Legends. And this becomes clear within hours of loging in to the game for the first time. I don't know about you, but me personally i don't want to do anything with that kind of a system, thank you very much. Sure, maybe i don't know a way to easily get money yet. But, like i said, this is genuine new player immediate experience.

 So to sum up: this game is clear cash grab tailored to appeal to whales alone. The devs clearly don't care about players who spend a little or medium amount per month. They clearly don't care at all about possibilities of f2p. It may look like it is about to give you a bunch of stuff for free, but it will not - you will likely not get to that point, quitting as soon as you run out of every resource you have (probably after 15-20 hours of play at most). Sure, there probably are ways to optimize farming, probably are ways to get along the progress being completely free to play, probably are redeeming factors to all of this. But as long as they don't start manifesting themselves within 5 hours of beginners play tops all the pros the game has will be null and void. And as an experienced new player i sure as hell don't see anything but the attempt to milk me of my money here. I say: "no thank you, i'd rather subject myself to garbage fire that is Summoners War rather than play this; at least i can go full f2p 24/7 in SW". What say you then?