Recent reviews by glythe

This game is a lot of fun *but* it has some issues.

There are frame rate problems even with very strong hardware. This is not a graphics intensive game so that really shouldn't be a huge problem...but it is. Ultimately you can't play the game the way you want with certain builds because the game isn't built to handle it (a claim they promised they were going to fix before release).

The biggest problem is the first major update nerfed XP. This is a single player game and all efforts should be on making the game more fun not doing ANYTHING to make the game less fun.

What was the thought here? We can make the game slightly more difficult and make people want to play it more? That is completely unacceptable.

Update: the devs no longer require you to register somewhere else to play HD2. That being said they nerfed the fun out of the game and then nobody wanted to play. Then they realized oh we killed the fun so we will put 2/3 of it back. That's not how it works. You need to put in 1.25-1.5x of the fun back in to make up for ruining things inthe past

Is the game good? It's fun for 20-30 hrs tops with friends. There are really only two "missions" as there are only two enemy types. There are multiple mission types but it all feels the same very quickly. There is no advancement after level 30.

This is how my review looked previously:

I buy steam games to play them on steam not to register some other account.

Do not buy HD2 until they remove the bait and switch terms of service. What's next? Will the game requirements change to have a monthly fee?

To make matters worse the dev team can't stop nerfing everything fun in the game. It's a PVE sandbox. If you want players to have fun and keep playing the game you give them overwhelming fun things to play with ..... not take away the fun things.

What's the best part of this game? The music is lovely.

What is the worst part of the game? Your weapons lose durability at what feels like some kind of 5x increased rate that was some kind of "hard mode" modifier.

Is this game worth buying right now? If you would be happy with about 50 hours of content then sure go ahead and buy it. That being said the game is unfinished and we can see only part of the total map. If they fill in the rest of the blacked out area then the hour count might go up to 100-150 hours to finish the "Story".

On that note there really isn't much story other than pages you read. This game is largely run around and find hidden pages in new areas. The last step of several quests is to get a new furniture piece that will craft new things in the base. Toward the end of the game this felt like "busywork".

Final Verdict : This game reminds me of Valheim where it has a neat idea but overall there is just something that feels like it is "missing". This is *not* a game you want to play alone as that would certainly be an empty experience. Considering that this game is in early access there might be more to this game later that will be the missing element to make the game good (but I kind of doubt that).

Really fun gameplay so far.

I have zero stuttering issues and people might need better PC's to handle this game.

Only issue I have had so far is with the MP lobby playing with a team.

9.5/10 (assuming they get the networking problem fixed soon™)

I loved AoW III and this has some nice modern changes but some downsides if you really loved III.

Bad changes :
-RNG on range attack
-Massive nerf with healing: you heal quickly only in your territory. Supports no longer offer more healing per turn. All "battle" healing is temporary hp which is basically worthless if you are used to healing in previous games.

Near complete "removal" of races as a fun choice that offers diverse units. In AoW III The best races for necromancer were: Lizard/tigran/goblin. Each played very differently. In this game they would all be the same.

The cultural differences are very small in terms of research and I feel this was a weak decision. The old game had t4 units for each class regardless of magic specialization.

Good Changes:
-Province system is just "ok" and you can min/max placement if you want. But it makes for an intelligent design with the building rush aspect.

-Magic system is definitely better now. In AoW III you had major/minor magics. Major required minor so at most you could have 3 spell types and that was it. This game lets you mix n match in a way that will take a long time to really min/max.

Mid way through you can take a random magic that you have no affinity for to really help out your spell selection or tailor your choices to who you are fighting.


Verdict: Should you buy this game?
Even on Normal the combat AI is quite good compared to AoW III. The turn based combat is quite difficult to master even for someone who had mastered previous titles.

Most of my major gripes can be fixed rather easily with mods that just add in a few AoW III concepts (like support units give extra battle map healing and temporary healing is now real healing).

We might be able to make race choices mean something and not just be cosmetic.

I really like the game and hope you will give it a try.

Should you buy this patch for Nemesis? He's an "ok" killer but the reality is that there are two viable killers in 2023 : Nurse/Blight. And while he is "fun" he is not very strong. He definitely needs a balance pass update. Basically none of his addons really help you feel "stronger". The Zombie AI is still a complete joke and they get stuck "afk" on generators doing nothing.

