Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

Best of the horde shooter genre imo, deep melee combat with a low skillfloor but a very high ceiling on the highest difficulty levels. Many improvements and additions since release; completely reworked skill trees for all the classes, many new weapons (+ crafting system) and maps. Very fun co-op game to play with your buddies. Dont expect an insane storyline but the worldbuilding and especially voice acting is top lvl, not to mention the godlike soundtrack by Jesper Kyd. Recommended for all 40k/Vermintide/Left4dead and Deeprock galactic fans!

I absolutely abhor the FOMO stupid expensive cosmetic nonsense but the game itself is *FANTASTIC*. Visceral, exciting, a masterclass in environmental design and an absolutely banging soundtrack.

the developers are psychopaths for releasing a new character DLC on a Monday.

TL; DR: one of the best multiplayer PVE games around that really immerses you in the WH40K setting, but unfulfilled promises (free additional characters and a singleplayer mode being notable examples), it taking 3 YEARS to reach an actual 1.0-like version of the game with the release of the update that went live alongside the vastly overpriced Arbites character, and shady MTX & FOMO shenanigans with the paid cosmetics leave me not being able to recommend this, especially at full price. Pros: -truly gets the WH40K setting and what it would be like as just one human amidst untold billions attempting to stem the tide of near-insurmountable, slavering forces of unknowable gods -stands tall alongside its contemporaries with some of the best co-op PVE gameplay in the genre -has that ever-wonderful subjective factor of "just one more mission"...you'll sit down to play after a long day and all of a sudden find that it's 3 in the morning, and you've had a blast the entire time -the community is (generally) very good, cooperative, and welcoming Cons: -lack of variety in maps/missions; while the "director", a la Left 4 Dead, will ensure no two missions are exactly the same, the maps themselves are static and there aren't very many of them, so you WILL experience mission fatigue due to that alone -connection issues...3 years on and disconnects are still a prevalent issue -many promises by the devs remain undelivered, and should have been some time ago -shady microtransaction (MTX) and Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) exploitative silliness that sours what should have been Fashiontide fun -entirely subjective, but: I can't help but think there's a lack of direction and overall vision for this game; I say that because with numerous past updates the devs have entirely reworked several mechanics, character skill trees, and game progression, so it seems like players have essentially been alpha-and-beta testing the game since even its official release with significant changes sometimes done in a fsck-it-we'll-do-it-live sort of way, and the game just now seems like a full 1.0 product with the update that went live alongside the paid Arbites class Overall, I will continue to greatly enjoy this game and will likely even buy the Arbites character at some point in the future...at a greatly reduced price. That sums up my entire recommendation for the game: if you are going to buy it, do it on a deep sale as, while it is (especially now) a great co-op PVE game, the business practices and development cycle with which it has been infested do NOT deserve to be rewarded with your money at full asking price.

Bluntly speaking: Game is fine, company behind it is not. Darktide is pretty good shooter with excellent melee system, but Fatshark has proven inept regarding launch of major updates, handling of DLC, and general breaking of promises. This is not strictly Darktide issue, this has been consistent problem on company side starting Vermintide 1, and getting slowly worse. Whetever that bothers you is up to you. If you mainly care for gameplay loop as is present, I'd wait for sale and grab it. For me? It's thumbs down, but do your research and see if this game works fine for you. Personally recommend Deep Rock Galactic being honest...

