Managed Democracy triumphs over Sony's corporate ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!

Helldivers! Turn those reviews around!

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I'm doing my part!

Ok, bit of a mixed bag here. Let's start with the good.

It's a fun game overall. Not perfect. But fun. If you like the idea of repairing and refitting mechs out of a start up garage, then this would be perfect for you. It was awesome at first, with enjoyable gameplay that wasn't too simple or too convoluted. There are a lot of different mechs, upgrades to your garage, stock market stuff with the companies that make said mechs. Lots of good stuff. On the whole, I loved the concept and was fully prepared to sink untold hours into it.

Gameplay wise? 7/10. It's good stuff that could do wonders with expansion and development from Polyslash.

Notice the "could"? Yeah... we're covering that now. Here's where it gets messy. The game does have some bugs. Such as when you choose to upgrade a mech's software (like the tutorial said you should if you want to get better payouts) but then get a negative mark and a pay cut because you "stole" their software. This doesn't happen all the time, but when it happens in a contract string of 3 mechs? Oh it sucks. That pay cut hurts.

The game is fairly bare bones beyond the repair elements. Paint jobs are a mess, your robot assistant is annoying as hell, the stock market is kinda janky. There are also missions you can send your mechs you've bought and refitted on... but they're clunky and take ages to even break even on the cost of bringing said mech up to speed... let alone making you actual profit.

All of this, plus some minor bugs, could be fixed with a bit of dev team work. But... take a look at the update history and you'll see it's been over a year since it's seen any kind of attention from the devs.

In short, it seems they've abandoned it and moved onto other projects. A great concept tossed aside as soon as they made their money back with a bit of interest.

My advice? Don't buy this game, on sale or otherwise. It's fun, but not perfect, and the devs will not be touching it any time soon to fix said issues. Don't support people who don't support their own games.

Update: Cannot recommend this game anymore. At the time of the original review, the game had potential and looked to be a solid successor to KUF.

It's been a hot minute since then and there has been little to no content updates. I see the occasional maintenance post, which seems silly for a game that's functionally dead. No one plays anymore and it doesn't seem like it'll have a comeback anytime soon. The game's death can be attributed to the lack of new content and general stagnation of events. None of which seem likely to change in the near future.

Sad to see a game with so much potential wind up with less constant players than the benchmark for games-that-are-dead-but-just-won't-admit-it: Eternal Crusade. When EC has more than double the average current players this game has, you know there's a problem.

It's a crying shame, but unless they wow us with some awesome new update to bring players back into the action, I'd say spend your money elsewhere.

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(Old Review)

As a fan of the older KUF games and an avid lover of MMO/RTS games in general, I was pumped to see they finally finished KUF2. It is not your typical MMO/RTS/RPG? (Lots of acronyms there), but it balances them all well enough.

I will start off by saying that the negative reviews from people who only clocked a couple hours should be, for the most part, discredited. The game has a rather slow start, with the first few hours being very linear and extremely tedious. Even with my excitement for the game, it was a chore to slog through. The true enjoyment of the game comes thereafter and is far more reflective of the game's performance on the whole.

Given the scope of elements involved in the game, I cannot reasonably expect you to read a detailed synopsis of them all, so we'll speed run them now:

RTS - Enjoyable with a fair variety of troops to control. I enjoy the flavor of each faction's troops, and how they play out on the battlefield. While it's not as tactically complex as previous iterations or current RTS games (Warhammer Total War comes to mind), the RTS combat feels solid and enjoyable on the whole.

Combat - Playing as your character feels lovely. As you level up and earn more abilities, you'll find yourself blendering through hordes of enemies and feeling like a complete badass doing so (Dynasty Warriors comes to mind here in both feel and mechanics). The game makes good use of implementing combos and dodge mechanics to give you a fair bit of options at your fingertips. While there's still the issue of getting stunlocked for 10-15 seconds at a time every now and then, I still feel this is the most satisfying part of the game. Faithful to the feel of the original games with a little added flair.

RPG - Arguably the weakest element of the three, but still solid in its own right. At present there are 5 classes to choose from and they each have their own unique mechanics to set them apart from one another. While this is all well and good, the classes are currently gender-locked (3 female classes, 2 male classes), the character customization seems a little lacking, and appearance wise you're limited to cosmetics you get from the ingame store (rather than different sets of equipable gear changing your appearance). On the whole, it's fairly generic and doesn't stand out too much from the crowd. I believe this might be a byproduct of the overwhelming success of other games in the genre that it will inevitably be compared to (looking at you FF14). Overall 3.6 roentgens levels of not bad, not great.

KUF2 has a fair few bugs that pop up every now and then, but the Devs are doing a solid job locking them down and fixing them quickly and quietly. Compared to the issues faced day one of launch, it is far more stable than it had been. Speaking of the Devs, they are very active in engaging with and listening to their community. This is even going so far as to put wishlist and feedback sections into their discord chat. Time will tell if they utilize the player feedback or not. At present, I've heard rumors through the grapevine of plans for future classes, units, and other fun stuff they plan to add moving forward. Fingers crossed, people.

In short, KUF2 is less a master of one genre and more a jack of all trades. It does strategy, combat, and RPG well... Just not as well as games made exclusively in those genres. This is understandable and remarkable enough that they managed to pull it off as cohesively as they did. Couple this with a friendly and responsive Dev team, and I wholeheartedly recommend KUF2 to RTS, hack-n-slash, and RPG fans looking for something a little different to spice up their library.

