I'm editing my review as I promised, points no longer stand will be strike through and newly added parts will be added with "Edit:" at the beggining of them.

You know what, I'll write a decent negative review NOT riding the whole PSN drama.

I love the game. I truly do. It's a fun game especially with friends. You'll have some memorable times, laugh and take some clips or some screenshots. However, that's it.

Don't think that this game is a grindable looter shooter MMORPG or w/e. It is like League of Legends or DotA. You'll load into a same type of mission (the one you selected) and it will be the same goal everytime. However, what happens from the start until the extraction changes -like LoL or DotA (In those both MOBAs the goal is the destroy enemy main building but what changes is what happens until that goal is reached). So treat the game like that or you'll be burned out pretty soon.

So this is where my negative review starts: From the start of the mission until the extraction you, as a player, don't know what is intended and what is not. There are lots of bugs in the game. I'm not talking about Terminids. And these bugs are not game breaking but fun breaking. Stalkers creeping towards you while you are mag dumping on them just to hit you once and throw you like 50m away into an enemy patrol which calls enemy reinforcements, is this intended? Because it's not fun. Getting ragdolled to a random rocket just to get hit by another random rocket to fly away on top of other enemies is not fun. Rocket devestators spamming rockets non stop is not fun. And these are bugs which are not acknowledged by developers but fixed if community cries a lot about it. Patrols spawning non stop to your location, which people though was a feature, was indeed a bug. How weapons work, how stratagems work, how objectives work, how enemies work, how missions work, how systems work are all buggy. They change constantly and you don't know which is the "fixed" version. Game itself feels like alpha version. Dealing DoT damage only works for the host, like how??? This game is live service...

Edit: Most of these "bugs" are fixed. Remaining ones are not as frustrating as before but some of them are still there. However I need to add this to the "Gameplay" title: After enough hours, game starts to feel repetative. Mind you I have a few hundred hours. So that's a long time to enjoy it.

Crashes and bugs everywhere. If you follow HD2 discord, you can see some very specific crashes being fixed. "Fixed crash that could occur if too many civilians spawn." The civilians are spawned in "extract missions" from 3 different places by the players, in waves of 3. So at the same time there can be 9 civilians. However, sometimes civilians stuck somewhere due to bad pathing coded and they don't go where they should thus allowing lots of civilians be alive on the map. "Fixed crash which could occur when throwing back a grenade while wielding a heat-based weapon." Like how does this work? There are lots of crashes. Everything can crash your game if you are not careful.

Edit: Performance is way better than before. It's a tribute to how the game released unfinished. With enough patches and hotfixes, game is running way better right now. Still I believe there is a memory leak issue after few hours, but nothing too major anymore.

The game has an awesome community with the worst Community Managers I've seen. CMs frequently attack playerbase if they are not on the same page. Then apologize, then do similar things again. Their wording skills are subpar with kindergardeners. They managed to turn player-base against each other in the events of Malevelon Creek and Destroying Automaton Major Order. They released statistics and told players that they failed the major order because there are too many people disregarding it and stubbornly playing on the planet called Malevelon Creek -which was not the MO. Thus started witch hunts in player base for a week where Malevelon Creek players getting team killed, etc. While saying nothing about the Terminid players who also ignored the MO. They are also bad at wording the patch notes. An example: "Patrol spawning has been increased when there are fewer than 4 players. The fewer the players the bigger the change. For 4 player missions there will be no change compared to before.The biggest noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties." This was the wording with patrol "fix" released. Solo or duo players got shocked due to missions being already hard for having lot player in a team, now they had to encounter more patrols too? After a big backlash on Discord, they added this info: "We unintendedly had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns so they didn't spawn as often as they should have when less than 4 players. The intention is that 1 player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to 4 players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th". CMs are not qualified to manage this big of a community. And with the PSN drama, you can learn more on Twitter.