Maybe the coolest 40k game ever made, consistently undermined for years by baffling direction. The same live-service curse that's killed basically every fun multiplayer game in the last decade. I stuck with this game for a long time because it's incredibly detailed, aesthetically perfect, and has a really pretty fun core if you use any of the things that are good. But, it's like you've heard a thousand times before; endless nerfs, useless updates, no new stuff we were promised. Things looked up when they gave us a couple sick new weapons and a big rework of the Ogryns not too long ago, but the fact that so many promises on launch weren't kept, so many fun builds have been erased, every character has become so streamlined, and so many new gameplay systems have been introduced and then ignored...this game just feels like it's stringing us along. When do we actually get the things we wanted at the start? The havoc mode is a joke, the mortis trials has two maps, and now this latest venture--a paid DLC class, even though at launch we were told there would be more than 4 at base--these things feel kind of insulting. Add to that the promise that next update they will be nerfing MORE stuff, including the dueling sword*, on TOP of not giving anyone anything that they asked for? And not maintaining anything that they did give us? It's safe to say that there is no captain on this ship, and every little new thing we get is simply a pittance. It is unclear and has been unclear for a while now why so many things are constantly nerfed or rebalanced into being unusable, and in a game where the only variety comes from trying out the plethora of new builds and weapons, that's bad. Plus new penances that are nothing but endless grind, new cosmetics recycled from old ones, worthless "stims" that were obsolete on release, and events where you get nothing but craft materials. But don't worry: the new patch has an overhaul of the mission board and a rework of the difficulty, two basic QoL changes that do next to nothing, but still took three years! At least the fully kitted weapon customization system we were told about before launch got done in two! The priorities are all wrong. New things are introduced and immediately abandoned. Every communication from the devs is just a lie. Every buff, fix, or new addition is a lateral movement--that, or simply a drop in the bucket. I have no clue how this formula is difficult, and I don't know where the microtransaction money is going. The obsession with keeping things grindy, annoying, and stale in a non-competitive multiplayer game is the kind of confusing direction that has killed or almost killed quite a few games in recent memory, but the lasting image of this game, to me, is just a litany of unfulfilled promises. At least helldivers is still going! *Many longtime players will immediately bray like jackasses if you complain about this nerf, or any other nerf, because for some reason if a lot of people like something that they don't, that means its a problem and they have to tell the teacher. Perhaps if they're sycophantic enough in the comments of the update announcements, the devs will reward them with a gold star! The dueling sword is somehow "too easy," and if you use it then you need to "git gud," and it's much more respectable and challenging to use, say, a force sword, or a power sword, or a tac axe, or a chain axe, or any of the other 97 weapons that can wipe a horde in 3 seconds if you have a good crit build. Personally I can't wait until fatshark removes every weapon that's good at clearing hordes or penetrating armor, so that I can finally achieve my dream of spending 90 minutes on each auric mission.

It has been 3 years since I bought this. I've played all the tides games from Fatshark, and this one is by far the most disappointing. It's not a bad game, but Fatshark as a developer delivers content at such a slow pace, and launched with so little, that the game is probably only just now at the level it should have been 3 years ago. They use tilesets to build maps, which is fine on it's own because you can put more maps out at the cost of them feeling samey, but this doesn't seem to help Fatshark because they put maps out at a truly glacial pace. Weapons are exactly the same, various "marks" within a class to make it seem like there are more weapons than there really are. This one shoots fast but does less damage. This one shoots slow but hits harder. That kind of stuff. Again, this would be fine if they were also putting out true weapons at a reasonable pace, but they don't. If they didn't stretch content to it's breaking point there wouldn't be any updates at all. Now I find one of the first significant content drops they've done (the new class) and it's paid DLC. I just don't have the desire to play a new character in the same maps I've already played, and I'm so disappointed in Fatshark that I truly don't think they deserve the money. So I don't recommend the game, despite having best in genre combat, because everything else kinda sucks. And if you're one of those people that think "lol 200 hours doesn't recommend", would you rather read a review from someone that played an hour and quit, or someone that put way more time in than the game deserves?

Thank you all playtesters, developers, and who ever helped make this amazing new dlc. This being the 1st paid dlc does not matter at all, considering that I have spent over 3100 hours already, I am happy to buy this addition. Everything I have seen gives me more faith for the continued life of Darktide, my favorite game. Seeing so many people express their excitement for this upcoming 5th class is heart warming. This is reigniting my drive for Darktide. I appreciate your work, I can not wait to play this ❤️

The game would be very good, if not for terrible optimisation, terrible monetization practises and server issues.

Was running legend solo back in vermintide for fun, and darktide, 3 YEARS after release, still doesn't have any solo host mode so i can't enjoy the scenery without people speedrunning. i don't care how bad the bots are, i just want to play mission solo to enjoy the world. if needed delete the bots altogether and let me solo it, but not giving me an option to choose how to play is a scam. Even tho they promised it years ago. Do not recommend.

