Stellaris: Distant Stars

Reviewing a Paradox Interactive game is a tricky job. Within a year or two the game receives patches, new expansions and downloadable content, changing it completely. For long time Paradox Interactive customers such as myself, the base game is viewed as merely a foundation upon which the company will often build upon. Examples of this abound with Crusader Kings II, Europa Universalis IV and Hearts of Iron IV. Stellaris is no exception and while the base game is solid and fun, thanks to expansions such as Utopia and Apocalypse, it has changed considerably. Now Distant Stars comes along to add another layer to the foundation.

Being a downloadable content pack, Distant Stars adds a lot to the game. Rather than breakdown every addition, I want to focus on what I view as the main selling points of the pack. Otherwise I’d just be parroting the change log. First and foremost, Distant Stars adds a whole slew of events to the game. Stellaris already had a large number of events which gave life to its randomly generated galaxy. Distant Stars adds even more, prolonging the exploration phase and giving players who focus on it further benefits. Some of the new events have quest chains and consequences which I’d rather not spoil in the review. Suffice to say they are all interesting and quite surprising at points.

Another noticeable change brought by the content pack is for anomalies. Before, anomalies would be ranked on a 1 to 5 scale and could be failed, leading to some catastrophic events (and dead scientists). With Distant Stars, anomalies rating scale was doubled, reaching to 10. Furthermore, scientists can no longer fail anomalies, turning the ranking into as a multiplayer which increases research time. The balance of risk versus reward is still maintained though as the multiplayer can really stack up. Occupying a single scientist in an exploration vessel for upwards of two years to research an anomaly is a waste of resources, especially in the early game where every exploration ship counts.

Other additions include two new Leviathans, each with their own unique rewards. New perks as well as changes to old ones (Master Builders receives a huge overhaul that makes it even more desirable). Re-balancing of traditions. A few new technologies including an ability for science ships to travel via sub space, thus circumventing bottle necks. The hyperlane generation has also received a fair bit of tweaking, creating more bottle necks and natural constellations which allow for a proper strategic depth. AI difficulty scaling returns, having been previously stripped from the game, for people who want more challenge. The marauders’ behavior was also improved and once a player empire reaches a certain level of naval power, they would call off raids. Pirates spawn was adjusted and now they won’t spawn every decade (by mid-game, if you manage your empire well, they wouldn’t spawn at all). Some event fixes were also added, in particular the Enigmatic Fortress and the Worm-In-Waiting.

Yet I haven’t talked about the most major addition to the game – The L gates. L gates are a new mid-game crisis centered around these gates. Unlike other gateways, these spawn only in black hole systems at their center and are scattered all over the galaxy. They each bear the name “L Gate” and cannot be restored even if the player had researched the gateway activation technology. Instead, the player needs to gather seven insights through exploration. Once all insights are gathered, a new technology would become available called “L Gate Insights”. Researched, it will create a special project for a scientist to preform on the first L gate whose system the player had claimed. The L gates all connect to a constellation outside of the galaxy known as the L cluster.

Without spoiling what is out there, I can say that the gates were sealed for a reason. That said the L cluster has its own rewards. Special strategic resources that can only be found there, plenty of colonizeable planets that can be quickly and cheaply terraformed and lets not forget the L gate itself which connects to dozens of locations across the galaxy. This makes the L cluster quite valuable not just economically but also militarily. However the L gates must be treated as a proper mid game crisis, albeit one the player has some control over its timing (unless the AI beats you to it, at which point you are most assuredly in trouble). Thus opening the L gate should only be done when the player is truly prepared for it.

Graphics wise the content patch adds binary and even trinary star systems, brown dwarf suns and ice belts, making the universe even more beautiful and varied. Sound wise I haven’t noticed any additions to the soundtrack though it is solid as ever. That said there are a few new voice packs for notifications as well as a fully voiced tutorial advisor which can aid newer or returning players.