Should you buy this DLC for Eruption? No - the perk was nerfed to oblivion after only a very short term status as a "strong" gen regression perk. The other two perks are complete garbage

Why should you buy this DLC? It features Jill and Leon and you want to show everyone that you're a RE fanboy/girl.
Are the survivor perks good? Blast mine got nerfed and Jill's other perks suck. Flashbang is "ok" and the other two perks from Leon suck.

Once upon a time Spirit was one of two "S tier" killers. And then the survivors cried and got her nerfed to oblivion. The last fair nerf Spirit received was the removal of collision while phasing. Everything after that was just to placate the survivor crowd.

Directional phasing noises completely ruin this killer. You're supposed to listen for her footsteps (something only killers know how to do apparently) - but that was too hard so they made the "wooshing" noise while she phases super easy to read so you know exactly where she is at all times.

This completely defeats the entire purpose of her power.

Here's a killer that was released in 2016 and has never been adjusted positively since. Note that this killer had a massive nerf about one week after his release. Michael Myers is an "ok" killer if you only ever play him with a green stalking addon with either infinite T3 or the pruple tombstone piece that lets him instantly kill one survivor (without ever hooking them).

The killer perks were good and then they mostly got nerfed. Largely speaking the only perk of value is Save the Best for Last and even then you're not missing anything as it works best on two killers that aren't even "top tier".

On the survivor side : Laurie clucks like a chicken when hurt (no seriously). DS has been nerfed from a completely broken state to a "fair" state but you need to realize survivors want the game to favor them not be fair. The other two perks are so dead most people have trouble telling you what the names of those perks are.

I'm not downvoting this DLC in response to the PTB changes but rather in the hopes they make this killer better. When they nerfed this killer almost instantly after release it send me the message : don't give this company any more money.

Is Darktide Fun? Yes.
Does it have problems? Yes?
Should you buy it? Maybe.

For me it fills that 4 player vs PVE gap that I used to have with PD2/Vermintide.

Why is the game messed up?

1) The only way to get good gear is an item shop that resets hourly. Actual item level at level 30 varies from ~3-- to 380. This is a joke. If I am level 30 and have 380 items nothing should be lower than 350 (before considering any blessings or perks).

To expand on this the shop does not have enough items for sale. As a Psyker there is only one viable build on t4-5 missions. That build is one of three staffs+Force Sword. About 90% of my item roster is guns that I would only have used before I unlocked the ability to use the better two staffs.

To get better items you need to log into the shop and buy 360-380 items. Maybe one in 7 shops has an item this level. What if it's a gun? Oops. And then you need to enchant it. This will require resources from about 12+ missions. If it turns out to roll the wrong modifiers you wasted the resources. Try again.

Update : They just recently buffed the store and nerfed it too. Guns in the store can no longer have tier 3/4 traits meaning you don't want to buy any blue items (only white/green). They added the ability to buy white items but people spent millions and got garbage low tier items not worth encanting.

Crafting is now "complete" but lacking.

2) The game has a achievement system called "Penances" where you do a task to unlock cool clothing. The alternative is buying it from the cash shop or using in game currency to buy "less cool" clothes. You can only get a backpack with real cash. It seems as if they made penances difficult so you would just buy cool clothes with real world money. That's scummy.

The Psyker Penances require you to basically have a private lobby.
One requires you to kill 5 specials in 12 seconds with the Psyker Brain Burst ability. Unlike the Zealot/Veteran abilities Brain Burst does not % scale. In fact it gets weaker in higher difficulties. So to get this done you basically need allies who play Ogres with shields and they stand around waiting for specials to stack up and then you kill them. This is basically "throwing". Since Brain burst does not scale it is hard to kill 5 specials on higher difficulty. And on lower (t3) difficulty you will almost never see 5 specials active at once.

Another Penance requires you to kill a mini boss as a Psyker by yourself with your underpowered Brain Burst.

Another Penance requires you to intentionally overload and blow up - which kills you. The resulting explosion needs to kill 3 "special" enemies. You must make sure they are critically wounded and nobody finishes them.

To clarify here : most of the Penances try to teach you good things to do. Completing a mission without taking any health damage is good. Completing multiple missions without going down is good. Learning to block or dodge multiple attacks in a row is good. Asking the Psyker player to solo a boss is bad. Asking the psyker to intentionally blow themselves up is bad.

3) Level 1-3 missions are easy and a single geared level 30 character can carry a team of noobs as long as they are more than AFk. But level ~14 players have no business in t4/t5 and the game lets them try it. If there were a million dollar prize for beating the game with 4x minimum level characters on T5 it would be impossible to claim. T4 needs to have a level 25 lockout. T5 needs a level 30 lockout.