This is a great game, I enjoy playing it; I love playing this game, I enjoy the game-play loop, I like the characters and weaponry. What I don't like; Constant disconnections, you play a long mission just to get dc'd at the end and earn NOTHING. Will re-download and re-review if issues are fixed. Update: Noticed it still happens every so often but not AS much as it did before, there's been a few hot-fixes since then but now, it's acceptable. Changing to positive review now that I can actually play without disconnecting as much as a once did. Get in there and slay FOR THE EMPEROR!

I have a 1000+ hours in this game. It's fun, good graphics, combat feels fantastic and got 4 classes plus a 5th new one now just released. It's well balanced and all the classes are close to one another the atmosphere is great in the game, sure I wish there would be more content comming out but they do a good job enough to keep you interested. However the game constantly fails when an update is made with crashes and errors it's so poorly programmed or coded. After a while you just get tired of trying to find solutions to problem after problem wich no other game seams to have. You will spend alot of time on forums reading and looking at videos on youtube. In the beginning it will be worth it but it will wear you down, especially one day when you just wanna log in and play but have to spend 1-2 hours fixing things just to play that should work already.

It's complicated. Answering directly to "would you recommend this game" i would had to say "Yes". What i'm trying to highlight with my review is technical problems, which ruining endgame constantly, you'll find tons of reddit and steam discussions addressing those. Gameplay is great. High level difficulties really makes you want to play better, to overcome waves of ads, swapping between different tasks at very high speed. Maybe not suitable for mass audience, but really shines on hardcore gamers (i mean in general, not only in terms of extraction shooters or WH). Gameplay is so great - you even don't mind poorly written dialogues, which is sort of confusing cause Fatshark previous release - Vermintide 2 - was nearly perfect on that, on pair with Borderlands 2. Funny, variable, with great voice acting. Here in darktide it's really bad. Graphics is ok. It looks well with mid settings, i'm playing on rtx 2070 with stable 60 fps. i've seen comments that with higher graphics settings overall fps efficiency is not very great, but again, i would say that this game is all about gameplay. I would love to lower graphics to extreme lows like we did it in old days with pvp games like Quake just to focus on whats going on. Sound is amazing, especially music, but there is dilemma with that, because you need to focus on sounds of special enemies that is aproaching, and you had to turn music volume down a lot or switch of completely. Now to the point of this review. Yo got constantly disconnected from the game. Game has a reconnect mechanics which works from time to time. But on high end difficulty (havoc) for some reason it just don't work sometimes and then you got penalized (demoted) after being disconnected. It makes you mad. Looking to discussions on that problem you will clearly see that it persists through at least a year, despite many small and big patches, is never mentioned by devs and not going anyway. It's safe to say that Emperor is not very pleased with Fatshark. More than that, it's quite possible it's been overtaken by heretics.

Started as beta for full price, ended in selling one extra class for 12bucks...2,5years later (Im silent of the story in between). I love the style and gameplay, but I can not support this way of publishing.

Decent game, somewhat badly optimized (bad stutter on first load and the cosmetics screen). The main problem is not the game itself, but the player base. A vast majority are rushers in a team based game. and for a first time player, that has yet to learn the maps and weapons, and abilities, it's a really bad experience. Add to that the fact that in one team you can have maybe 10 lvl difference between players. No ability to play chill on low diff with bots so you can learn stuff. It's not hard, is annoying. I'll keep it to waste some time now and then, but overall, a decent game ruined by players,

I recommend the game highly. It's maintained, updated and while slow, the content is there. Babies cry about nerfs of the most overpowered weapons in the game, hence negative reviews.

Gameplay: 10/10 Stability: Crashing just before finishing the mission/10 Monetisation: "It totally supports the game bro"/10

Fun game, great immersive 40K setting, but crashes A LOT! Please fix!

