At this point I'd say no, not even for $20. But there's both objective and subjective reasons for me to say that.
This is mostly a 'rant' but there's information you might find useful in the wall of text below, if you want to bother reading it:
Back in 2016 when it came out it became my bread and water for a solid 3 months or so, maybe more. I couldn't stop playing it. Then the first "competitive season" came out, and the effect it had on my friends list (which was sizeable by the time that game mode came out) was a major split. The majority of course wanted to then play in competitive mode (and only there, doing absolutely nothing else), and the few of us that remained and didn't care about "serious competition" ended up left in some corner to dry.
I kept playing (quick play mode) regularly enough after that, although it already started to feel "more of the same" by that point (regardless of the arrival of competitive mode or the 'split' in my friends list). All that for me happened before the very first new hero came out. Then, Ana was released; and that new hero release single-handily destroyed the already rather fragile-but-tolerable balance into oblivion. It made me stop playing for weeks, or possibly more than a month; can't recall.
Now I'm skipping a lot, but basically I "came back" a few times playing it. But ever since the release of the first competitive season I never played it again for more than maybe a few days in a row, only to stop for literally months after that. It's been like that ever since really. I do log-in from time to time (once every month or so) nowadays, usually just to check out the new heroes (almost all of which - on a side note - are bad, in my opinion; even in terms of design and lore) and the new maps when they do make those.
My biggest 'gripe' with Overwatch, however, is the fact that after nearly 2+ years (will be 3 years-old in May 2019 I believe, or around that time) there's still an incredible lack of PvE and Solo content. If I'm not mistaken it's probably the first 'big budget' Blizzard game I can think of that leaves us PvE / Coop / Solo players in the dust. I'll try to enumerate the things related to this lacking 'portion' of the game that comes to mind:
- There's no campaign, there's virutally no proper, coherent timeline of events in a fleshed-out lore background (it's a Blizzard game, let that sink in).
- Related to the above point, they do - sometimes - release a mini "story-based" mission (it's just a map, separated in 2 or 3 parts) that tells a very insignificantly small amount of "story" about the occurring event, and the characters (very negligible info) involved during said mission. However, they REMOVE those missions all the damn f'ing time. In other words, they are timed "event" game modes that always get removed after maybe 2 or 3 weeks whenever they do bother making those (and it is rather rare). And it's not always related to the actual 'proper lore' of the game's world and only is a nod to the seasonal event going on (Example: Junkenstein Revenge or whatever the name is, is a PvE Coop mission that doesn't have map variation at all, is an arena / horde game mode themed for Halloween and the costumes that the characters involved in the mission received for said Halloween event).
- To come back to the point above: the removal of PvE / Coop content is a major offender. I do not understand the logic, the point, the purpose. It's stupid. There's no other ways to cut it.
- Now, there's a mode where you get to create your own game, with your own rules. It's basically Overwatch's take on "Mutators" in the Unreal Tournament series. Low gravity, faster spawn times, no cooldowns if you want... etc. So, in that game mode you can set up A.I. bots to have your own custom made version of what amounts to PvE content. However, that aspect of that game mode has been left barely touched ever since they implemented that game creation mode.
- There's 25+ heroes by now in the game I think? Well, there's I believe 10 or 11 heroes in the bots list, maybe less. Not to mention that the A.I. itself has barely been worked on, since most of them don't even USE their abilities at all (Reaper A.I. never, ever uses Shadow Step or whatever the name is, the teleport ability; it was simply not even coded in Reaper's A.I.).
- But it gets worse. If I want to set up a game where anyone can join, but I also want to include bots in the meantime, then I have to manage the whole thing manually as the game unfolds, because they didn't bother to work on that (they truly don't give a shit about PvE and A.I., it's that simple). For example, I want a 6 V 6. Fine, but no one joins the game immediately. So what can I do? I can add bots in both team's available slots (for now). Fine. So I add 5 bots in my team, 6 in the enemy team.
All the slots are filled. Following me? Good. So I start up the match, I play. The stupid bots do their things and I can at least "play Overwatch" at bit. However, I did set up my game so that people can join if they want. So what DOES happen when people want to join? They get sent in SPECTATORS slots (if I did set those up). Now, in the actual available game's Browser list, MY game will show up to people as being FULL, that's because they didn't bother to differentiate between "filled up by humans who just join" Vs "filled up by bots".
