Recent reviews by scourge excoriator

PRO
+ 4-man co-op magic and melee action
+ 5 characters, 3 jobs for each
+ The struggle on Legend is why I love to play it
+ Incredible character, VO, and setting details
+ 32 melee weapons & 22 ranged weapons, though restricted to specific characters
+ Updated by a team of devoted developers (Fatshark)
+ Player hub is a personal castle & its grounds; feels good to walk around and explore; training dummies
+ Very replayable, thanks to the game director ensuring that you don't get bored

CON
- Glitchy map spots continue to pop up from time to time, random disconnects happen
- Learning curve for weapons begins with figuring out which animations you want and which you don't, based on timing
- Really small chance of receiving hats from loot boxes (but they look pretty amazing when you get one)
- Sometimes, the game just ♥♥♥♥♥ on your team and there is nothing you can do about it
- Needs more maps and praise-worthy DLC

Review
I love both this game and its forerunner. The hack 'n' slash action is very fun in the grimdark fantasy world the game presents (takes place during the End Times of the Warhammer world) thanks to the variety of weapons you can use for each character and the introduction of jobs in this edition. The world feels much larger compared to the original Vermintide, as do the hordes of Skaven and Chaos warriors. The inclusion of multiple daylight maps in this version helps add a bit of visual appeal to it for me as well. The player hub has grown from the humble Red Moon Inn to a castle called Taal's Horn Keep; this is the place players meet before going out adventuring, or return to for crafting and leveling up. The castle continues to develop with recent game patch updates.

The learning curve I listed in the CON section refers to how each weapon has default swing animations. The game doesn't explicitly tell you that you can cancel your next swing animation by using block; this is a vital lesson to learn in order to improve your game. For example, if you were trying to use the first swing animation on a weapon because it struck in a way you liked, but you did not like the swings that followed, you can use block to reset the swing pattern. That aside, it's pretty fun to use your weapon of choice in a variety of ways to fit your needs of the moment once you figure the timing out.

The game director controls the enemies you will face, when they spawn, and how often they occur. I've no idea how it actually works, but the variety of stuff it throws at players taught me to always check my back, my team mate's backs, and to watch where I stand. Sometimes BS spawns happen that wind up causing team wipes though, this is what I meant by when the game ♥♥♥♥♥ on you. To be fair, the devs are continuing to tune the engine with patches and updates. To be fair, there are also times in the game where you get the feeling that the game decided the party should die immediately; silent patrols spawning in front of players with no chance of evasion, for example.

Overall, the game has a richness to it that stems from the level of detail invested into each character and how the characters dialogue with each other. The devs have added more dialogue since launch, and it's fun to catch new blurbs during the game. My favorite character continues to be Sienna Fuegonasus, the Wizard, but I've found that taking different jobs triggers different dialogues between characters, which is a nice touch. For example, when playing as the control class, her lines seem to be more in control than when playing as the tank, when she seems to be out of control. The other characters are all great to play as well, and I've played them all.

The major difference for me between this game and its predecessor concerns the quality of the DLC issued thus far. The original Vermintide's DLCs were astondingly good, and this game's DLC is depressingly bad (so far): to the point that I've been in pugs where all agreed to simply jump off a convient cliff in order to reroll the map rather than to play that particular map for various reasons. I am looking forwards to V2's next DLC impressing me as much as V1's did.

Straight to it: the save function is quirkly designed and unexpected. The gameplay itself is rather clunky, too. I've no interest in playing a RPG that doesn't allow me to save my progress whenever I want, or that has checkpoint saves so far apart that it literally would take hours to reach each one if you chose to opt for sidequests. For that matter, I've little time to play anything built on the Source engine. It's decrepit; the graphics feel like late '90's, and player interactions with the environment feel decidedly antiquated. Finally, why is the game so dark? It's really freaking dark! In the same vein as Doom 3.

TL;DR: Bad save system by design and old engine leaves this one for the hardcore nerds who have LOTS of time to blow off.

I grew to love this game. The gameplay, to be precise. I couldn't really care less about the spoiled white boy protagonist aside from the fact that he's me in the game, so the story sort of... got in the way, at times. Held me back from gaining skills due to encounter-locks versus XP lock outs, that sort of thing. It's the exploration of Far Cry 3 that really appealed to me: the exploration of two beautiful islands with lots of violent potential. I went totally Indiana Jones in this game and loved it.

The variety of enemy takedowns possible with the use of stealth and position appealled to me. They feel fluid, gritty, intense. The game features some kill-challenges that require you to take out the target with a knife among a bunch of bodyguards, which only helped encourage getting more proficient with the takedown system. The reward for successful takedowns was many times more experience than a simple gunshot frag.

The vehicles are all fun to use, the more off-road, the more scenic the game becomes. I rode a jetski through a mangrove river, a buggy from the top of a mountain ridge down to the beach, and would off-road Jeeps just for the experience of it. There is also a wingsuit in the second-half of the story that allows gliding and parachuting. That was awesome!

The downside of the game really isn't anything major, but a variety of minor niggling things. They reoccur frequently but are easy to dismiss.
*I play using a keyboard and mouse, but the game constrained my assignable hotkey choices to just two number keys, 7 and 8. This meant breaking up gameplay, usually when under fire, to access the menu to get to items that could have easily been assignable using other keys. That disrupted many instances after long periods of seamless gameplay.
*I'm unsure why the game required me to be standing directly on top of and looking at the many useable items in order to interface with them, but that plus having to hold the use key down was annoying.
*Such beautiful island design. I really liked the mountain cliffs! I wanted to scale them free-hand, but sadly could not. Many times an ascent did look like it was possible, and perhaps half of it was, before hitting a wall... the only way up is the way that the developer gave you, most of the time. Just follow the continuous grassy patches, and you can ascend.
*At times I had completely no idea how to spend money, and my limited inventory was full and needed to be sold off. My ammo was maxed out, my armor was 100%. All of the guns available for sale were already owned. The solution presented itself in an odd way: purchasing extraneous weapon attachments and vanity color schemes for weapons.

Bottom line, this game is worthy of thunderous revelry because of its mechanics and is only held back from vaster glory because it felt like a constrained port with some oddish design decisions to me.

Well, is there a point besides having fun? Have fun running on walls, diving over crates, kicking bodies off their feet on your landings, circle around and take out the group surrounding you.
Do it with your friends or make new ones playing the pub match-ups. Make a clan, build it up, invite your buds to be a part of it, you can be casual or serious about it. Grind bosses over and again for that final part needed to hit the craft button and delay instant gratification by not using in-game premium currency and waiting for 3 days to claim it.
Get it, play with it, find out how you like to style it, and then see how god-like you can get it to seem when you play it. I donated to support this game's development and feel like I got more than my pound of flesh out of it.
It's FTP not PTW. And it rocks!