Got this with a discount code from Forgeworld. I won't pretend it's the most amazing and innovative game out there. But I can acknowledge the hard work Neocore games put into Warhammer 40k Diablo. If you go into it wanting the next best ARPG or some super neckbeardy slugfest through the 40k universe, then you're going to be disappointed. If you go into it wanting to play a rather straightforward ARPG with bolters, chainswords, and thunderhammers (oh my), then you're going to have a good time.

Are there bugs? Sure. It's a 40k title. There will always be bugs because that's the curse of the universe's games.

Does the maps and enemies get repetiive? Also sure. There's a set few maps that get repeated a fair bit and the enemies become fairly easily to outplay once you figure out their behavior patterns. But that's par for the course with most ARPGs anyway.

Could the game have some more class variety? Sure. 3 classes with 3 sub-classes each can be a little stale, but this was a proof of concept and I'm fairly certain we can expect new classes and content of that sort in future DLCs.

Is it the most faithful depiction of the grimdark 40k setting to ever grace your steam library? Eh, not really. You can 1v10 Chaos Space Marines and make them look silly in the process.

But it's a solid game with a decent main story, actually good voice acting, fun mechanics (heavy bolters are so damn satisfying), and something that most grimderp 40k games lack: wit and humor. The characters have a certain charm to them that makes you actually kind of give a ♥♥♥♥ about them and actually has you chuckling with their banter at times.

Don't expect this game to change the genre forever. But don't toss it aside without a thought. Martyr is a solid ARPG and a welcome addition to the 40k games of the current generation.

7/10 would recommend.

UPDATE:

Gave this game another go a while after writing this review. Since then, the devs have done a ton of updating to the handling of Martyr. For those interested, you can read all the fun details on their 2.0 update post.

This game has seen vast improvements over its earlier life and I am pleasantly surprised. It's still not a terribly groundbreaking game in the ARPG genre, but it's a ton of fun once you hit your stride.

A couple points of note, both good and bad:

+ Graphics are quite impressive and the general scenery/atmosphere of the levels is pretty well on point.

+ Weapon and ability feel are on flippin' point. The feel and sound of weapons like the heavy bolter or the thunder hammer bring a happy tear to my eye. Your armor abilities are also satisfying to use. From the jump pack of the assault crusader class to the time manipulation of the eradicator assassin class, and everything in between it feels lovely in the midst of combat.

+ Leveling and gear gets a major thumbs up with 2.0. Before, your overall level was kind of janky to figure out. The best I could describe it as is similar to I level in FF14, but less intuitive. Now? Your level is based on... your level. Shocking, I know. It's simple, it's effective, and it makes sense. Items still have the usual color based rarity system, only now it's nowhere near the chore it used to be to get relic and archaeotech level gear (just wait until you've completed your first Void Crusade... By the Throne, it's glorious).

+ DLC is fun and adds some new enemies and such to the mix, as well as a couple new maps (praise the Emperor! Variety!) and the option to pay fate points to pay for them is pretty nice too. That said, if you can find them on sale, I recommend that over the full listed price. Also, ignore the Charbdyis Outpost DLC listing in your inventory. It was a pre-order bonus exclusive for console players that somehow wind up in the PC version's DLC listing. That's a bug the devs are aware of.

+/- Sound is both on point and meh in some places. Again, the sound of the weapons is beautiful and sparks joy. The music is ok overall. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice change up from blaring organs and indecipherable dog Latin chanting, but it often lacks the punch you'd expect in those tense moments of gameplay. A shortcoming in the sound of this game is that it often gets a bit congested in the middle of a massive fight. When you have 50+ enemies all using their abilities at the same time as you're slamming away on full auto with your heavy bolter, things get kind of noisy. So much so that at times the audio seemed to have some clipping issues as it struggled to sort out the cacophony of gunfire and screams.

- Finesse of handling definitely gets a negative point here. Not saying it's bad. But it's clunky at times, and often acts caddywampus when you definitely don't want it to. An example of this being directional based attacks that seem to go off in directions that you didn't want them to. This has had me repeating the line "Thank you for hitting that heretical pillar/wall/park bench, but please next time prioritize the daemons getting all up in my face, please and thank you" far too many times to count.

- AI is still pretty jank, truth be told. You'll have enemies pathing weird ways, allies rushing into minefields as if they were members of the Death Korps of Krieg, bosses locked in idle animation (not that I'm complaining, mind you, free damage is free damage), floating enemies off the map, I could go on, but you get the picture. Mind you, there's no more falling through the map (at least that I've encountered) and your character getting into and out of cover is no longer so finicky as it used to.

N/A Multiplayer. I'll be honest, I don't have many friends who play Martyr, let alone who have clocked the hours I have into this game... So I have not touched the multiplayer for this game at all. No idea how stable it is, but multiplayer isn't my thing when it comes to ARPGs. So yeah, tread that territory with the same caution you'd give the Ghoul Stars.

All in all, this game has come a long way and is definitely worth a look if you're a fan of ARPGs and WH40k. Again, don't expect it to blow your mind, but don't write it off without a second thought.

New score: 8/10