Community is not as big as before but still enough to enjoy the game. More casuals though. I miss the time when people talk on mic, now people don't talk at all in matchmaking lobbies. CM dramas are handled internally as far as I understand, so there are no big dramas too. However just to mention: I'm spending less time on official discord, so take this with a grain of salt. There are still trolls but which game doesn't have them?

Galactic War is a joke. What you do as players not matter. You pushed a front you shouldn't? Devs tweak some numbers and boom. All your progress is now lost and lore-wise "the enemies brought a hidden force they built up to push through our defences". For a week people trying to push through the Terminid front, however always either the decay rate of the liberation campaign of that planet is increased, so the players can't take it. Or the planet that connects the frontline to the backline gets attacked and losing that planet results in losing the frontlines anyway. What you do is meaningless in the grand scheme. If devs want you to win, they tweak the decay rates, and you win. There is a recorded instance where a planet's liberation jumped from 70% to 100% without much players in it. If devs don't want you to win, they tweak the decay rates, and you lose.

Edit: Galactic War is STILL a joke. Its an illusion, and a bad one. Major Orders are still bad. "Kill 1m bugs", "defend x planet". Storytelling is at best toddler level. What's happening in the grand scheme of things are not logical at all. So don't think about it much, it's there to add flavor, that's all.

I have 268h on this game, I even wrote a guide for this game. However developers really don't fix the game to a released standart, the community can't get enough of the drama, CMs are childish, and you can't show your concerns or talk anything against the game in the Discord to find a solution or fix because community is ready for a drama and discrimination too. And I'm tired of it.

I'm sorry if I didn't explain how everything works in detail but I'm just done at this point.
I won't change this review, however, if the game itself changes and the things I wrote gets fixed, I'll delete this review / edit it to "can recommend" and change it to a thumbs up.

Edit: All in all, if you play casually with friends, you'll have a fun time. If you tryhard and grind yourself to death, you'll find out about to problems easily. So just focus on your fun rather than the game design.