Overall I had a lot of fun with the new content and it did get me back into playing Stellaris for a few weeks straight. All the additions are solid and for its price tag of 10$ I feel like I got my money’s worth. It feels weird to grade a downloadable content pack but I’d give Distant Stars a solid 8/10 as it adds a lot to the base game. That said when it comes to recommending it, I’d put it strictly for Stellaris fans only. If you don’t like Stellaris or were turned away by the major changes in the Apocalypse expansion, this content pack won’t change your mind.

8/10 for Stellaris fans only.

Battletech

I am no stranger to the Battletech universe. As a kid I played several of the MechWarrior games so I have a passing familiarity with it. That said, the newest game set in the universe, Battletech (Yes, that is not going to be confusing in the future whatsoever) which had just recently released allowed me to get a deeper dive into a universe fraught with war and giant robots, known as Mechs.

For those unfamiliar with the setting, the game does a good enough job summarizing key points. Suffice to say its the 31st century and everything sucks. Humanity has spread across hundreds of stars but has lost a lot of its technological advances thanks to internecine wars which wreaked havoc on many worlds. Thus, people cling to what working relics of the past they can maintain as a new feudal society rose to prominence, with the Mechs – giant bipedal war machines, acting as its equivalent of knights, only dozens of meter tall and able to destroy a small city with Gauss rifles and phased plasma cannons. In this universe, noble houses wage war with each other over planets and technological relics.

The story itself is set in the Aurigan Reach, a region of space in the Periphery, located between several of the major powers in the Battletech universe. The player takes the role of a mercenary captain, down on their luck with debt and loans piling up. When a mysterious client offers the player a chance to climb out from their financial black hole, they’ll get embroiled in the struggles of the noble houses in the Reach.

The main story of the game wouldn’t shame a season of Game of Thrones. There is a healthy dose of drama, intrigue, backstabbing and reversals to truly engage the player. The various supporting characters all play roles in the bigger story and have interesting backgrounds of their own. The motivations of all parties are quite fleshed out, amplifying the tragedy of their actions. Suffice to say the story both surprised me at points and had me invested in it heavily. That said the game takes place before the invasion of the clans, so sadly no Timber Wolves.

Gameplay wise, the game is of the tactical turned based combat genre. The player operates a squad of 4 Mechs (also known as a Lance in-universe) which they can customize beforehand. Once deployed, the Mechs will be under the player’s control as they attempt to complete objectives. The combat system itself can be described as complicated at best, and obtuse at worst.

Mechs are assigned their combat turn per round depending on their initiative, which is dictated by their class and pilot skills. The heavier the Mech, the later its turn in combat would come. If the player has several Mechs with the same initiative, they can choose whichever one they wants to move or decide to reserve them, thus further delaying their turn. Mechs are usually able to move first then shoot. The further a Mech travels the more evasion it gains, making it harder to hit by the enemy.

Thus movement and positioning are key in combat. Mechs are armored, with the front and sides being the most heavily armored parts. Its important at all times to present the front of the Mech to the enemy as it is able to absorb the most damage while maneuvering to the back of hostile Mechs and vehicles where the armor is thinnest. A Mech that doesn’t move during its turn will simply become a sitting target.

Terrain itself is vitally important. Battletech operates both on elevation and lines of sight. Certain weapons require unobstructed line of sight while others offer indirect fire, not to mention the ranges. The game does a good job showing firing arcs, optimal ranges and whether the target is visible or hidden behind terrain. The other role terrain plays is in stability and heat management. Mechs, being bipedal walkers, must be stable. Weapon impacts may destabilize them, causing them to be knocked down which injures the pilot, temporarily decreases initiative and allows the enemy to get Called Shots (focuses the firepower on a specific part of the Mech, thus able to inflict greater damage). Things like rough terrain increase stability damage and decrease overall movement.