1000 Hours in, the game gets better every quarter and every year, can't say enough things about it, but a great constellation of systems that have been continuously revised and improved for a better experience

This game is a gem. Very addicting, intense, with high skill ceiling and replayablity. when you get past the first 5 hours barrier you will always come back for some high octane action

Horrendous FPS stutter, consistent drops; the game probably hovers around 30 or 40 FPS at all times regardless of which settings I change or adjust & I have a somewhat decent PC with 32gb ram, RTX 4070 Ti, 1tb SSD, etc.

The main game-play loop is very fun and each of the classes is unique, certainly one of the best horde-shooter game-play out right now, but it does get stale after a while especially playing alone/ with randoms. Unfortunately classes feel like they only have a couple "correct" ways to play/ builds, if that, Ogryn for example very much feels like it has only one way to play and doing anything else is wrong and even then i don't have fun playing it. They recently released a new class that looks super cool, not a big fan of paying for a class cus that's kinda pay to win ish but was totally ready to buy is assuming it was like 5 bucks or something, its $15 CAD like wtf. On principal i'm sure as hell not paying that much for just a class, super disappointing seeing this level of corporate greed in the game, uninstalled. If you have the money to burn and are morally okay with supporting that kinda thing i guess you'll enjoy this game 8/10 before new class 4/10 after

This is the first time I've ever felt the need to write a review on steam, and I hate that it has to be the case. I cannot recommend this game in its current state, which is frustrating because it IS a good game. But between the asinine design and priority of the FOMO cash shop, the poor quality and recycling recolors of the paid cosmetics in said shop, the lack of free-to-earn cosmetics in two years, the failure to deliver on a solo mode that was explicitly stated as coming by the devlopers, the outright lying of saying Aquillas would be earnable in-game and then quietly removing that from the steam page, and now almost-immediately disabling the ability for the new DLC class to use universal cosmetics, but insisting that you need 'time' to decide if that should be undone following near-immediate backlash, its all so insane. This game is amazing at its core, unfortunately its owned and operated by one of the most idiotic, asinine, pants-on-head stupid companies to ever operate a video game. Its sad, is what it is. A good game ruined by an absolute trashfire of a company. Do yourself a favor and buy Helldivers 2 with 40k mods or something. At least they actually do something about player feedback.

Two years and a half after its launch (and almost ten years after Vermintide's), Darktide finally has a campaign taking the players through the different maps, and surprisingly, with cinematics between every mission! With this, the game finally feels like what it should have been all along. The gameplay is still as good as it ever was (the very best), and the systems around it are finally up to par. I used to tell my friends that the end game grind was bad because of itemization, it has been fixed a year ago with weapon masteries and crafting overhaul, and now the game has somewhat of a story instead of a sorry excuse in place of it, so well done!

They have finally made the new player experience somewhat enjoyable. Previously the game only started to get fun when you were nearly fully levelled already, but with the narrative actually taking place as you play the game you can level up in a way that doesn't feel like a slog. Great game, fun mechanics, phenomenal sound design, and an amazing soundtrack. Highly recommend, especially with the recent update :)

The new paid DLC class has it's best keystone broken and Fatshark devs are on holiday untill August. Not worth supporting this company. This is simply unacceptable.

Do not let the game fool you . You can be casual and still have fun. Work up to better gear slowly and learn the game. Or blast it but i prefer just having fun with it. Seems like they have put some decent work in while i was gone. My only gripe is the maps feel all the same i think that is from the atmosphere of the game though.

tons of build diversity in the different classes, a lot of fun overall.

