I've got about 60 hours sunk in now, almost entirely played with a group of rl friends (about 10 of us, so it's usually possible to get a full group any given night of the week).
I like the game a lot -it's basically Vermintide 1 but with a bit more variety and a higher level of graphical/system optimization- but it is never going to be a Codex-favorite. Balance is all over the place. Some careers are completely unviable above veteran unless you are being carried or have top-tier necklace/ring/trinket from grinding other char, to the point that some of my friends will quit to menu if we happen to get stuck with a pubber playing Shade or Slayer. In general, each character has one career paired with one weapon loadout that VASTLY outperforms all other options.
Melee combat feels great, even more satisfying than in 1. I've mostly played Bardin (duh) with axe/shield + flamethrower, and it never ceases to satisfy when I cleave down on a berserker's head or lop off a Skaven runt's arm. Sounds design strongly plays into this; every *squish*, *thwack*, and *splort* is pitch-perfect and I can't help but grinning like a madman while playing. I don't know if I've ever played a FP game with melee combat that was as satisfying as V2's. 2Handers also feel great from my brief survey of using them, but they definitely seem underpowered compared to the shield builds.
The maps also, overall, have a much greater variety than V1. There are only 2 (out of 13) maps that I groan at when I see the loading screen. Chaos mobs and bosses also go a loooooooong way to breaking up the monotony and extending the game's shelf life. The chaos in particular are very well done. It would have been pretty easy for Fat Shark to just reskin Skaven as Chaos, but they actually put the work in and designed enemies with materially different strengths and weaknesses compared to the skaven. Battles against Skaven, Chaos, or Skaven/Chaos combo will all require you to vary your tactics if you want to handle them optimally.
Regarding the mechanical obfuscation going on under the hood: yeah, it's pretty obtuse, and not great, but it also in no way ruins the game. This is not a game for min-maxing your stats spread to ensure that you deal optimal damage to all enemies. It's a game designed around much more simple and straightforward kinesthenics; can you explode the Sturmvermin's head in 2 *thwacks* or less? No? You might want to lower the difficulty and gear up a bit more. Are you ending runs with full tomes, grims, and health? Yes? Probably time to kick the difficulty up a notch or do some deeds (deeds are the game's version of the bounty system from V1. Basically they're runs with between 1-4 handicaps against the player. There's a good variety of these like "no pickups will spawn", "elite enemies have 2x health and deal 2x damage", "hordes spawn with much greater frequency", etc, and while playing a deed with 1 or 2 handicaps isn't too bad, 3 or more substantially ups the challenge of a map, and sometimes you'll find a combo of even 2 that really makes you rethink your loadout and strategy).
The number one biggest problem I have with the game is the loot system. Basically: items drop with the familiar white, green, blue, orange, red progression. White items suck, Green items have one stat boost, Blue items have 2 stat boosts, Orange have 2 stat boosts and 1 passive trait, Red have 2 stat boosts and 2 passive traits. There is again a wide variety of traits. Some of them are amazing (20% less overheat on my flamethrower) to pretty useless (25% chance not to consume a potion upon use), but they can all be rerolled infinitely through the game's crafting interface until you find one you like. In addition to stat boosts and traits, each item also has a power level assigned to it. Default gear is power level 5 and max level gear is power level 300. Power level is basically the main method of progression through the difficulty levels. It affects damage done, damage taken, stagger/push arc, and... maybe some other stuff? The max power level of items received from completing missions is dependent on the difficulty; on recruit items drop up to 100, vet 200, champ 300, leg 300+ additional chance of red drops, so that you are continually encouraged to attempt higher difficulty levels. All fairly simple, right? Well here's where Fat Shark completely fuck up their progression system and artificially inflate the grind: No matter what difficulty level you've just completed, no matter how many tomes or grims you've collected, no matter how perfectly you completed the level, you will never find an item that is more than 10 power higher than your highest level item. This means that a level 1 character who, on their very first run ever, successfully completes a Champion run will get... a power level 15 (out of 300) item. It's absolutely garbage design, and completely fucking retarded. I don't know how anyone, anywhere would think this would lead to enjoyable progression. Nothing like punishing players for their own high level of skill, eh?
Admittedly this becomes less of a problem when leveling alts, as 3 out of 5 inventory slots are shared amongst all characters, so once you have power level 200 items in those 3 slots on your main, you effectively have them on all other characters as well and higher level items will drop for their 2 class exclusive slots when playing them. It doesn't ruin the game, but it does irritate the shit out of me that anyone would be stupid enough to design loot drops this way.
Anyways, if anyone wants to play, feel free to add me on Steam (same sn, just send me a pm here if your steam name is different from your 'dex sn). Mostly doing full grim/tome Champ runs with the occasional foray into Leg, but I need to level some alts too so I'd be down for vet/recruit runs.
These magazines are compiled long in advance of being published, so back when we planned our roadmap and release schedule, White Dwarf had already been informed of our plans. When our plans changed, the magizine was already ready for publication and, well, here we are today.
