I am so deeply conflicted about this game. I want to love this game. It has the potential to be much better than vermintide 2 which has become one of my favorite games of all time but it just has some very shoddy design choices that bring it down.
The core gameplay goes hard and feels like mostly an improvement over vermintide 2. weapons feel better to use, they have more of an impact, ranged weapons are more fun and weapons have more varied movesets. Combine that with the music and that makes the game feel perfect in some moments.
I like the map layouts. They've def gotten better at that with time.
They also captured the atmosphere of 40k perfectly through the environments, dialogue and music.The class system is good tho rn I haven't messed around too much with it.
The mission board is not good design. Instead of a clear cohesive campaign or even just being able to select any mission after unlocking them you just depend on RNG. My early game experience was repeating one or two missions because that is all people in quickplay were doing.
Grims and Scriptures being randomized is a very bizarre move. Was this some misguided attempt to dissuade grinding or something? because it just dissuades people from going for grims and tomes in general.
Toughness is likely the second worst thing about Darktide for me. Its the opposite of THP in vermintide 2 and ends up rewarding playing safe instead of aggressive and the punishment for losing teammates is much harsher than in vermintide 2.
The worst thing tho is the progression system. Getting weapons is somehow more randomized than vermintide 2.
In v2 you get one chest every mission with the item rarities depending on factors you have a direct control over and each chest had three random items. You would likely not get exactly what you want but you could just scrap it and craft the weapon you wanted easily.
Here there's like two currencies for a randomized shop with very stupid requirements for upgrading them based on more resources that you get in missions. One of the currencies you use to get weapons is the same currency for the non-premium cosmetics. The last one feels extremely stupid.
I'll come back to this game after an year or so. Maybe it won't be a game held back by stupid progression paths then
The core gameplay goes hard and feels like mostly an improvement over vermintide 2. weapons feel better to use, they have more of an impact, ranged weapons are more fun and weapons have more varied movesets. Combine that with the music and that makes the game feel perfect in some moments.
I like the map layouts. They've def gotten better at that with time.
They also captured the atmosphere of 40k perfectly through the environments, dialogue and music.The class system is good tho rn I haven't messed around too much with it.
The mission board is not good design. Instead of a clear cohesive campaign or even just being able to select any mission after unlocking them you just depend on RNG. My early game experience was repeating one or two missions because that is all people in quickplay were doing.
Grims and Scriptures being randomized is a very bizarre move. Was this some misguided attempt to dissuade grinding or something? because it just dissuades people from going for grims and tomes in general.
Toughness is likely the second worst thing about Darktide for me. Its the opposite of THP in vermintide 2 and ends up rewarding playing safe instead of aggressive and the punishment for losing teammates is much harsher than in vermintide 2.
The worst thing tho is the progression system. Getting weapons is somehow more randomized than vermintide 2.
In v2 you get one chest every mission with the item rarities depending on factors you have a direct control over and each chest had three random items. You would likely not get exactly what you want but you could just scrap it and craft the weapon you wanted easily.
Here there's like two currencies for a randomized shop with very stupid requirements for upgrading them based on more resources that you get in missions. One of the currencies you use to get weapons is the same currency for the non-premium cosmetics. The last one feels extremely stupid.
I'll come back to this game after an year or so. Maybe it won't be a game held back by stupid progression paths then