Okay having been able to play the game again finally I will "cast my judgement" on this less than ideal update/DLC release. My immediate upon release went as so: *Buys new Class DLC and then goes into game to play it... Crashes 100% of the time and cannot play the game at all.* 10/10 would recommend again... No actually this garbage Dev team can go %$#& themselves. As expected the Class is as advertised but that's besides the point for now I get to tell you that no the problems don't end there with the problem that was fixed via a ("Backend fix", Imo if the fix was so easy to apply why did it take nearly 4 hours.) Eitherway I been encountering a few lovely bugs there and there so if I gotta be honest if this is the state they release a big new content update in then I tell them yes you are not a very good Dev team I've come to expect this kind of a shit show from Arrowhead but I guess things running on Stingray just can't be bothered to work right and the Devs can't seem to realise this and don't thoroughly test the new content before releasing said new content. Here is some other problems (Edit: I noticed more great...) I been encountering each match and subsequent return to hub that are impossible to miss: Arbites Shock Maul Trinket clips into handle instead of hanging off the bottom of the Pommel Dog names sometimes showing player names mid-match (It does wonders for my viability) Cadian eye colours are glitched on all classes if you have them selected you cannot customise your Operative at Krall without doing a Personality Scourge... (Edit: I found a fix for this that is basically go in and out of "Modify Appearance" till it allows you to actually finish the operation.)¸ Shotpistol cylinder clipping into grip in menu... (Idk which ones are fixed and which ones are not anymore...) All fleshy limbs on all classes seem to be invisible... -.- And that's just the obvious stuff I spotted and by some miracle all my mods still work so I'm upgrading the Dev teams status from "Garbage Dev team" to "Incompetent Dev team" for I simply CANNOT give em a pass for releasing this update in this state and how it was directly upon release as most of these problems would be encountered on a 5 minute testing run yet somehow they were shipped with the game update so I say these Devs do not deserve my pity they deserve my scorn for making sure I went from excited to try the new content to bitter and very much annoyed in the span of less than 10 minutes upon release. Please test your shit before releasing, please and thank you.

I desperately want to recommend this game. The visuals, music, and gameplay are absolutely top-notch. The combat is visceral and satisfying, and a fantastic iteration on top of what Fatshark had going with their Vermintide games. There is a LOT to enjoy about the game's core loop. The problem is that everything [i]surrounding[/i] that core experience is frustrating. Despite it being a $40 title, they aggressively monetize this game's cosmetics as if it were free-to-play, with unpaid options being extremely limited in comparison. For a very long time, nearly every aspect of the game was underbaked or riddled through with bugs -- except the cash shop, which always seemed to be their #1 priority for upkeep. Now, we have the release of the fifth player class, the Arbites. While I was originally planning to jump back in to check it out, discovering that it costs over 1/4 of the game's base price completely tanked my enthusiasm. I'm sure I'll come back at some point, maybe when prices drop, but I'm in no hurry to play it now.

Any cosmetic variety is locked behind a rotating FOMO in-game store that requires real money. The only thing you can buy with earned dockets are generic reskins/recolors of the same outfits.

Amazing game-play, terrible, and I mean embarrassingly bad cosmetics system, unquestionably one of the most important systems behind game-play in games, there are one or two (and I really mean one or two) cosmetics worth wearing per class if you cant afford or don't want to buy in game currency. There is no way to earn this currency other than opening your wallet. The dev's Lied about a 5th playable class being free, and charged for it. Idc if its 20$ or 5$ they said it would be free and it is not free. I have a ton of time in this and vermentide 2, love the combat loop, but I can't recommend buying a game with devs who are dishonest and hide the majority of cosmetics that aren't a recolor of a base skin behind a pay wall. It's gross, and if I knew they were going to be dishonest and run cosmetics like this I would have invested my time elsewhere. I have not purchased DLC or cosmetics to date due to the dishonesty.

this is a good game. it could be a great game if it was given some more depth. if players could group up and hang out in the same instance on the morningstar thatd be neat. its be really cool if a free dlc came out and a patch that included a barracks for a squad of friends, legit anything to help the new class get more in game content. its a good game, do play it. devs, pls do more work on it, make the rpg stuff usable in outa battle home locations, gives players more reason to open the game

I wish Fatshark didn't have a ledges fetish. Dumbass game design. Skin system sucks. Most of the skins are just copy pasted with different colors. There is also a lot of weird clipping with half of the cosmetics. Bots are way worse than Vermintide 2, despite this being a newer game. No bots loadouts, can't have any classes other than Veteran bots, they can't carry any item and don't use any ability. They are attracted to daemonhosts like magnets. Levels often use same assets, recycled zones, etc. Feels like im playing a beta game.

Best horde shooter out there but horribly optimized to the point it is not enjoyable to play.

