Finished the single player campaign.
- Just about all the guns and powers in the game are fun. Each time I took something different for a spin, it felt satisfying to use it, and some of those guns are even downright hilarious (hellfire bolter). In the end I stuck with the ol' faithful plasma cannon, which seemed the most effective to me, but all the other gits I talked with about the game were all saying a different waffe felt the best to them, so I guess that attests to Deffwing's arsenal being gud.
Didn't try out that many weapons in SP. Stormbolter variants didn't suite my playing style so heavy flamer and plasma cannon were my weapons of choice from chapter 4 or 5. There is a bit difference which one is more suitable in different situations, overall I liked plasma cannon a lot, but it has slow fire rate and I felt flamer made several hold the forth situations easier.
- 40k architecture admiration simulator, nuff said. All the care that was put into this game to make it reflect WH40k as closely as possible is nothing short of amazing. There's also plenty of neat enviro-storytelling everywhere if you pay attention.
Environments are absolutely great work and there's lot of things that are very telling. There are also sort of eastern eggs, code snippets in some terminals and written on the walls have actually meaning, though I just noticed on Steam forums that someone has actually translated some of them.
- Making hordes of xenos explode is almost always fun, and only gets "old" around the last level.
- A bunch of the "hold out for a few minutes" scenarios were p. tough, or the ones where you'd have hordes of hybrids appear overhead with heavy stubbers and RPGs. Also, hybrid psykers are OP AS FUK.
Hybrid Psykers instakilled me few times before I spent few points to Devotion branch, which reduced damage. They can be really dangerous in some places if you don't have suitable weapon to deal with them.
What I didnt liekd all that much:
- Having only two battle bruvas and having them so insanely limited. As I mentioned here previously, bruva apothecary is basically confined to bolter/narthecium because you'd have to be suicidal to make him switch to sth else. Why can't he swap the default stormbolter for another one, though? Also, bruva Barachiel, in my experience, is confined to lightning claws, unless you want to see him die at every step. He's terrible with the autocannon, and a bit less terrible with the plasma cannon. I thought he'd be gud with the thunder hammer and storm shield, but with that he's also extremely shit. Meanwhile with lightning claws he gets a massive reflex boost, parries every hit and slices and dices anything that gets close, essentially becoming unkillable. I really would have liked to have at least one more battle bruva, especially after all the promo pix that were showing a squad of 5.
This. There really aren't other sensible choices but those two for squad mates. Makes sense that one of them is close combat specialist, but nothing but Lightning Claws don't actually work for him and for Apothecary Bolter / Narthecium is only reasonable choice too, but why in the world he can't use Bolter 'side-grades' at least. So for my experience that limits variety, on harder difficulty levels at least, also to what are practical options for Librarian too.
There are scenarios where you need a weapon to support your squad from becoming rushed. Barachiel can hold mostly on his own, but Apothecary is very vulnerable in those situations. So flamer or plasma, and if you pick flamer your long range combat options suck, because while occasional rush to burn the fucking Xenos and their long range support can be rewarding experience, if there are Psykers, they can instakill you, so you need to protect Apothecary so he can take them with his bolter, which happens, sometimes, when he isn't shooting something else.
So too often options are a) Duck with flamer near your squad, b) use plasma cannon, which gives options taking Xeno rocket guys and Psykers out faster, but if Xenos get too close and it jams on that moment, Apothecary is fucked and so is your exploring because you need his healing ability. That said, Psygates are option too, but using them lowers score which determines how many skill points player gets.
I felt this is actually contributing problem for game coming tedious, at least if you go relic hunting where you explore more and so have more battle encounters. The more of the same factor starts to build up because options that are actually practical for player are very limited. Giving more options how to equip Apothecary and buffing him a bit might help, giving more options also to player, like actually being death machine raving around battlefield instead of being a baby sitter.
- The level design. Having big non-corridory maps with a bunch of different routes available is very welcome, but in practice there is very little point to them. Since it's always the same enemies everywhere, since turrets don't matter, since there's no keycard hunting, taking whatever route basically boils down to the exact same thing: you go through a bunch of rooms shooting xenos that spawn from marked spawn points. All this stuff is only there for you to go around pocketing relics like a Blood Raven, and well, it's not exactly required of you to do so either, and it's even more lame that those relics don't give you anything except for a free town portal once you've got enough of them. Also, the arbitrary blockades can get ridiculous at times, like how in the last mission my terminator squad was stopped by... a knee-high concrete barricade set up by the hybrids.