Heat is another factor in fighting as weapons generate heat. Each Mech has a heat threshold which can be improved with pilot skills. Once a Mech passes the threshold, it risks internal damage and worse, emergency shutdown which takes it out of action for a round. Terrain can contribute to heat retention (like geothermal fields) or aid in its dispersal (such as lakes and rivers). Biomes also play a role, as snowy biomes give Mechs lower heat retention while deserts and lunar landscapes cause Mechs to overheat much faster. Thus it is important to pick the right Mechs for the environment.

For these reasons, the game doesn’t feature an overwatch function. Instead the player must be careful and pick and choose which weapon systems to employ, at what distances as they watch heat accumulation and effectiveness, being mindful of the enemy’s next turn. The point of a battle is always to incapacitate hostile Mechs. There are several ways to achieve that:

The most tried and tested way is to blow out the main torso. This is not an easy feat considering that shots have a percentage modifier to hit and that hits’ damage can be halved by armor, brace command and pilot skill. The second tactic is to incapacitate the pilot, usually by causing recurring injury as pilots have limited injury tokens which can be improved through skills and equipment. Third option is to blow both legs off a Mech, but considering leg armor is second only to torso in thickness, this isn’t very recommended. Fourth case is lethal cockpit damage, usually by blowing out the Mech’s head. This is very hard to achieve due to the small target area (even with Called Shots and a skilled pilot I never saw more than an 18% chance). The last option depends on the type of Mech, as those that use missiles and artillery house the ammunition inside of them. Destroying the part of the Mech where they are stored can cause internal explosions which can bring the Mech down from the inside.

Last part of combat are the pilots themselves. Pilots have 4 stats, each corresponding to a different aspect of the Mech. Pilots gain experience through completing missions, enabling them to improve their stats. Once enough experience was gained, pilots can also unlock special abilities, specializing in one of the 4 branches and having a secondary ability in another. The 4 branches are Gunnery, which improves hit chance, Piloting which increases evasion and melee attacks (as well as stability thresholds), Guts, which increases health and heat threshold (don’t ask me how) and finally Tactics which gives better detection range as well as decreases penalty for indirect fire. Pilots can die in combat and injuries are so common place that its always recommended to have alternates just in case. The pilots themselves are not bound to specific Mechs and can be easily re-assigned.

It is this complicated combat system that can either frustrate a player or satisfy them. For my part, as much as certain aspects galled me, overall I did enjoy it. That said the game’s difficulty is quite wonky. There is no adjustable difficulty level, and certain missions can easily overwhelm a player. One bad mission can easily derail a campaign. Thus save scumming isn’t just necessary, but is recommended. Mainline story missions are more balanced but contract work can often surprise you as the difficulty indicator only tells the player the total tonnage of a hostile lance, not the number of hostiles or Mechs (many missions will have reinforcement waves of hostile Mechs). Often times the player will have to choose between just completing the main objective then bolting, standing their ground for a bonus or just withdrawing.

This is a problem as money in the game is tight. To get better Mechs the player has to either locate a planet selling them, often at an inflated price, or salvage them from the battlefield, which may take several battles to find enough parts to assemble one complete Mech. This forces the player to choose in contract negotiations whether to pick more salvage and receive less pay or sacrifice overall salvage for a much needed monetary relief. Salvage is also important in finding and getting better weapon systems.

Mech customization is a factor as well. Each Mech has a set tonnage and number of hardpoints and it is up to the player to decide what to load them with. Players can replace generic weapon systems with upgraded ones, add more heat sinks to better manage heat or jump jets for better maneuverability. They can even decide to just remove certain weapon systems and focus instead on thicker armor. There are many ways to tweak a Mech to suit a player’s playstyle though that said, Mechs do have set roles.

Graphics wise, the game looks beautiful. The Mech models are detailed, giving them a very realistic look of bulky war machines with paint flaking and scratches. During combat as the Mech accumulates damage it can be seen on the model. Sparks will fly out of sockets of lost weapon mounts and fires will burst out. As heat builds up the Mech will start venting steam and glow redder. Environments are nicely detailed though not as much as the Mechs, and physics can glitch at times leading to some hilarious animations. Overall though its quite a pretty and visceral robot punch out game.