Good coop experience if you like Warhammer 40k universe and has some friends with voice chat. Got the game on sale for a half price. Game OST has ultra cool soundtracks.

I bought this game at launch, and it definitely was not without issues. It's still not without issues, but I think it's come a long way and feel pretty comfortable recommending it to any fans of horde shooters and/or Warhammer 40K. Other than Space Marine 2, this is the closest that 40K has come to "AAA." And with the addition of a new class and tons of people coming back to try it out, now is a good time to jump in.

Its a good game, Fatshark just needed to cook abit more with this after launch. Now its amazing

Game was made unplayable, this is what i get for using pickaxe on an ogryn, and they dont intend to fix this before the weekend. this is what i get booting up the game. GUID: db9fc4aa-db06-4ae0-a99e-f4d1a85d9fa0 Log File: Info Type: ----------------------------------------------- [Script Error]: Unit not found #ID[6e94f2f24a8bbaf5] Assertion failed world.resource_manager().can_get<UnitResource>(unit_name) at D:\a\d\rel_engine_darktide\release\2025_04_29_Patch1.8.x\runtime\application\plugin\c_api\c_api_world.cpp:57 in function stingray::plugin_api::world::spawn_unit ----------------------------------------------- [Crash Link]: crashify://db9fc4aa-db06-4ae0-a99e-f4d1a85d9fa0

Games fun, new class is very fun. Good to see they are still working on the game. The class being only paid playable content if fair for the price. Fun game for less then $60. Chuds complain and whine, ignore them and have fun. Happy rock throwing:)

Took months for a reasonable game at their current price point to be made. Just released a new class as a purchasable DLC instead of being part of the game. Already has massive micro transaction cosmetic store.

The idea of the game is great. The execution however, very trashy. It needs a a lot of work. If you don't intent to stick on it, you should avoid it. If that's all you need to know, good. But if you want more info, on what, atleast in my opinion is wrong with the game. Keep reading. Ok so what is good? The world it's set in, is very beautiful. The music and ambiance are chefs kiss. VA is phenomenal. The game-play is solid, although lackluster in certain parts. What is bad? The game is plagued by poor made choices by the devs and little to none communication with the player-base. When the crafting rework/update, whatever you want to call it, rolled out, it turned the weapon mastery system into a grindfest, if you were unlucky and the game assigned the starting mastery points into weapons you have never used before. If you were playing 24/7 or if you had crafting materials to spare, you can accelerate the process. Great. But if you are casually playing the game, well have fun grinding the max level of your favorite weapon, which could be nerfed by an update by the time you reached the max rank. And apart from weapons, your classed could also nerfed in order to make others viable or stop certain play-styles. I gonna be honest. I love how they made the first DLC a new character, even before the other classes were actually fun and playable *cough cough* VETERAN *cough cough*. Not to mention the potential risk of each new update, breaking the game in a new flavor. But that seems to be a standard nowadays. Why make a complete and working game, if you can fix it with duct-tape patches that will break something else right? Speaking of DLC, I remember Fatshark making a post that said, that, in order to have free content in the game, they made the in-game shop in their games to pay to this. So why do we have a DLC character now? That's some backwards logic if you ask me. Also what of the new classes each quarter promised? Is it again a communication error and they mean like new talent trees for existing characters or fresh new characters? I don't know, they are presenting it in a confusing manner. Also, yes we did free content. Don't get me wrong. But again, lackluster. Let me explain: Campaign Maps: Maps are coming at a snails pace. Gonna be honest here. From all of the few maps we got, the timed map is quite an interesting feature. The others, besides bringing a bit more lore into the game, is pretty forgettable in the most parts. Havoc Mode: Well never played it. Heard alot of bad stuff about but idk. Mortis Trials: Well okay here is something. I think what many believes, myself included, was, that the Mortis Trials were akin to the Realm of Chaos from Vermintide: A Rouglike go from mission to mission, adventure, with random buffs and perks for you to get along the way. In reality: It was a Horde-Wave mode with those random buffs and perks. The idea is not that bad. But again it shows the lackluster communication between the devs and the fans. Many wanted a Realm of Chaos like mode for the game. Nah... pass. Something else: The lore of this game. If that even is something you really care about. Came with timed ingame events. Bringing some quests along. Missed it? Sucks to suck mate. But even if you took partake in the event. Your reward is crafting materials, maybe a „fancy“ border for your character and a little dangly bit you can put on your weapon and won't be seen 80% of the time. If you are new. Great! If you are a long time veteran of the game. Well throw it in the corner to the rest of it. It's criticized a lot by the community, nearly meme-worthy status. But it goes on so, someone seems to like it. All in all, it's a game with a lot of potential to be great, but also a lot of problems and roadblocks. Only time will tell, if things will get better or worse. I want to have high hopes for the better, but at this point I'm probably taking copium.