4) As suggested previously the crafting system only makes sense if you can constantly run T4/T5 missions. You can't without geared friends. I can run them if I find geared level 30 players but See #3 as to why that is a problem.

The crafting rewards suck if you are only able to run t3 missions all day. It takes 7 missions just to use the final enchant (orange). But there's also an enchant from green-blue-purple.

The only viable crafting method is to buy a 350+ item then turn it green. If trash start over. You must roll one of the modifiers you want at green or the item is ruined (you can only reroll one perk). Then go to blue - if you get a "wrong" blessing the item is ruined- start over (this might change later).

Why are items below 350 not viable? Every item has upto 380 stat points divided across five categories. Some weapons need every category (especially true for the staffs). Math time: 380/5 =76. 350/5=70. 330/5=66. Meaning at each of those item levels they would have on average that many points per trait. But be aware often you get a 350 item with 44% in a category and the item is completely ruined.

5) The game is just incomplete and it shows. This is the level of product I expect with a 30$ game that will be full price later when everything is perfect.

It has periodic crashes (I have only experienced a few in over 100 hours but other friends have them regularly with super high graphics enabled).

The devs did not listen to multiple points of feedback that players hated from the Vermintide games.


-Update : Now there are weekly coin tokens you can earn to buy items from the daily store. But essentially you are buying items to sacrifice to unlock *maybe* one tier 4 trait per week. You might think you can buy a single trait that can appear one time on axes, swords and other weapons. Haha - no that would be too easy.

Each different type of weapon needs to have the trait unlocked. That's garbage.


*Anniversary Update* : Did the complete rework make the game better? No. It fails to address key issues like getting new "good" items still takes too long. It didn't really make the game better but is largely just window dressing.

It's an interesting idea for a 4v1 game that corrects many mistakes from a game like DBD. But VHS is the personification of what a horror movie would be like if the villain's theme music emanated from their body without their knowledge.

There needs to be some kind of mechanic to punish the teens when they all just stand around in a group with weapons. Overall it just feels like there is very little you can do if the teens just "stack up" and never separate. The game was advertised as making every hit matter - but that's not true. If you don't knock teens down then they die very slowly. It can be extremely difficult to hit a teen twice when they are in a group with all the other teens with weapons. This is why I have had many games where I have to hit a single person 7 times.

The game is almost entirely sound based and in this regard is inferior to DBD. They copied DBD in that the teens always know where the monster is because of its "terror radius". Nothing says "horror" to me like when you always know where the killer is by sound. Meanwhile the teens are almost completely silent (they don't get out of breath, and make no noises when hurt). DBD gets a lot of things wrong but that is one thing that makes this game nowhere near as good.


Almost every match has been a complete stomp where one side loses definitively.

The first tier of weapons feel very fair overall but as soon as people get the better weapons it just feels way too punishing.

The information sharing seems skewed. For example you don't know when the teens get weapons but everyone knows when the killer WART activates his shield. What? Shouldn't that be sight or sound only and not a map wide indicator?

When rift forms a single teen can capture it at the same speed as the monster - even though there are four teens. This is the kind of thing that doesn't feel right; one teen should capture at 1/4th the speed of the monster.

Just like DBD there are second chance aspects for the teens but not the monster. Teens can eat candy bars to get HP back.Teens can resurrect one ally per game. The monster cannot get a health state back.

This game in its current state is completely unplayable if you have any sort of hearing loss, hearing damage or have reduced hearing capacity.

The game desperately needs monsters to play it. I got a 5 minute time out for leaving two dead (bugged lobbies). I did back out of one lobby that was going to be against a premade ttv team that had been playing since the beta - didn't want them to stomp me as a new player. I was willing to give this game a shot but man DBD feels so much more fun right now as the Killer. I never thought I would honestly be saying that.

As the monster you lose if you have been hit 4 times. Meanwhile while playing as the monster I have had games where it took more than 22 hits to kill all the teens. Simply put that just doesn't seem right. There is no room for a teen to have enough health to survive 7 hits if I can die in 4 hits.

If they equalized the sound imbalance I might be willing to give this game another try. I would prefer the monster have the sound advantage because the teens have voice coms.

It's dumb to me that if a monster activates their howl or armor power that you can just run away when the activation starts. By the time the power ends the monster will catch up with you. This is not indicative of a power role but rather 1:1 balance.