Recent reviews by illujin

Darktide is a game that I find myself continually going back to because of how fun it is. What holds the game back from me wanting to leave a positive review is the lack of player agency and how much the game disrespects your time.

There are currently two ways of obtaining gear for your character:

1. Purchasing it in one of the two in-game shops
2. As an Emperor's Reward at the end of a mission

One of the shops rotates every hour with random weapons and accessories of the lowest three rarities. The other shop rotates once per day with random weapons and accessories of the highest two rarities. The issue with the shops is that not every weapon type is available to purchase at any time. If you want a specific weapon, you're at the mercy of RNG for it to show up in one of the shops after it refreshes. It will take even longer if you're looking for a weapon with specific stats or specific perk/blessing.

Crafting hasn't been fully implemented in the game. The fact that we can't craft our own base weapons (and there does not seem to be any plans to ever implement this) really irks me because you will always be at the mercy of the RNG shop to get the weapons you want unless you get lucky with an Emperor's Gift that will randomly show up at the end of a mission. There isn't even a way to determine when a gift will appear. This may be fine when you're still leveling up your class because you're still trying out which weapons suit your playstyle best, but once you hit max level and know how you want to play, it is beyond frustrating.

What makes it even worse is that resources are not shared between characters. I suppose this makes sense from a lore standpoint, your characters probably wouldn't be pooling their resources together aboard the Mourningstar, but it's really inconvenient from a gameplay perspective. For example, I like playing as the Psyker and feel like the gear I currently have allows me to play the way I want at higher difficulties without feeling like a hindrance to the rest of my team. The gear I have isn't perfect by any means, but it feels good enough for what I want to do. I don't feel that way when playing as my Ogryn or Zealot, but if I want to get better gear for those classes, then I'll have to continue playing as those classes using weapons that don't fit my preferred playstyle but will have to do because it's the best that I have. It would be nice if I could continue playing as Psyker to play higher difficulties to get more Ordo Dockets and crafting mats that could be used to gear up my other classes if the RNG shop ever refreshes in my favor, but that is not the case.

Each character you create also gets weekly missions that unlock once you reach a certain rank. Weekly missions give a special currency that can be used in the other store that resets daily with higher rarity gear. This doesn't sound so bad until you see that some of these weekly quests take an incredible amount of time to complete on just a single character. For example, there is weekly mission to complete 15 missions in a week. Not too bad, maybe about an hour per day to get it done, but there is another variant of that mission that makes you complete 25. What if you roll that mission on all of your characters? The game basically becomes a second full time job just to get it done on each character. The only saving grace of this system is that the base stats for the gear in the shop are normally so bad that you wouldn't want to buy anything anyway. I've stopped caring about completing my weeklies long ago.

The players that are just as frustrated with the current system as I am aren't asking for it to be easy to obtain perfect gear. We just want it to be easier to obtain weapons that we want and be able to fine tune them to better fit our playstyles. End game should be about chasing perfect rolls, but right now end game is just logging in every hour to check the shop. They seem to care more about allowing you to make your character look how you want with paid cosmetics than they do about allowing you to actually be able to play the way you want to.

Maybe once all of the issues are fixed, I'll go back and change this into a positive review. Until then, I'll likely take a break from playing now that I've got every class to level 30.

Bad optimization. Also, what's with the price after early access? Pretty ridiculous.

This game feels lifeless. When I first started the game, I joined a multiplayer session with random people doing Chapter 1. I had no idea what was going on. No clue about where I was or why I was there. I was following the other players around who somehow knew what to do and where to go. I suppose walking around and killing stuff was pretty fun, but what bothered me was when I decided to play the campaign and realized that the game gives you markers. There are cutscenes and someone actually talks to you as you complete objectives. Had there been these markers and audio cues during my multiplayer session, I might have enjoyed it more.