Some people are review bombing this game because they're nerfing two of the most powerful weapons in the game despite them buffing literally everything else So I decided to give my own review. As someone who plays primarily horde shooters like vermintide, deep rock galactic, left 4 dead, etc, if you're a fan of any of these games, darktide is for you. My hours speak for itself and I haven't gotten bored a single time during my entire playtime and with the new Arbites class I can only see myself playing more The melee combat is easy to learn but takes time to master but once it clicks, the dopamine starts releasing and only explodes once the banger OST hits This game is what singlehandedly got me into Warhammer and the only con I can give it is that the devs are slow on updates but that seems to be a trend for horde shooter games Get this game cuz I assure, it's a fuck ton of fun

Spiritual Successor to Left 4 Dead but with so much more. Didnt buy this game until it went on sale, i'm glad i waited because the game has gone through a lot of changes to get to where it is today, but this game is worth every penny of the original cost. Absolute blast 10/10. Vermintide 2 is a great game as well, but Darktide is superior in my opinion.

Like Vermintide 1 and 2, but with a larger focus on guns, and larger volumes of targets, generally feels like its on the easier side with more focus on Player Builds and equipment.

First of all, I have played waaay fewer hours than what Steam has listed. I'm a prolific mod developer for this game, and easily over half of my hours come from sitting in the game while making a mod and not actually playing. That said, that's still a few hundred hours of actual playtime, so... The obvious game to compare this to is Vermintide 2, which this is basically a sequel to. When VT2 came out, it catapulted towards the top of my most-played games. It's currently sitting at #3, behind only Garry's Mod and Darktide. Thanks to pre-release betas, I put over 40 hours into VT2 before it even came out! I skipped school and lagged behind in other responsibilities cuz I wanted to play VT2 more! It's easily one of my favorite games ever, offering compelling classes, best-in-the-business first-person melee, and fun environments. So how does Darktide compare, especially now, after ~2.5 years of updates? Well, in some ways it's a complete improvement. The melee was already basically perfect in VT2, and it's just as meaty and fun here. The guns on offer also all feel great, putting a lot of other FPSs to shame, even though I think this game still favors melee over shooting. I don't wanna get too into the weeds of the mechanics, but I think the way Darktide encourages melee without punishing you too badly for taking stray gunshots (i.e. Toughness) is genuinely so clever and fun that it makes VT2's similar system (i.e. Temp HP) look like a joke. Although I don't think the weapon variety is quite as good (yet?) as it was in VT2, the class variety is unbelievable. VT2's talent choices were, well, pretty bad tbh. But in Darktide, each class gets its own skill tree, and each tree is filled with interesting, meaningful choices. They're a perfect balance of being open enough to let you do what you want with it, while still having enough definition that each branch has a distinct theme to it. You can set up builds that actually feel totally different to play, even within the same class. I've played tons and tons of RPGs in my time, and it's almost hard to believe, but Darktide's skill trees are easily among the best I have ever seen. Also the soundtrack is easily among the greatest OSTs of all time. It sounds unlike anything I've heard before, and it fits the game's aesthetic perfectly. I swear, the first time I heard Imperial Advance while fending off a hoard, I started levitating. And not for nothing, the devs are extremely welcoming to the modding community. They haven't made any tools, but they've been very open to us opening their game up and tinkering with it. Their modding policy is very permissive, basically just common-sense. It's neat! But! There are two key ways that Darktide falls short - very, very short. The first is the environments and maps. VT2 has a frankly huge number of maps, and almost all of them feel entirely unique from one another. The city, the sewers, the elven ruins, the dwarven hold, the mine in the mountain - you really feel like you're going on a huge adventure, and each map also ends with its own objective to complete, making each one feel even more unique. In Darktide, I think there are like 4 different objectives, and they're scattered throughout the maps seemingly at random. The post-release maps generally do a better job in that regard, but they still suffer from another issue. There are only like 4 environments, and all four can be summed up as "grim sci-fi factory." The world around you is always going to look more or less the same as it did in the previous mission. You could argue that's unavoidable because it's all set on the hive city, but it didn't have to be. There's no reason this couldn't have been made with - or receive now - maps that have a lot more visual and mechanical variety to them. At least they aren't procedurally generated, though. Each map does have an actual identity to it, it's not the sort of bland, endless sludge you get in games like Helldivers or DRG. The second issue is that Darktide is filled to the brim with enough player-retention nonsense to rival your average AAA or mobile game. You have to grind to get your character level up, you have to grind to unlock weapons, you have to grind to improve those weapons. You get weekly quests, the mission board strictly limits which missions you can play and when, and there's a gougingly-priced FOMO cosmetic store - not to mention the FOMO events they run every once in a while. It's annoying at best - and if we're being honest, it's completely scummy and predatory, even if it is absolutely ubiquitous in gaming these days. VT2 did have a grind to it, too, but it wasn't nearly as long or as deep as it is in Darktide. In the end, even though the gameplay is imo a complete improvement over VT2 in every single way, the lack of variety in the missions and the presence of scummy player-retention BS make this game much harder for me to recommend than VT2. But if you don't mind those things, then it's a no-brainer.

