I am breaking my normal pattern and reviewing this game before I am done playing with it. This game hits some great highs and some frustrating lows for me. I will start with the lows and end with the highs:
I have a high end AMD graphics card that should be able to handle this game just fine. The problem is I am pretty sure they optimized the game for NVIDIA to the exclusion of AMD, so the game runs my computer at full blast, causing it to crash constantly. I finally found the right back end settings to get it to crash far less frequently, but I am still dealing with crashes which is frustrating because the game is so good.
The highs: This game has made me feel like a kid again. I realize this is such an unquantifiable experience in terms of the mechanics of the game, but the constant thrill of running into hordes of bugs with even the grunts having engaging attack patterns creates a frenzy that reminds me of the feelings I got jumping excitedly in front of the TV while I played intense games of smash bros with friends as a kid. The inclusion of friendly fire has created a lot of funny scenarios with my friends (though this could create problems if playing with randos online). The stratagems give the player a good rhythm of shooting guns and causing explosions.
I have played a lot of deep rock galactic. I adore that game. This game is very similar in many ways, but the experience of playing it feels quite different. I am excited to get to harder difficulties as my friends and I progress down the tech tree. Now if I could just get it to stop crashing, especially with the login queues (though I think those might have been fixed now).