In other words, there's no system in place to allow players to REPLACE a bot by filling up a slot that the bot(s) occupy. So HOW does a match host deal with that? Well, I HAVE to set up at least 2 Spectator slots (2, because having just one isn't enough when it just so happens that at least two persons tried to join my match at around the same time), and wait until an actual player gets sent to Spectators. When that does happen, I have to act fast, and manually, right in the middle of action sometimes and of course, I die more often than not if I do that; but I have to. So I have to open up my menu, and manually remove a bot from my team's slots and THEN the person who might still be in Spectators mode "automatically" gets sent into the now-available slot that I just liberated myself.
However, on top of that, the problem is that usually players do not join matches and expect to get into Spectators mode, so more often than not when someone attempts to join and gets in the spectators seat for even just 10 seconds what do they do? Well of course, they leave my game. But I already did free up a slot, so I have to go back in AGAIN, and manually re-add another bot because I just lost my damn time trying to free up a slot and died for it, but I have to repeat the process otherwise my team will now be missing a player if I don't re-add one again.
It's an absolute mess, and there's essentially no development time put into it. No care, no passion.
This portion of Overwatch (PvE / Coop / Solo / Vs A.I.) is absolute trash, basically non-existent and looks like the laughing stock of the industry when you compare this "arena shooter" to the grand daddies in the veins of Unreal Tournament, Quake and Tribes. If a company like Blizzard can't bother with their players base whom happen to have been mostly PvE or single-player players for years (since Diablo 1 or 2, or since StarCraft 1 and around those golden years of the company) then they are missing a MAJOR point.
- So all in all, it is no exaggeration to say that Blizzard sends a clear message: If you want PvE / Solo (permanent, non seasonal, non timed-event based content) / set up your own 'fun custom mutators match with bots; if you want to understand what the Hell is actually going on in the world of Overwatch with a story, lore and campaign, then this game is not for you. "We prefer to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on occasional once-per-6 months CGI shorts that essentially tell almost no real story, but look pretty good". They expect me to read some 'Overwatch comic' where I get to learn the sexual orientation of one character and consider that "lore"? No. No Blizzard. I don't care.
Anyway, my rant only applies if you also like that sort of content in your action FPS games. I played a crap ton of UT99 and UT2004 back then, but still today they are mountains that stand out in the crowd when you compare those classics to something as fast-food and low effort in content variety (and PERMANENTLY present content that just gets added over time) as Overwatch. I genuinely had a lot of fun with it at first, but that's just because I apparently and innocently so believed that it would just get improved upon over time since it was a Blizzard game.
I DID believe it. Because I was among the few originally when it was out who said that despite the overall low amount of content (because when it came out it really did NOT have a lot of content to offer, besides playing Quick Play and Mystery Heroes and one or two other modes) that stuff would simply be ADDED to it over time (of course, including new heroes, and maps). Well, Heroes and some Maps are permanent. Indeed, some maps DO belong to timed-events that do get removed later on (can't play in that London map during the Null Sector event mission, as in not only is that mission timed and always removed eventually when it does come out, but the map itself doesn't stay for us to choose to play in it with other game modes anyway; so there, some maps can't even stay permanently).
So the gist is that it never really "got any better" despite new heroes (again, I don't even like most of them to start with; the original roster had a fantastic quality pass made on it over the years of development and it shows; there's only 2 in the new post-release cast that I think show that some effort was put into them to look genuinely unique... but that one is extremely subjective I know) and maps. There's no campaign, I don't actually CARE about any of the characters since I don't know them, nor their past in enough amount and exposure via lore, and CGI shorts are not a viable source of info nor is it the same as experiencing a character's story via... oh you know... gameplay in an actual campaign?
So anyway, the only positives I can think of at this point have essentially not really moved from when it came out, which are:
1) Good music (but is subjective)
2) Good overall art style and character designs (I do dislike most of the new heroes, albeit not all of them; and I do think that the original roster is generally very good)
3) It's flashy and bombastic / chaotic at times (not always though; mostly depends on game mode and how many heroes unleash their big abilities at once in your field of view; it's situational). I do like that aspect since I used to spend hours in UT2004 custom servers playing absolutely chaotic Monster Invasion modes with exaggerated Mutator effects. I don't mind the 'visual clutter' of effects and particles much, but this is subjective; it's definitely not for everyone.
4) And, well... as a positive if you DO enjoy multiplayer ONLY, then yeah I could say this is a good game to get for maybe $20, sure.
That's about it. Where Overwatch for me was originally easily a solid 9/10 game (including the prospect of seeing it being improved upon with added content over time) it quickly went down the drain for me and is now only a rather mediocre experience. I wouldn't give it more than a "barely passable" 5.5 or maybe 6/10 if I'm being very generous with it.
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