The game’s cutscenes can be described as still images with limited movement added to them. They remind me Battlefleet Gothic: Armada with their style. They are quite beautiful to look at, and the voice acting itself is quite good. Sound design is satisfying as Mechs sound like the lumbering metallic constructs they are. The creaking of metallic limbs, the high pitch of lasers and the dreaded shrieking hiss of a missile barrage all add to the experience. The soundtrack though was completely forgettable, so much so that I quickly gave up on it and just had podcasts and my own music playing in the background for most of the campaign.

There are several nitpicks to be had. The player is given the illusion of choice in dialogue segments, but it all boils down basically to roleplaying. Loading times are an arse. I wouldn’t usually comment about this but having just bought a new mid range rig, I thought it worth mentioning. Some levels would take minutes to load up. Travel between systems also brings the game’s flow to a standstill and contract work dries up in a system after a couple of missions. The game tends to favor bigger, heavier Mechs as it progresses, changing the game style a tad (from fast and flanky to slow and lumbering). Oh and the game remains a 4 Mech lance for the entire duration.

That said, many of my complaints can be countered with the narrative. Of course travel between systems takes time due to the backwardness of human civilization. That time is also used for repairs and healing crew members. It is only logical that a mercenary outfit will only have a few contracts thrown its way per planet as competition is fierce and will need to seek higher paid work elsewhere. A Battletech squad is a 4 Mech lance and of course bigger Mechs are preferable due to their thick armor and punishing firepower (my favorite is just kicking smaller Mechs with an Atlas II and seeing them explode from the sheer power of the strike). Since Mechs are such an important commodity of course they’d be hard to find and expensive to buy.

Which brings me to the final score. I wrestled with myself for a whole week over the score. It is part of the reason I hate, though understand, the need for numerical scores. Having fretted for a week, the game’s ending was the clincher, raising the score a whole point (which tells you just how much I liked the story). Thus:

Battletech is a good game which brings its namesake universe to life. It has a deep combat system, a good story and beautiful graphics and sound design. However, its soundtrack is forgettable, its difficulty level non adjustable and certain game design choices may turn off players. 8/10, I recommend it to Battletech fans and newcomers alike.

Frostpunk

Frostpunk is one of those hard to classify games similar in a way to Papers, Please (And yes, that is a tall accolade). The best way to describe it is as a story driven city building crisis management game and even this description does little to do it justice. Suffice to say it is quite an interesting game which flew under the radar for me.

The game itself comes from 11 bit studios, whose other notable title is This War of Mine and the two games share a similar theme of survival in inhuman conditions and choice. While This War of Mine mainly dealt with the survival of a few individuals holed up in a bombed out building in a war torn city, Frostpunk story is a tad bigger and more apocalyptic.

You play as the captain of an expedition in an alternate, steampunkish 19th century, sent north to locate an experimental generator as the entire world descends into a hellish ice age. The temperatures keep plummeting and most of the world has succumbed to the cold, becoming a bleak, snowy wasteland. Upon discovering the generator, you must marshal your band of survivors to build a shelter from the growing cold and save whatever is left of humanity in the face of mounting challenges.

Stated in the opening paragraph, the game is a city building\crisis management game. You start with a set population and must feed it, keep it warm, housed and healthy. The cold is a constant enemy to battle out as it can take its toll, thus heat management is a major aspect of the game. There are various resources you can harvest and mine, from coal (needed to stoke the generator and keep the city warm), wood and metal (common construction materials), steam cores (needed for advanced machinery) raw food and rations. Of course materials are scarce and research is needed to unlock advanced buildings which allow you to access deposits.

Scavenging and scouting are also a vital part of the game and important to the story. Early on you can research and build a beacon which allows you to send out search parties. These expeditions can travel outside the city and find survivors to bolster your city, materials for buildings and advance the overall plot. The game itself allows you to pick and choose where to send the expeditions and unlocks more locations as the story progresses. Each location will often have a journal entry besides materials and survivors, further fleshing the world of the game and adding to the backstory.

