Recent reviews by gotrunks712

05/03/2024 Update:
Requiring PSN now after months of release where the game functions fine without it is bonkers. Yes I know it was on the store page, but it wasn't incorporated. Word of mouth and other factors lead many to buy the game that can now likely not play it at all because they can't create a PSN account. No need to link accounts unless you have cross-progression which they confirmed isn't coming.

On top of all of that, the community manager was flaming users in discord that wanted change. Someone asked for change saying that a lot of steam users were going to leave unless they backpedal. Community Manager Spitz's response, "I thought you were refunding and leaving."

05/06/2024 Update: Sony changed their requirement to link a PSN account on PC. Changing review back to positive. Although Arrowhead's community manager shouldn't have acted they way they did, they were in a tough spot with a very popular game, a large portion of their playerbase upset, and no ability to make changes to the PSN linking policy.

05/10/2024 Wish the story was over. But days after Sony reverting the change, they still haven't reverted the story changes and have even extended Playstation game purchasing restrictions in Steam to other games. You can no longer buy Helldivers 2 in a region where PSN is not allowed, even though the requirement was dropped. Arrowhead has been working to resolve this, but Sony hasn't reverted the change yet.

Original Review:
Great game. More content added regularly and you're playing a live campaign with other players making progress in real time that is controlled by one person on the development team. Definitely some things aren't balanced, but this game is great with a friend or small group. Best of all, everything is earn-able in game even though there is premium currency you can purchase. You can easily get it in game as well.

DLC is enjoyable and adds needed fresh content to the game. With that said, there are some things to be concerned of, especially if you have multiple accounts that play.

The DLC is a one-account activation. Nothing is downloaded. It essentially triggers the DLC to be active on one account alone. If you later log in with another account, it will be as if you never purchased the DLC. This is true for consoles with multiple profiles as well. Anyone who initially bought the game and played it on multiple accounts will now have to spend $30 for each.. I can't recommend it for that reason, even if I enjoy the content.

Edit: Evidently the DLC has been flagged in the Microsoft store in a similar manner to in game currency. This means that you can purchase it hundreds of times on the same account and will have to do so for each account because it isn't flagged as an expansion or dlc content.

Is this GoTY?
Yes it is.

Why should it be?
Releasing a complete, fully established game with no pre-planned DLC or day one microtransactions then continuing to update the game with improvements based on community feedback on top of an already amazing base. On top of all of this, the game is designed with player-freedom in mind. You can save entire groups of people or choose to eliminate all of them yourself. All game developers should strive for this level of gameplay completion and polish.

We shouldn't be at the point we are today with pre-orders quickly refunded because AAA developers were too pushed for profits and on a time crunch that they couldn't deliver on promises or even properly optimize their games. All of that with multiple Expansion Pass upgrades and Day 1 DLC or integrated cash shop.

Deliver a great game, content complete and optimized, then we can talk.

I haven't seen the same performance issues as many people outside of some screen tearing, which I also saw even more of in ASE. Overall a much prettier version of the game that needs some QoL updates and could use some more optimization. But I've been able to play for over an hour with no crashes and stable 60 FPS.

Edit June 17, 2023: Today's update added RNG gacha mechanics with a shiny new premium currency. All those gems you've gathered from events and playing the game? Useless. Best end-game bonuses, locked behind a 0.28% chance with 1 free chance per week. Good luck. Not recommending this anymore.

Is this something worth spending on. No. Some quick numbers based off of the price for a 400 Green Gem pack. 4 pulls for $5.99 gives you a 1.1% probability. How many pulls for 90%? At 820 pulls you hit 90% probability of getting Doot. That is $1,227.95. This doesn't account for higher odds as I can't see what that is in-game without spending money. At this point I'm not giving the developer a dime.


Original Review
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Have to add my review after all of the controversy. The game is great. Very F2P friendly and you can progress without really being actively involved. A very fun idle game that you can continue playing as it has regular updates and a lot of deep systems to dive into.

What happened with the controversy:
Dev admittedly made a mistake that allowed you to convert once currency into the same currency *1.2 or so. This lead to some people abusing that and progressing exponentially in a late-game area of the game. I hadn't even logged in before it was fixed, but multiple users repeatedly clicked the trade to gain infinite amounts of currency. Some did it without fully realizing.

Anyone who used the bug trade was "reset" with w5 Sailing progress back to a static point (no rollback). Sure that isn't ideal and there are possibly better ways to handle the reset, but there's a lot of systems that interact at play with one another and some people clicked hundreds of times. All of this content is easily re-obtainable just playing the game again over time.

The dev did his best, but people who abused and were punished are now review bombing or flaming the dev over his decisions. One person works on this game and a lot of people play it for free..

Fun game, especially if you like others in the series. In game-tech trees and removal of the PTW commanders. The new campaign has a lot of options than just a linear mission layout, which is nice.

Good. Game.


Only had one issue so far where I glitched under the floor at a door before it had fully loaded the other side. Otherwise very smooth and enjoyable gameplay with a ton of content to 100%. ~25 hours in and still have more story and a lot of open world content to complete.

Fun game, but the performance is abysmal. Computer resources aren't even being used and any cinematic takes 45+ seconds to load and loads with severe stuttering causing you to miss the first 20 seconds. Gameplay for me is smooth at least and enjoyable, but I'm well above minimum requirements and the game doesn't even use them. Needs a performance patch ASAP.

EDIT: Performance is much better after moving the game to an SSD. Otherwise the game runs incredibly poor.

Disney Animal Crossing.

Great Game. Released 6 years ago and is still getting FREE content patches today.