I decided to do this all in one post just so it is consolidated and I’m not making a bunch of different posts.
Character Creation & Customization:
Overall I was actually really satisfied with creating my own character and how much effort went into creating the back story for my character. The interactions between the characters with the varying backgrounds was great as well, wether your character and their character were far separated or shared similar experiences. With creating my character’s appearance it definitely is not robust but it works perfectly and I was able to make a character that I loved and I also did not run into anyone who looked exactly like me which is great. Once in the game and I was then able to customize what I wore, even though it was very limited, the options are great for what there is. Since I reached lvl 30 I was able to nearly get the full inquisition outfit just the headgear wasn’t included in the beta. I liked that as I moved up in level I was given access to flak armor and in the end a full set making me really feel like I went from being a penal soldier working off my sentence to a for lifer in the inquisition. One thing I did notice was that it appears the outfit options are locked to specific color ways which in the end is fine but I’d personally love if we could edit the appearance of an item so that you don’t always have to be red and black or that gray blue color, it’d give more personality to your character but like I said in the end what we have I imagine will be great and if that isn’t an option it definitely isn’t the end of the world. We didn’t have access to the extra gear pieces or insignias so I can’t really comment on them, I do hope with the insignias we’ll be given options to place them wherever we like or at least in a few different areas to again increase personality. Overall with what I had access to I loved the whole experience of making my character and getting more equipment for him.
Combat:
Firearms - Starting with the rifles we had access to, appearance wise every rifle looked absolutely fantastic and made sense to me. The reload animations were beautiful and I really appreciated the occasional animation where your character would mess up the reload, an example is how they would accidentally smack the power pack into the mag well before sliding the power pack in. The sounds of each rifle are fantastic, I really enjoyed with the lasgun that when you were on your last few rounds you could hear the power pack was fizzling out. The mounted flashlights are really well done and definitely assisted with picking out targets hiding in dark corners or against a darker background. Overall I am incredibly satisfied with the rifles appearance wise. Moving on to the gameplay of the rifles there is very clearly setup effective ranges and power/calibre increase between the firearms we had access to. Starting with the recoil it quickly became clear that there were recoil patterns for all rifles, I have no complaints with this, while shooting these rifles it was great learning how to control each one and I had no issues keeping on target and tracking my targets while they moved and I was shooting. With the differences between lasguns and autoguns the effective ranges became very clear, lasguns went back and forth between far and medium ranges while autoguns went between medium to close ranges. That being said I definitely was still able to get in close with the lasgun and really cut down my targets and with the autoguns I was able to sit back and take heads off of my targets but there was very clearly strengths and weaknesses when taking these two types of rifles to their extremes. Both types were very satisfying to use though and I actually don’t have any complaints with the rifles themselves. It felt really good firing, reloading, and getting headshots with those beautiful headshot sounds. The main downside I noticed with ranged combat was that there seemed to be hit registration issues sometimes and that the flinch may be a little aggressive sometimes and if this were to be toned down it would just need to be a little bit but at the end of the day we are getting shot and it was not impossible to back away and approach from a new angel to re-engage targets. Another issue was that sometimes with the ambient fog/smoke it could be hard to see who was shooting at you, wether this is changed at all to make smoke a little easier to see through is fine if it happens or not because like with the flinching it’s not impossible to disengage, move, and re-engage your targets or just wait for the flash and shoot slightly above it. I also enjoyed the amount of ammo that I had as a veteran, it didn’t feel like I was ever punished for mainly engaging targets from range while my Ogryn and Zealot engaged in melee. Overall I was very satisfied with ranged combat and enjoyed engaging with squads of chaos guardsman in firefights.
Melee - I personally did not play a lot of Vermintide so I won’t be able to speak from that experience and compare there. From experience I do have with other melee oriented games I did quite enjoy it for the times that I spent hacking through enemies. Like the firearms there were clear strengths and weaknesses between each melee weapon. Each weapon served it’s purpose well from what I could tell and overall the melee combat felt very smooth to me and it was nice that you could have some back and forth with enemies. The main issue I noticed was that sometimes even though you would dodge and look like you were fully out of the way of an attack or grapple you would still get tagged by it but other times you would be missed by it.