Story driven should be emphasized. The game has a story line, with the story advancing by certain triggers\time stamps. This means that certain events will always occur, giving less replay value but allowing players to learn from failures and better plan in their next playthrough. The story itself is unique to each scenario, and each varies in length, goals and emphasized mechanics. Of course, each is full of challenges and hardships.

Challenge is the operative word. Besides managing resources, the player must keep an eye on two gouges; Discontent and Hope. Should hope fall too low, the people would lose faith in their survival. High discontent will cause bloodshed, insubordination and an uprising. Managing these two gouges is hard considering various events and laws the player has to navigate on a daily basis. Keeping discontent low and hope high seems obvious, but when the survival of the city depends on people working 16 hour shifts and sometimes double ones just to keep the coal mines running to feed the generator, and you too would be facing an exhausted and disgruntled workforce.

Morality is the main theme of the game. Each choice you make either in the overarching story or in the daily events is important. Would you enact more draconian laws to keep people working and content or would you turn to faith to soothe the fears of the population and be tempted to slide into a theocratic state? Would the shortage of workers make you enact laws forcing children to work, risking their lives in mines and factories, or would you keep them safe in shelters as the coal piles dwindle? And always, there is the growing cold… The game often forces you to ask just how much of humanity are you willing to sacrifice just to keep the city going for another day.

The game’s aesthetics reinforce this theme. The landscape is almost an unbroken snowy terrain. What isn’t white is either frozen blue, brown or industrial grey. The only bright colors are those of the generator’s flames. The art direction itself is reminiscent of This War of Mine and tends to look closer to a graphic novel than realistic. The graphics themselves are quite beautiful, the city looks alive and the buildings and people are very detailed. A major theme of most buildings is just how roughshod and cobbled together they look.

The sound design is great. The sounds of the wind howling and water freezing and thawing are a constant companion. The soundtrack itself is filled with haunting orchestral pieces, many employing the violin to great effect. It is one of the few games in which I didn’t feel the need to play my own music or have a podcast\tv show\movie playing in the background. A true compliment you can be certain of that.

That said, there are some drawbacks. While the game eliminates the most tedious aspect of city management for me – the plateauing (when the player has enough income to build whatever he or she likes and is left with the task of just improving\maintaining the city), it may hamper the enjoyment of others who do like it. The city building itself is quite constricted due to the setting, which can also turn off players of the genre. The story beats themselves are set in stone and don’t vary, meaning there is little replay value once you beat a scenario. As for choices, while the game aims for the players to make “Moral Choices” it more often fails in my opinion. The only times I really felt like making a moral choice was when I was forced to by a lack of resources rather than anything else the game presented me with. Once you gain sufficient experience with the game its also easy to plan accordingly and negate this entire aspect which seems like a failure of game design.

All told the game is an intriguing take on the city building genre. Has interesting lore and good world building. Presents the player with difficulty and challenge while telling a compelling story of survival in the harshest of environments. Scenarios have their unique takes and never overstay their welcome. That said, has little replay value and is very constricted in its nature. Not to mention falters when it comes to its “Morality” aspect.

8/10 would recommend.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2

In the last few years Warhammer Fantasy (Not to be confused with its offshoot Warhammer 40,000) has seen a revival on the computer. Vermintide, Mordheim: City of the Damned and Total War Warhammer have served to bring the tabletop game back from the dead (Let’s not talk of Age of Sigmar) and introduce it to a wider audience.

However, I profess that of the three, Vermintide was the only game I didn’t play. Part of it stemmed from my dislike of horde based games. Though I have played both Left 4 Dead 2 and Payday 2 (As well as a brief stint of Killing Floor 2) they never had a lasting appeal for me. This might be due to the reason you need a good group of friends to maintain interest in them and that the constant grind (i.e. replaying levels over and over again) quickly erodes what little joy there is in these games. Thus when I received a free copy from a friend, I didn’t really have much in the way of expectations.