I'm editing my review as I promised, points no longer stand will be strike through and newly added parts will be added with "Edit:" at the beggining of them. [strike] You know what, I'll write a decent negative review NOT riding the whole PSN drama. I love the game. I truly do. It's a fun game especially with friends. You'll have some memorable times, laugh and take some clips or some screenshots. However, that's it. [/strike] [h3] Gameplay [/h3] Don't think that this game is a grindable looter shooter MMORPG or w/e. It is like League of Legends or DotA. You'll load into a same type of mission (the one you selected) and it will be the same goal everytime. However, what happens from the start until the extraction changes -like LoL or DotA (In those both MOBAs the goal is the destroy enemy main building but what changes is what happens until that goal is reached). So treat the game like that or you'll be burned out pretty soon. [strike] So this is where my negative review starts: [/strike] From the start of the mission until the extraction you, as a player, don't know what is intended and what is not. There are lots of bugs in the game. I'm not talking about Terminids. And these bugs are not game breaking but fun breaking. Stalkers creeping towards you while you are mag dumping on them just to hit you once and throw you like 50m away into an enemy patrol which calls enemy reinforcements, is this intended? Because it's not fun. Getting ragdolled to a random rocket just to get hit by another random rocket to fly away on top of other enemies is not fun. Rocket devestators spamming rockets non stop is not fun. And these are bugs which are not acknowledged by developers but fixed if community cries a lot about it. Patrols spawning non stop to your location, which people though was a feature, was indeed a bug. How weapons work, how stratagems work, how objectives work, how enemies work, how missions work, how systems work are all buggy. They change constantly and you don't know which is the "fixed" version. Game itself feels like alpha version. Dealing DoT damage only works for the host, like how??? This game is live service... Edit: Most of these "bugs" are fixed. Remaining ones are not as frustrating as before but some of them are still there. However I need to add this to the "Gameplay" title: After enough hours, game starts to feel repetative. Mind you I have a few hundred hours. So that's a long time to enjoy it. [h3] Performance [/h3] [strike] Crashes and bugs everywhere. If you follow HD2 discord, you can see some very specific crashes being fixed. "Fixed crash that could occur if too many civilians spawn." The civilians are spawned in "extract missions" from 3 different places by the players, in waves of 3. So at the same time there can be 9 civilians. However, sometimes civilians stuck somewhere due to bad pathing coded and they don't go where they should thus allowing lots of civilians be alive on the map. "Fixed crash which could occur when throwing back a grenade while wielding a heat-based weapon." Like how does this work? There are lots of crashes. Everything can crash your game if you are not careful. [/strike] Edit: Performance is way better than before. It's a tribute to how the game released unfinished. With enough patches and hotfixes, game is running way better right now. Still I believe there is a memory leak issue after few hours, but nothing too major anymore. [h3] Community and Meta War [/h3] [strike] The game has an awesome community with the worst Community Managers I've seen. CMs frequently attack playerbase if they are not on the same page. Then apologize, then do similar things again. Their wording skills are subpar with kindergardeners. They managed to turn player-base against each other in the events of Malevelon Creek and Destroying Automaton Major Order. They released statistics and told players that they failed the major order because there are too many people disregarding it and stubbornly playing on the planet called Malevelon Creek -which was not the MO. Thus started witch hunts in player base for a week where Malevelon Creek players getting team killed, etc. While saying nothing about the Terminid players who also ignored the MO. They are also bad at wording the patch notes. An example: "Patrol spawning has been increased when there are fewer than 4 players. The fewer the players the bigger the change. For 4 player missions there will be no change compared to before.The biggest noticeable change will be for solo players at higher difficulties." This was the wording with patrol "fix" released. Solo or duo players got shocked due to missions being already hard for having lot player in a team, now they had to encounter more patrols too? After a big backlash on Discord, they added this info: "We unintendedly had non-linear scaling of the patrol spawns so they didn't spawn as often as they should have when less than 4 players. The intention is that 1 player has 1/4th of the patrols compared to 4 players, but it used to be that they had 1/6th". CMs are not qualified to manage this big of a community. And with the PSN drama, you can learn more on Twitter. [/strike] Community is not as big as before but still enough to enjoy the game. More casuals though. I miss the time when people talk on mic, now people don't talk at all in matchmaking lobbies. CM dramas are handled internally as far as I understand, so there are no big dramas too. However just to mention: I'm spending less time on official discord, so take this with a grain of salt. There are still trolls but which game doesn't have them? Galactic War is a joke. What you do as players not matter. You pushed a front you shouldn't? Devs tweak some numbers and boom. All your progress is now lost and lore-wise "the enemies brought a hidden force they built up to push through our defences". For a week people trying to push through the Terminid front, however always either the decay rate of the liberation campaign of that planet is increased, so the players can't take it. Or the planet that connects the frontline to the backline gets attacked and losing that planet results in losing the frontlines anyway. What you do is meaningless in the grand scheme. If devs want you to win, they tweak the decay rates, and you win. There is a recorded instance where a planet's liberation jumped from 70% to 100% without much players in it. If devs don't want you to win, they tweak the decay rates, and you lose. Edit: Galactic War is STILL a joke. Its an illusion, and a bad one. Major Orders are still bad. "Kill 1m bugs", "defend x planet". Storytelling is at best toddler level. What's happening in the grand scheme of things are not logical at all. So don't think about it much, it's there to add flavor, that's all. [strike] I have 268h on this game, I even wrote a guide for this game. However developers really don't fix the game to a released standart, the community can't get enough of the drama, CMs are childish, and you can't show your concerns or talk anything against the game in the Discord to find a solution or fix because community is ready for a drama and discrimination too. And I'm tired of it. [/strike] [strike] I'm sorry if I didn't explain how everything works in detail but I'm just done at this point. I won't change this review, however, if the game itself changes and the things I wrote gets fixed, I'll delete this review / edit it to "can recommend" and change it to a thumbs up. [/strike] Edit: All in all, if you play casually with friends, you'll have a fun time. If you tryhard and grind yourself to death, you'll find out about to problems easily. So just focus on your fun rather than the game design.