The bones are good. Every FS game's bones are good. There's just never any meat on them. It's sad, really. Vermintide 2 didn't get meat until years later. We are in the "years later" phase of Darktide and they have, basically, what should have been 1.0. This game released without crafting, had Mists of Panderia trees for each class, so many bugs, and the RNG was just an unfun mess. Now we have a crafting system that's had a few overhauls, actual class trees, still many bugs (like entire talents of the tree not working), and a rewarding system for actually using the weapons along with some healthy RNG. What was promised, though, was also lost. There's very little in the way of map and mission variety, there's an entire roguelike mode that has been tossed to the side when they could have copy/pasted what they had in Vermintide 2 and it would have been great, and the promise of "a new class added every quarter" never came to be and they are now asking for thirty percent of the game's base price for the first new class that adds just the class and three new weapons. This is just a game that was shoved out the door in an unfinished state, took three years to get to this 1.0 state, and is just lacking when it comes to actually keeping you like other games in this genre. I don't seek out playing this game. I only play when friends do, and each one gets about ten to twenty hours in and get bored of doing the same thing with the same things over and over with no variety.

The core of the game is good, but it's just so overshadowed by everything else it's hard to enjoy. The promised offline solo mode that would be out "shortly after launch" is still nowhere to be seen, despite their stated intentions to add more classes post launch it took us three years to get one, and it's the price of an indie game. I'm patient when it comes to games, but even I have to admit the dripfeed on content is agonisingly slow, enemy very limited, and the optimisation and audio bugs that have plagued the game for years and still prevalent. The thing that makes all this insulting rather than annoying, however? The overpriced cosmetic shop runs smoothly. A fun game if you get it on sale, have friends to play with and don't pay attention to anything outside the game.

Solid gameplay and intense combat. Server stability can rarely be an issue, but 97% of the time it's good. Gotten huge amounts of gameplay for my money and love the 40k flavor.

Was not expecting there to be no support for solo play because Vermintide actually has it. I'd rather spend my money on a game that actually cares about its players. The fact that a game like this still has MTX and FOMO content on top of hating solo players is WILD. Updating my review. This game somehow started running in the background of my computer without my noticing for more than 14 hours. So now I cant even request a refund for this dogshit. DO NOT BUY THIS.