It's a competent TPS hack n slash power fantasy, but there's no meat on those good bones. Classes only have 2 or 3 weapon choices, with the only class-unique ones being the Heavy's weapon choices, Assault's Thunderhammer, and Sniper's Las Fusil- everyone has to share, but at least mastery and perk level availability are tied to the specific weapon and not per class. Combos are dead simple, there are some un-specified mix-ups you can do to keep a combo going to the end of the basic chains or some like the Power Fist and Combat Knife can infinitely loop their light>heavy string. Trying to pop headshots with the basic Boltpistol feels really bad with the large reticle even zoomed in acting more of a general guide on the direction your shots are going to go, and good luck hitting ANYTHING that's not already in your face if you're not ADS.

The class abilities are all fun and interesting enough, and you can do some bonkers plays with a Vanguard or Sniper, but for ones like Heavy or Bulwark there's really nothing they can pull off that gives them a breakaway from their hyperspecialized niche- and Bulwark can't even tank well if the team spreads out since it opens him up to getting stabbed in the back by Warriors or Raveners the moment he changes focus to deal with whatever enemies are harassing him from off-screen.

Tyranid swarms are...meh- you kill a Warrior and all the fodder dies too, so it just boils down to you and whatever non-Minoris enemies spawned in and that gets boring eventually. Thousand Suns are not much better, but at least they have variety with Sorcerers and Melta-wielding Marines and their grunts actually can stagger you and make life annoying. Meltas are busted, they clear and stagger basically entire screens, but at least that provides you openings to engage with the kinda fun, weighty melee combat.

Needless to say, I burned out of the honeymoon phase super fast, even with trying to go the intended route of padding the campaign with the co-op missions. Admittedly, I haven't touched PVP yet, because it just doesn't interest me all the much.

((Also, yeah yeah, skill issue- but what even is the right timing for a Perfect Parry using the Blocking type? Fencing is kinda like Sekiro, Balanced is comfortable against everything on reaction, but Blocking has such an awful windup with no actual defense to the blocking animation that it just feels like a waste of a purchase.))

!!!ORIGINAL REVIEW BELOW!!!

Most of my gripes are still there, but with the release of new classes, more varied content in the way of Mortis Trials and the train gauntlet level and Havoc challenges, the entirety of the Talent Tree reworks, and an actual (optional) campaign flowchart with rewatchable cutscenes to shape it up more into VT2-quality, I'd have to say it's a lot better now than it was pre-release and early launch. Runs pretty smoothly, and feels fast and fluid to make gameplay loop fun and rewarding to find a playstyle for your favorite class(es) that fit your own way to engage content.

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I gave it a good 45 hours in the pre-order beta, but it just feels so hollow and incomplete even with the addition of the week's crafting updates.

The gameplay loop doesn't do much to define itself away from Vermintide 2, cover is largely useless, you still only use ranged to take out specials and elites then immediately swap back to melee to protect yourself from the surrounding horde of melee trash. Dodging with your ranged weapon has been confirmed by the devs to be entirely useless against melee as it doesn't break tracking like dodging with your melee weapon does.

There's no synergy with class feats between your melee and ranged playstyles, Zealot's feats actually do not function on ranged attacks despite the non-specific/universal wording i.e. unspecified "hit" and "damage" do nothing unless it's with your melee weapon doing the hitting, meaning your ranged weapon has no stack building nor benefits except where specifically mentioned within a single lackluster feat (it does however proc toughness damage reduction feat on crit, but with no other benefits from the rest of your feat picks, it's largely unproductive to even use your ranged weapon when 9/10 times the rest of your team has a dedicated ranged player to pop specials and elites anyway).

The banter is fine, I guess, but after a while it all just blends together between responses and prompts across 3 of the classes. The only banter I can say is genuinely great are the Ogryns responding to any of the classes, they're hilariously incompetent at times.

Ogryns in generally are not great. Or maybe I should specify most Ogryn players, at least in public matchmaking where you'll be spending the majority of your time. The fact they take up entire hallways is a blessing and a curse. They'll block your lined up shots so many times because they clip into your projectile by being right up your ass eager to get into melee and keep the horde back rather effortlessly preferably with their shield's special to also protect the squishier Psykers and Veterans from the sheer destruction that several ranged enemies can send your way in the blink of an eye.

Maybe when more classes get released in the future, I'll give FatShark my money like they deserve it, but that remains to be seen in the next few years if they don't just rehash most of the classes from Vermintide 2 like they did with Zealot.

It's a fun stylish hack-n-slash from Platinum, so combat holds up. Plot is to be expected from Kojima and Metal Gear as a whole. Nice wide array of boss weapons that each fill a purpose (Crowd control, Aerial targets/gap closer, SUPER ARMOR AND STAGGER and also cutting stuff in half). Blade mode is nice clean-cut fun, even if Free-mode does take a tiny bit getting used to but should only really used for precision anyway(arms, "cut the thing" phases, etc). My only real gripe is "Raiden tries too hard trying to be cool and his voice gets a bit annoying", to which my solution is "Get the Gray Fox suit, put subtitles on and just mute everyone so I can pretend to just be Gray Fox the whole game and listen to the awesome soundtrack".

First playthrough on Normal wasn't too hard or too easy, only a few areas gave me trouble: the elevator sequence and the 2nd boss fight (and by extension the miniboss fight against the first two bosses right AFTER the elevator sequence). Second playthrough on Hard feels about the same so far, with the exception of the prologue because you get set back to default for it(as you'd expect).

Combat feels polished and flexible, thoguh the Warrior stance always feels a bit clunky and slow (in a good way, you're wielding a heavy weapon after all). Story is alright, kind of a short journey though with it only being 3 Acts and an short end segment with a somewhat difficult Final boss, even on the easiest difficult setting. It's pretty much a discount Witcher. You only really get one choice though to change anything in the plot and it comes in the Swamps, and it basically boils down to "Let the Demon take over" or "Stay Human". I advise making a save when you get to that point so you can play both paths with the same "character". I felt it was a pretty well-done RPG from Spiders, even with the few issues I found while playing.

Seeing this game in library hurts, it had so much potential to be something great. Then a few questionable updates came, namely an XP unlock system. I'm fine with it in early access, to test feedback on it and see if the rate needs any tweaking, but the game has, for all intents and purposes, a dead playerbase, so you really can't progress to unlock better spells and swords.

I bought into it early, before the XP progression, and I really really liked what it had to offer. The combat was decent enough for the state the game was in, if a bit confusing and frustrating at times, but that was part of the fun, learning how to do combos and then do them faster and faster. And then, everyone I was having fun with in the game started to disappear, now there's only about 5 people if you're lucky.