I really wanted to like this game. However, performance and connection issues really put me off from wanting to play it. I can run other games with more demanding system requirements with 60+ FPS, but this game barely keeps up at 60 FPS and dips down to as low as 15 FPS depending on how many enemies are around. I could potentially enjoy the game solo, but the AI seems pretty clunky. The controls feel a bit clunky as well. I found myself hitting a key multiple times before anything actually happened with it. Loading screens are a pain and constantly freeze up. I've had numerous occassions where the game would freeze once the screen said "Press [insert melee attack key here] to continue" but nothing would happen when I pressed that key. I could hear noises, but it wasn't until I alt+tabbed out of the game and back in it that anything actually refreshed.

Moving on to connection issues, I kept getting disconnected in the middle of every game I tried to play. It was frustrating to say the least. I wish that the game would at least attempt to rejoin once the connection is lost, but it just kicks you off to the multiplayer lobby. Each time I couldn't help but feel as though I wasted my time.

The visuals and setting for this game are actually very good. The gameplay was pretty fun as well, but as previously mentioned, the performance issues and overall clunkiness really detract from the good qualities the game has to offer. If the performance issues are somehow fixed and the single player experience is brought to multiplayer as well, I'd probably actually recommend this game to other people. Until then though, I can't recommend it to anyone in it's current state.

I'll likely end up refunding this game, but I'll hold off a bit and wait to see what my friends think of it first before doing so.

Gorgeous looking game and tons of fun.

This is the best co-op game I have played in a long time. If you're a fan of Left 4 Dead, you'll probably like this game. It's pretty much L4D, but with a heavier emphasis on melee as opposed to ranged weapons. The focus on melee combat as opposed to ranged can be a bit tough since you actually have to manage your ammo (unless you're a Bright Mage, then you manage your heat) and there are other mechanics not present in L4D. You can guard, push enemies away, and dodge. There is also a charged melee attack you can use and vary depending on the weapon type. Some charged attacks are very effective in dealing with armored enemies while others are very useful in pushing back hordes of enemies. Mastering these mechanics are essential in doing well at higher difficulties.


There are currently five different heroes with their own strengths and weaknesses as well as varied playstyles depending on the weapons you equip. There is a loot system in which there is a dice roll at the end of each mission to determine which piece of equipment you'll obtain. In each level, there are 3 tomes and 2 grimoires hidden somewhere on the map (the locations of these items never change). Each tome adds another die while the grimoires add a guaranteed success die. Though, tomes take up a healing slot (you can drop the tome and pick it back up to heal) while grimoires take up a potion slot (you cannot drop the grimoire to pick up a potion, doing so makes you lose the grimoire) and reduce the party's maximum life by 25% per grimoire. There will be times where you'll know where both grimoires are, but may elect to not pick one or both up due to how difficult the level is. The loot system isn't perfect though since items you roll at the end of each mission is random and might not even be relevant for the hero you are currently playing. However, personally I can look past those flaws since the game itself is very fun, especially with friends.

Don't take this game lightly. This game is difficult, especially when playing with random people since you are likely to have little to no coordination. Coordination with your team is very important if you want to successfully finish a mission. One thing to note is that VOIP communication is off by default so you may want to turn that on if you want to communicate with your team better. Sticking together as a group is key since you need to watch each other's back. You know how in L4D2, sometimes you have situations where there is a spitter, smoker, and hunter about all at the same time? This game does that too, but to a higher degree in that multiple of the same type of special rat can spawn at the same time. On difficulties higher than "Hard", there is friendly fire for ranged weapons. For those starting out, I would recommend starting off on easy or normal just to get a feel for the game. Understanding the mechanics and using them well are key in succeeding in "Hard" and higher difficulties. There is nothing wrong with playing on "Easy" in order to figure out and master the game's mechanics, memorize the locations of all the tomes and grimoires, and know where the good chokepoint areas are for hordes. In fact, it's encouraged to do so because wiping at any point in a mission causes you to fail entirely, losing all progress, and forcing you to start over from the very beginning should you opt to try again.

This game is a ton of fun. This is the first D&D game I've ever played and the combat is similar to that of Growlanser if you've ever played any of those games. I've played for a few hours and feel that I've only scratched the surface. There is so much to do in this game with a lot of areas to explore and quests to undertake. I'm sure I'll be busy with this game for quite a while.