Pros:
Engaging combat and a high skill curve
Great Art-Style
I like the new weekly events, it makes the gameplay more interesting
No complaints with loot as I've had over 30 reds in around 300 hours (Playing Legend helps)
5 Characters and 3 careers gives 15 different play-styles

Cons:
Textures aren't extremely detailed
While Frames/Second is decently good, the fluctuations between the minimum and maximum is noticeably large
No dedicated servers yet
I feel that it needs more DLCs/content to remain interesting

Overall, my experience with the game has been relatively positive, whether it's as a solo player or playing with friends. I hope that FatShark will continue to support the game

This is a pre-launch review of the game. I have over 700 hours in Vermintide 2 and played in both closed betas (10 hours) and the pre-launch beta for Darktide (60 hours). I have played mainly Veteran Sharpshooter and Zealot Preacher.

Environment:
The environments are well-designed and depict the Warhammer 40k setting quite faithfully. Environmental effects are quite intentional and set the mood pretty well. That being said, the entirety of the game is set in a hive city which limits the variety of biomes that Fatshark can make use of. Granted, Fatshark has attempted to vary the environments in every mission, by drastically changing the backdrop and details available in the background, although the immediate playable areas can get a bit same-y. TLDR: Beautiful, given the setting limitation.

Sound design:
the sound design is great -thematic and impactful. There isn't really that much more to say.

Characters:
I am slightly disappointed that the game launches with only 4 classes. The classes are more flexible than those found in Vermintide 2 and different playstyles can be adopted based on the feats and weapons selected.

Combat:
Melee combat is a staple of Fatshark games and the Tide series, and they did not reinvent the wheel for Darktide. Melee strikes feel impactful and weapons do have enough variety to make it interesting. While Vermintide has been described as a hack and slash (I feel that this term has a negative connotation), i do feel that this is only relevant in the lower difficulties where spamming left click does the job. Learning weapon attack combinations and patterns against different enemies is absolutely essential in the higher difficulties. Melee is thus far from mindless if you are invested into playing the harder difficulties.

Ranged combat is where the game deviates slightly from its predecessor. There is quite a wide variety of weapons available, although I do feel that some sub-variants of the same weapon do not need to exist (autoguns anyone?). Weapons feel meaty and punchy, from the humble lasgun to the earth shattering bolter. Gunplay and weapon feedback also feels great and the large ammo pool incentivises ranged combat regardless of character class.

The intention of the game design is hybrid combat, but the sentiment shared by many players is that the game is still melee heavy. Of course, one could argue that good positioning allows ranged-only combat to be viable, but 'get good' is hardly a good solution to this. Few ranged weapons deal good damage against hordes, and those that do are exceptionally good at it (E.g. Flamer, Accatran pattern Lasgun). Most ranged weapons penetrate one target, with a few penetrating two to three. Those that are seemingly good at horde clear, like the bolter is balanced by the small magazine size.

Thematically, the 40k universe, which I am a fan of, gives some problems to the balancing of weapons. For example, a bolter is supposed to be a death machine that fires rocket propelled gigantic armor piercing rounds that detonate after penetrating the target. A power sword is supposed to slice through armor like wet tissue. In the lore, these weapons outclass most hand held weapons by a fair bit. In the game, this is somewhat reflected, which is both good and bad. The good side is that the weapons feel amazing and feel like an actual reward after you spent hours levelling your character. The downside is that when you hop into higher difficulty missions, these weapons are mostly what you see. 90% of Veteran Sharpshooters run a bolter + power sword combination. There was some attempt to balance these weapons by increasing the draw time and reload speed as well as adding special attack functions (to power on the power sword), but experienced players like myself are hardly affected by this and these weapons are borderline overpowered. An alternate perspective is that the other weapons need a buff.

Levelling:
Levelling up your character is a bit miserable (for sharpshooter). The game feels slow in the earlier levels to allow new players to the series to get used to the mechanics. How fast you level up is contingent on whether you can complete the missions. Difficulties are unlocked rather quickly (too quickly in my opinion), which made the early days of the pre-launch beta insufferable. Entering a game on Malice difficulty and seeing 3 teammates who are level 5 is a great way to waste 10 minutes of your life, as you will inevitably watch all 3 of them go down within the first 3 engagements. This made it unlikely for players to solo carry the difficulty that they should be able to play comfortably. My recommendation is to impose harsher requirements for higher difficulties.

On the topic of actual levelling, the feats are generally well-designed and do add depth to the playstyle of each class. Veteran Sharpshooters feats in particular, is very synergistic and actually play well into one another.

Overall:
The game is undeniably fun and given how Fatshark always support their games, it will get better. I will look to the launch day tomorrow to see how the game fares and am fairly optimistic that it will improve,