I want you to understand that barring Meta elements, Helldivers 2 deserves 5 Stars. As a game it's so fucking chaotic in every way, from it's world building and it's locations and it's presentation and it's gameplay, it's genuinely a blast every single time I pick it up and play it.
At the moment, however, I'm only really comfortable rating it 4 because the current meta for most things feels kind of claustrophobic. Especially in range of "Stratagems you can use to kill hives/factories". If you don't have someone willing to carry the 500kg bomb during the mission it's leaps and bounds different from if you do. And that's just because "Oh there's a problem. Throw the 500KG bomb and let's get out of here." is a perfectly valid strategy at that point.
There's also the issue of enemy variety being super limited, pretty sure from all my playing there's less than 10 types of enemies the game can throw at you max, maybe 12, and that's cut in half because the only two factions are bugs (Easy outside of the big ones) and Automatons (They will all kill you if you stop to breathe). So I hope you enjoy fighting the massive swarms of identical enemies with supporting "Bigger guys who are harder to take out" and "Dudes that have a ranged attack that will either fuck you up or instantly kill you dead". More variety in what you can blow up is absolutely necessary.
There's also the issue of needing more armor types and what those armors can do. Armors all look pretty good but statwise they all roam around the same 5/6 additional effects that lead them to feel pretty similar. The progression is pretty grind heavy too, so unless you're prepped to play this game every day and throw yourself into identical mission again and again you're really not ready to see how long it'll take for you to get a kit that feels visually and mechanically distinct from the 3 other friends you're dragging around screaming into the game. Especially if you're all going in from a fresh save file and trying to keep pace with one another.
Again, don't let this dissuade you, Helldivers 2 is a fucking fantastic masterpiece of a game right now and the way that the game feels is great, the way the devs and the community are interacting is hilarious, and the way the game is being paced is really really good. But on the other hand it really feels like this game screams Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Hyper grindy early game/mid game, by the time you get to the end game you're either devoted to it or burnt the fuck out of it, and realistically there's so little here that it's relying on future content updates to keep it's audience attracted and entertained. It's just a matter of who wins: The speed of development or the declining attention span of the game's ideal recurring player base in a year of gaming that feels like it's industry as a whole is repeatedly swinging home runs at the wallets of gamers all around the world.
At the moment, however, I'm only really comfortable rating it 4 because the current meta for most things feels kind of claustrophobic. Especially in range of "Stratagems you can use to kill hives/factories". If you don't have someone willing to carry the 500kg bomb during the mission it's leaps and bounds different from if you do. And that's just because "Oh there's a problem. Throw the 500KG bomb and let's get out of here." is a perfectly valid strategy at that point.
There's also the issue of enemy variety being super limited, pretty sure from all my playing there's less than 10 types of enemies the game can throw at you max, maybe 12, and that's cut in half because the only two factions are bugs (Easy outside of the big ones) and Automatons (They will all kill you if you stop to breathe). So I hope you enjoy fighting the massive swarms of identical enemies with supporting "Bigger guys who are harder to take out" and "Dudes that have a ranged attack that will either fuck you up or instantly kill you dead". More variety in what you can blow up is absolutely necessary.
There's also the issue of needing more armor types and what those armors can do. Armors all look pretty good but statwise they all roam around the same 5/6 additional effects that lead them to feel pretty similar. The progression is pretty grind heavy too, so unless you're prepped to play this game every day and throw yourself into identical mission again and again you're really not ready to see how long it'll take for you to get a kit that feels visually and mechanically distinct from the 3 other friends you're dragging around screaming into the game. Especially if you're all going in from a fresh save file and trying to keep pace with one another.
Again, don't let this dissuade you, Helldivers 2 is a fucking fantastic masterpiece of a game right now and the way that the game feels is great, the way the devs and the community are interacting is hilarious, and the way the game is being paced is really really good. But on the other hand it really feels like this game screams Animal Crossing: New Horizons: Hyper grindy early game/mid game, by the time you get to the end game you're either devoted to it or burnt the fuck out of it, and realistically there's so little here that it's relying on future content updates to keep it's audience attracted and entertained. It's just a matter of who wins: The speed of development or the declining attention span of the game's ideal recurring player base in a year of gaming that feels like it's industry as a whole is repeatedly swinging home runs at the wallets of gamers all around the world.