Where level design (and architecture) can really shine is multiplayer. For now it's still a bit of hit or miss if you find a squad that can move fast and is good at combat. The biggest problem is that mission objectives don't always show up on maps (LOL). But anyway, IMO map design and all the detail can add longevity to game. in SP though, I can't recommend this for those who like exploring. It felt too much like work and too little like fun for the reasons you wrote. Not at least in this shape it's now (relics don't always spawn at all).
- In the long run, it's way too easy. Apart from a few exceptions (like the aforementioned last stands, or a few places where you have to close spawn points while stuff keeps endlessly bumrushing you [mission 2 genestealer nests come to mind]), it really does just get formulaic eventually. Go through corridor, splat some dudes with plasma cannon, unleash an inferno behind you, rinse and repeat. Entering a big room, look out for hybrids. Shoot around when your radar starts fizzling to splat the stalkers. The few times I died in this game were almost exclusively when I was acting carelessly. Also, the biggest enemies (scythe-strains and broodlords) are scrublords and pushovers, especially if you have the warp rift spell. Stuff like turrets and door blocking are also disappointing - it's idiotic that you can't activate turrets to help you without taking control of them, and door blocking is just a waste of time. It also doesn't help that you will have seen all the enemies this game has to offer by level 5 (out of 9).
I recall there were couple of maps where door blocking was actually at least somewhat useful, maybe 7 and 9? don't recall for sure. Turrets, what comes to them I think whatever devs were planning for them, didn't made it to game. Now they their only function is that few of times in entire game I was able to use them to clear long range support Xenos from location I was about to enter.
- I think Streum were intending to make this a proper "Space Hulk" game in that it was supposed to be horror-ish, but they failed spectacularly at that, and it's a huge disadvantage. It's hard to be scared of the jeanstealers when they can hardly harm you, and you yourself are a mountain of steel that can make whole mobs of them explode with a handwave.
- All the time before release, I was expecting this game to be like Republic Commando, in that it wouldn't really be much of a tactical squad shooter, but you'd at least be able to continuously give your bruvas rudimentary orders and spam dat E button to make them engage in various weapons manoeuvres or haxx0rz, etc. Unfortunately, the degree of squad command here is limited to "stay here", "follow me", "HEAL PLZ". Meanwhile, if you could order them around to man special positions and the like, put enough of them on the whole level and marked a bunch on your map, it would help the level design and movement-through-level planning IMMENSELY.
So yeah.
I ultimately liekd it. But it's really a waste of potential tbh.
I think there was lot of effort, but this is unfinished product. While there were some great moments in SP, those same moments were even better in multiplayer (when it worked.) because I didn't needed to babysit anyone.
This is a game I really wanted to like and it's not entirely bad in sense (I played through it). I didn't suffer any horrible performance issues in SP mode, at least in comparison to Bioshock Remasters. Then, lot's of people are having issues and on MP side, there were were some practically few seconds long freezes few times. Connection issues are still there but player base is forming. Much easier to find a decent group than on last week. At least some players have learned maps, objectives, learned not be on each others way, etc.
Technical aspects aside, there are also other issues in MP. Character progression system doesn't work. Practically only way to reach class level 7 (and unlock those achievements) is soloing MP missions. There just isn't enough XP to level up to level 7 in single map if there are other decent players in squad. So it doesn't work. Also, while I wouldn't otherwise care, the thing that character progression is reset after completing MP chapter, on next mission everyone starts on level 1 again, sucks. Even with a decent team chapters are too long for this sort of system. So either developers should either increase XP given per kill, or make progressions system work from chapter to chapter.
Overall I still felt this was okay game. Not everyone cup of tea and I can't recommend this for anyone before another patch at least.
I also think this game lives and dies with MP. There are fans of tabletop and settings, maybe this can attain some sort of cult status, but only if developers fix the existing issues and pretty fast.
