Completed on Emperor's Mercy (second hardest) difficulty.

Mostly good! Very polished, didn't notice a single bug. What drew me to this game was The Boltgun, it looked very satisfying to shoot, and it really is. Every gun is varying degrees of fun to shoot, so it's already in the upper echelon of shooters for me based solely on that. Movement feels really good, running and jumping feels great, and the rare instances of platforming aren't that terrible by non-platformer standards. The chainsword dash is cool, and probably the only "original" idea this game has going for it, but I rarely used it. Would have been cool to see it used to access secret areas or something, but nope. The charge attack is useless, I kept forgetting it existed until I fat fingered the F key.

The art is awesome, I really wanted to roll around in those pixelated piles of blood and guts like a dog. The earlier Tzeentch stages were my favorite, but most environments end up being some variance of otherworldly industrial cathedrals. All of the enemies are flat and constantly rotate to face you, which means the only way to sneak up on anyone is from above or really far away.

Circle strafing will dodge most forms of projectiles (except the stupid fucking Plague Toads, who's attacks track like you're playing Dark Souls 2), but you'll never get behind enemies that way. I'm pretty sure they all see through walls as well, so they'll often prime their attacks if you try to sneak damage with corner peeking. They're smart enough to do that shit, but not smart enough to walk away from your grenades or avoid walking next to exploding barrels, or move slightly to the side when you're sniping with the Plasma Gun from across the map.

Like many others have pointed out, the level design is often very bad, and a LOT of its badness could have been muted by a map, a compass, glowing objectives, an objective list, more landmark variety, ANYTHING. I'm not that bothered by getting lost occasionally, but the absence of these features is so confusing, and the design philosophy remains highly suspect with or without them.

Despite those complaints, this was really enjoyable, and I was always excited to play just one more level. Certainly MUCH better than Space Marine by the virtues of belonging to a more entertaining genre and having an art director with a voice.

A Warhammer 40k Boomer Shooter... why did it take us so long to make this???

There are some issues though - the enemy variety is eh, the level design has some high highs but low lows, and the guns take a while to feel varied but... you get to literally taunt the bad guys with the push of a button and stomp around with your stompy Space Marine boots turning heretics and demons into gibs of flesh I just can't not appreciate this

Final Grade: A-

What Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun lacks in substance it makes up for sheer, unadulterated viscera; it is a boomer shooter to its very core. Nothing else matters other than painting the walls of each of the game's 24 chapters crimson with the blood of the heretics that dare stand against you. The game asks you not to think, just kill without discrimination.

The weapons appropriately match this sentiment; the guns are blunt, with disregard to any sense of utility in exchange for raw fire power. Not to say they all do the same thing though; there are of course situations where the shotgun is going to be better than the titular boltgun, and the plasma guns splash damage is particularly handy in some scenarios, but really just holding down the trigger and letting bullets and blood fly is often the best way to approach encounters. As well, the sound design of the guns play into this play style; all the weapons just have a punch and power that makes them unendingly satisfying to fire in long bursts, to the point where I would often use a gun because I just wanted hear the sound of the projectile shooting out of the barrel and the shell hitting the floor. The game also provides copious amounts of ammo to ensure that you can fulfill this desire, there was never a single time where I didn’t have a sufficient amount of ammo, say for the game's BFG equivalent. The level design also encourages this run and gun strategy. The levels vary from being linear hallways where enemies are lined up like bowling pins for the marine to knock down in absurdly bloody fashion, and gigantic open maps where, to open the exit door, you run around and kill everything in sight, and sometimes then some. As well, health packs, armor (called contempt here), ammo, and secret power ups are all scattered around these arenas; so if you want to live you are going to have to run, jump, and pile drive through the environment.

However, as fun and cathartic as running through enemies with the force of god, it inevitably loses its luster after a while; and that is where the core flaw of this game lies. The game has no nuance. Like I mentioned, the guns only exist to do damage, they have no utility outside of that, which makes deciding which one to use for a given situation a matter of which one do I have the most ammo for. The enemies are also just as blunt as the weapons, they only exist to do damage and offer no other way of inconveniencing the player; the only real determining factors on which enemy should be dealt with first is how big their health bar is and how fast they can take yours. Compare this to the likes of Doom Eternal where the game constantly asks to understand the abilities of your guns beyond just damage and to apply them to dynamic combat encounters where enemies are designated to affect the players actions and train of thought in different ways, serving almost like a puzzle that is repeatedly un-solving itself.

Warhammer 40k: Boltgun is still a good game, don't get me wrong, and it will certainly make a name for itself in the ever growing pantheon of retro boomer shooters. But I still feel like it doesn’t fully understand what makes for engaging design in this genre, and instead decides to fully engross itself with a lot of the surface level concepts that people think about when discussing the retro first person shooter scene.

Boltgun is mostly a boomer shooter with not much of a substance but I think the fantasy of being a Space Marine being done so well with guns ripping through people and you walking like you weight one ton it nearly makes up for it. The main gripe I have with the game is that there is nothing new happening after halfway point of the game, you just kill the same stuff over and over. Another small problem I had with the game is that it desperately needs a map or some sort of a pointer because a lot of the time it's not clear where you should go.

Overall it's a decent boomer shooter that should have been shorter. I would only recommend it to fans of 40k setting as it masks some of the problems, at least for a while.

Pure Bethesda Game with all the exact same flaws and qualities as a Fallout 4 or a Skyrim. Except that in 2023 those flaws outweight BY FAR its qualities, especially as it feels they dont learn from their mistakes.

Pros:
- Lots of content
- Great work on the "being in space" feeling (DA on interiors, ship and some planets)
- Decent storyline
- Great faction side quest and some hidden one
- Nice and various choice in firearms and powers
- Strong modding community

Cons:
- Absolutely HORRENDOUS npc AI, it really feels like you are sourrounding by empty shell with the most unnatural and stupid reaction ive seen since a while. Reminding you every 30s that you are "just" in a game as "human" interaction feels empty, cold if not weird as hell.
- Companions empty af with poor design, and interaction with them is just plain boring
- LOADIND LOADING LOADING ALL THE F**** time, literally destroying immersion
- Terrible Ship dogfight system. Absolutely zero skill required (no real evasion maneuver, missile counter or such things) it is PURELY stats based hence VERY quickly repetitive and boring. Huge miss from Bethesda here.
- Terrible optimization on PC
- Even if more polished than its predecessor, very average looking for its current gen
- Inventories, weight system, skill system challenge etc ... outdated and feels very "heavy" to use
- Everything feels slow, but ... the bad kind of slow.

CONCLUSION:
Without mods, I would surely have give up completely on this game, but best is to let the modders and update improve the game to get back to it MAYBE after a year or so.