I was proven wrong on so many levels. Vermintide 2 is one of the best games I’ve played in recent years and that is not an accolade I give lightly. The game clears the first hurdle (Lack of interest) by actually having a story and characters. You play as a member of a small strike force captured by the Skaven as they attempt to activate the Skittergate, a bizarre contraption that should it work, would allow the Skaven allies, the Rotbloods, to mount a full scale attack of the Empire from inside as well as summon daemons and other nasty creatures from the Warp. It is up to your strike force to escape and work to sabotage the gate in a series of missions, each contributing in a way to the overarching goal.

Some readers would of course be confused by the terms used, but the game does a good enough job of informing the casual player of the stakes while giving more informed players a taste of the rich lore. The characters themselves do a good enough job of expositing in their banter, fleshing them further via their interactions. This is the second selling point for me as there is a character progression and skill tree, as well as weapon customization allowing for deeper gameplay not to mention actual personality. Kerillian, my favorite character, can be summed up as a murderous psychopath bitch who spends most of the game demeaning the other characters and reminding them of her exalted status of being an Asrai (Wood Elf).

Characters earn XP by completing missions and collecting items in levels. Each level adds more damage and health to the character (Represented as power). Every 5 levels a character earns a talent point which is used to unlock skills or ‘Talents’. The point allocation can be changed in the lobby, allowing players to change and tweak their characters before every mission, thus giving more flexibility. Added to it, every 7 levels a character unlocks a different class with different talent trees and unique abilities. This allows party members to try or fill different roles if needed without sacrificing their character progression.

The game has 3 major roles, coined on reddit as Tank\Striker\Ranger. Tanks are, as the name implies, able to soak damage and draw aggression. Strikers do a fair deal of damage in close combat and deal a lot of damage to bosses as well as help clear hordes. Rangers play as long range support, dispatching dangerous enemies from afar and helping allies. Though each character starts by fulfilling a certain role, as said before, they can change class and transition roles, thanks in part to weapon customization and talent points.

When I wrote weapon customization, I truly meant it. There is a wide variety of weapons available to each character, both with unique looks and a wide range of properties. Weapons themselves are given at the end of a level via loot boxes (I’ll address them further down the review) and differ in power and rarity. The more rare an item, the more secondary properties it has, thus making it more powerful in combat. The amount of weapon types is quite impressive, each with their own animations and qualities. From fast attack weapons like swords and daggers, to more powerful axes and maces and even slow but highly damaging halberds. For range you have the assortment of shortbows and longbows, crossbows, pistols, rifles and even experimental revolvers. Each has its own pros and cons such as the longbow’s armor piercing property but long wind time or the sword and dagger combination that can cleave through enemies fast but easily glances off armored foes.

Added to the game is a deep crafting system. As the player progresses in levels and gains more powerful weapons, old equipment can be salvaged to its basic components and used to augment current weapons or craft new ones. With rarer items producing better parts that can even be used to re-roll the properties of other weapons, thus making them far more beneficial. This mitigates the RNG factor of the game somewhat as well as allow players to keep their inventory less cluttered. It also gives further purpose to level grinding, as the extra loot can all be smelted into salvage materials to make better weapons.

It seems in the current gaming landscape loot boxes are inescapable but thankfully Vermintide 2 handles them well. These loot boxes are always dropped at the end of a level and upon gaining a level. They will always drop level appropriate weapons and trinkets that can be used by the current character. There is no option to buy in-game currency to spend on them. Even better, these loot boxes can be augmented by exploring the level and gathering tomes and grimoires which also give small XP boosts. However this adds some further challenge as tomes take the place of healing items and grimoires take the slot of potions and have the added effect of lowering overall party health by a third per grimoire (Thankfully there are only 2 per level). This gives level exploration a boost as well as allow a well coordinated party to gain better loot.

