Recent reviews by Sepyt

TL;DR: The core game is very fun. It doesn't run well and is plagued by crashes. The game isn't feature complete at "launch". I will be continuing to play and enjoy the game, but I don't recommend buying it if you don't know what you're getting into. It's disappointing the game was rushed to release instead of going into early access.

The Good:
First things first: The gameplay is excellent and it's a very fun game at its core. If you like Vermintide 1/2 or Deep Rock Galactic, you'll probably like this. The gunplay is pretty solid and there's nothing quite like tossing around a horde as an Ogryn.

There's a good variety of specials and elites fulfilling different roles and requiring different tactics to dispatch them. The toughness system is a good replacement for temporary health. It's had some bugs and needs some tweaks, but they're on the right track. There's a few mid-mission minibosses that can appear. They each have very different models, attack patterns, and movements.

The Bad:
Unfortunately even with previous experience from Verm 1&2, delays, and "betas", the game doesn't have a lot beyond its core. Don't let the words "beta" and "launch" or being on version 1.x fool you. Remember, a beta is supposed to be feature complete, and Darktide certainly isn't.

I won't go into every missing feature or promise, but there are many. Crafting is a big one. There's 1/4 crafting options available at launch, with the other three saying "Open Soon!". Couldn't implement the crafting system, a core mechanic, for launch, but the cosmetic cash shop most definitely made the cut.

70 weapons were promised at launch, and they couldn't hit that even with many of them not being unique. A large number of the "different" weapons simply have a model change or a slight difference in stats or fire rate. Having those slight differences is fine, but those are minor variants, not unique weapons.

Less maps than were promised are available. Same slant as the weapons, they reuse maps with different routes and objectives. That's a smart move, but they aren't unique maps.

The Ugly:
Performance. My system includes a 3950X, 3090 Ti, and 32 GB of RAM, no a weak system. I am running at 3440x1440, so about midway between 1440p and 4k. I can hold about 90 fps in the hub, which isn't bad. In game I top out at maybe 70 fps and the game frequently stutters and dives below 40 fps, with occasional dips below 30 fps. The game looks pretty good, but it should not be running this poorly on my hardware.

I've turned off, lowered, and tried every combination of settings both in game and in the user_settings.config file. I've used DDU and reinstalled GPU drivers. You name it, I've tried it. Practically zero difference in performance with any settings change, except a small fps reduction with ray tracing on. DLSS and FSR provide zero performance increase, just make the game blurrier depending on which level you select.

Regardless, I have to cap the game at 60 fps to reduce crashing. It doesn't eliminate it, but it's definitely less.

Crashing. I've lost count of the number of times the game has crashed. It's improved, but the game still crashes an unacceptable amount. The only mitigation I've found to actually work is limiting the framerate to 60, but it does still crash. Not very fun spending half an hour grinding through a mission, only to crash near the end and not be able to load back in to the game quick enough to get your rewards.

Time wasting or "driving engagement"? The only plausible explanation I can think of for the following decisions are to force people to spend more time in the game in hopes they'll spend money on MTX.

Very limited map, difficulty, mission choices - You can't pick, you get 1-3 options for each difficulty level that cycle. Hope you don't need to do a specific mission type or map for your weekly contracts. Just let us queue for what we want or need.

Limited rotating shop - Seems fine at first, starts sucking around level 10 as you unlock more weapon types. The shop only resets once per hour. Once you're higher level half the items are automatically not worth buying. Of the remainder, you have to hope the weapon type you want shows up and has decent stats and blessings/boons. If it doesn't, then too bad. You can't craft anything either since crafting is only 1/4 implemented, you can only upgrade weapons you have. You don't get a grey tier given to you when you unlock a weapon type, so if you're unlucky you might be waiting awhile to even try it.

Weekly contracts - These are pretty solid timesink to get done. That's assuming it's actually working and tracking your progress. Some require you to complete secondary objectives on specific maps. You have to hope the right map comes up, it actually has a secondary objective (sometimes they don't), and it's during a time you're playing. These also aren't shared between characters. Good luck completing 15 missions on 4 different characters in a week. These should be reduced in requirements for some of the more difficult one, or shared across your account.

Currency - Why isn't this shared? It would help mitigate the weekly contract timesink if currency was shared. Instead you have to grind basic money, currency from weekly contracts, and crafting materials on every class/character.

The end, finally:
The game has great bones. It's satisfying and fun to play when you're in a mission. The performance, crashing, and out of mission things are what's dragging the it down. Aside from the questionable design choices listed just above, most of these things are fixable given time. However, that time should NOT be after launch. It is ridiculous that the game launched in this state. The game needed more time in development or an early access period. It didn't need this moneygrab of a "launch" that's early access in all but name.

I've been playing Fatshark games for some years now. I knew what I was getting myself into and I'm fine with that. What isn't acceptable is forcing an incomplete game through launch and advertising it as a complete game. 40k has a big fanbase that doesn't necessarily overlap with people who played Vermintide. There's going to be a lot of people buying this game expecting a polished and complete product, and they aren't going to receive that.

I hope I can flip my review to "recommend" someday. Until the game receives some serious improvements in a variety of areas, I cannot recommend an early access game masquerading as a complete and released game.

Great game, you should buy it.

I'll start out by saying the game isn't perfect, but I find it a lot of fun. It seems a good chunk of the negative reviews are people who bought the game, played for less than an hour, and refunded. Which is fine. But the game doesn't try to hide what it is. A lot of the gripes are things that aren't advertised as existing. Like a story.

The AI isn't amazing and they mostly just charge you, but it does actually get harder later in the game when you get large swarms and more advanced corrupted(?) enemies. The game doesn't have hard single enemies (other than a few), but it uses numbers against you. Not the most elegant aproach, but I think it works fine for this game. Blasting mobs of enemies with a meteor is fun.

My only real complaint is the looting system. Once you get past the 2nd chapter or so it's just a pain to go search through every house. Once I got decent gear I started blowing up houses for essence and just buying better stuff if I found it.

Now for good parts. Blowing things up: tons of fun. The game actually runs quite well and I don't see the complaints with graphics. It looks better than Skyrim that's still being shoveled out and it's from an Indie dev. The only time I would get significant frame drops was using a multi metor on a giant building. Which is fair, lots of physics and it's worth it.

The spell system is a lot of fun. Having to choose which, if any, augments to use and balancing your mana with how many enemies are around you is challenging and fun. I found myself having to sacrifice precious health to be able to cast spells later in the game.

The game isn't perfect, but I think it's easily worth $20 and promised continued support. Don't buy it if you want a perfectly functioning AAA game. Don't buy it if you want a game with a story. It isn't and it doesn't advertise itself as. If you want a semi-mindless destruction game with fun physics and awesome spell casting then this game is for you.