This all works to make level grinding more tolerable as each re-play can be used to explore for more secrets, get more loot for the smelter and quickly level up other characters. One can play the game solo on lower difficulties as the bots are competent enough and are able to respond to different situations adequately. However on higher difficulties they can easily get swept by the hordes and more on one occasion their programming left me dismayed, thus tarnishing some of the single player experience.

Gameplay wise it is a horde based game. You start the level and make your way to your objective fighting regular enemies and hordes that spawn from time to time. The look and behavior of different enemies does well to shake things up. You have the genre staples such as the slow lumbering but hard hitting enemies, fast berserkers that quickly drain your health, armored enemies that take a lot of hits and sneaky ones that attack from behind. All told the fact you fight both Skaven and Norscan raiders gives all enemies unique looks and behaviors that make every fight challenging but satisfying. The focus itself is mostly melee, with very few enemies employing ranged weapons and overall is very satisfying. You can feel the impact of the weapon as it cleaves through a wall of fur and teeth.

Boss characters are also diverse, with Spawns of Chaos flailing around, grabbing player characters and munching on them to recover health, Stormfiends with warp flamethrowers and heavy armor and Bile Trolls with vicious clubs, acid spit and natural health regeneration. Last (And pretty least) is the Ratogre which is the most vanilla enemy there is, simply an oversized rat which is fast and hard hitting but has little else going for it. The boss encounters can happen anywhere in a level though some missions will always have specific encounters in them. It is not unusual to have 2 boss encounters in a level (Especially after you used up all your health potions after surviving a particularly vicious horde wave and are trying to catch your breath).

Level design is really good, there is enough freedom as to not feel oppressed by the linearity of the levels and there is good variety in visuals. You will go through ruined cities, sewers (Sadly it seems mandatory in EVERY videogame to have a sewer level), woodlands, mines, farmlands and so forth. I rarely got lost in a level and always knew where to go next. Whats more, the art team has really done its research and you get beautiful vistas from seemingly pastoral farmlands with seas of wheat, to ruined, dilapidated cities struck by disaster to ivy grown ruins. Every location is both beautiful and memorable.

Graphics wise the game is beautiful. It is stunning to view, especially the backgrounds and sky boxes. I caught myself more than once just staring at the landscape before rudely stabbed in the back by a dirty Skaven. Am not the biggest judge of graphics but the game looks good even on the low settings I run it with due to the age of my gaming rig. I’d imagine on higher graphics it is breathtaking. It really made me wish the team would make a Skyrim style game of Warhammer Fantasy, since they certainly have the skills in the arts department at least.

Difficulty is varied, with higher difficulty levels granting better loot but in return beefing up enemy health and damage. The lowest difficulty can be breezed through with bots alone but has a power cap on loot, incentivizing playing on higher difficulty. Difficulty levels also determine the amount and availability of health items and ammunition, ramping up the challenge on all fronts. The top two difficulty levels also add friendly fire to the equation, which at that point seem just plain mean. Difficulty can be further customized by deeds, a loot box drop item that imposes certain restrictions on a level in return for guaranteed better loot (Like no health potions at all, all mobs turned into armored enemies and so forth). It really ramps up difficulty with these special rules, adding to replayability.

Of course, no game is perfect (Except Stardew Valley and I am willing to stab anyone who disagrees with me!) and Vermintide 2 has its fair share of faults. As mentioned before, the companion AI really lets you down on higher difficulty levels and has a tendency to break in certain situations. Even on lower difficulty levels the game has a nasty tendency to swamp higher level characters with almost impossible enemy combinations. The exploration aspect often forces the player into jumping puzzles that don’t suit the engine well, making them often frustrating. Last point are the loot boxes themselves. I just dislike RNG loot drops in general and had my fair share of disappointments hoping for better gear and receiving nothing valuable (Yeah, I know, but still!).

In summary, Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a fun, horde based game with good story, characters and mechanics. It is enjoyable both alone and in a group and really brings the Warhammer experience to life. Score wise I’d have to give 2 separate scores to the game (Single and Multiplayer scores).

Singleplayer – 7/10

Multiplayer – 9/10