With both sides of combat, ranged and melee, I had a ton of fun and even going through those same missions over and over I didn’t get bored of the game once. The cycle of enemies that appeared was great and I enjoyed the variety that existed and how different each level was with the changing spawns for enemies. Overall was great and I personally just had a few minor issues while playing that I’ve explained above.
Veteran Class
All of my play time was done on this class during the beta as I looked forward to it the most. I’ve always wanted a game where I could play as a guardsman and you guys have absolutely nailed it. It’s truly a great ranged experience and I love that playing as this class I am not punished for shooting a majority of the enemies with my lasgun. The amount of ammo I had and could find was perfect allowing me to cover all my friends throughout the whole mission with my lasgun. The ability I had I really liked because it allowed me to focus specials and really protect my friends from them by allowing me to call them out and put some serious damage on them either killing them or weakening them enough that my friends could easily kill them. The only thing about the ability I wish it was at least 2 seconds longer, the recharge time felt good but the time I had it felt really short. Overall I am really please and felt very satisfied playing as the Veteran. I’m excited to see what the future holds for this class and what new customization the class will receive.
Level Design and Missions:
Every level we went into was absolutely beautiful and the lighting was amazing. Seeing Valkyries fly by, Hydra turrets firing, a Valkyrie flying in and blowing up anti aircraft guns with rockets, disabled leman russ tanks, old imperial guard defenses and positions taken over by the enemy, and so much more every level was just purely interesting to me and every time I went through I found new small details that I had missed before on my last run. I really felt like I was within 40k and like I was a guardsman fighting for the Imperium. The mission objectives were great as well and I enjoyed how interactive the mission objectives always were. I also enjoyed each narrator and the interactions everyone had with those characters. Overall the missions and levels were very beautiful and fun to play.
Enemy Variety
Every enemy I enjoyed fighting in this game. The pox walkers were fun to cleave through and their animations were great throwing themselves over cover and at you trying to surround you as quickly as they could. The chaos guardsman bounding between cover while another gives covering fire, the glowing green eyes in the dark were beautiful. The large hulking mauler with thick armor plating bearing down on you to smash your skull in. The gunners with their hot shot lasguns providing a high volume of fire forcing you to reposition to re-engage. The fear that would come from hearing the beeping of a bomb on a pox burster getting closer and closer. Hearing the dogs howl in the distance and the ticking of the flamer when he got close. All of the enemies and their variety is absolutely amazing, the audio cues once you learned them were perfect and really would have me snap in the direction I heard it coming from. Every enemy in this game when either left alone or allowed to group up together truly become incredibly deadly, a simple two pox walkers are able to quietly sneak up behind you and wack you from behind doing some intimidating damage. When you’re playing on level 3 missions and above you really have to work together covering each other and keeping your head on a swivel to stay alive and I love it. For issues that I have with the enemies there really are very few, my main ones were that the dogs seemed a little too beefy maybe especially for how fast they are because they’re definitely difficult to hit. Another one is with the gunners unless they decide to start suppressing they are very inactive and kinda just stand or hide, it’d be cool if they had a normal quick burst they would do at you until they start fully suppressing. The last one would be if mutants maybe had a slightly wider turning arch because they turn a 90° corner on a dime at full speed it seems like. Other than that I loved all the enemies and how they acted and supported each other.
Leveling and Challenges
I didn’t find the leveling experience to be annoying or tedious and the pace for leveling felt really good to me. I had played for 42 hours mostly playing level 2 and 3 missions and I reached trust level 30 in 3 days. I found that pace to be pretty good as it got me access to all the weapons both ranged and melee giving me great variety and I got beautiful cosmetics as well, if it were to be touched I would say only just slightly slower but otherwise I think the leveling pace is great. Once I reached level 11 and had access to the Requisitorium I found most of the challenges to be good but also a bit lacking, it’d be great if there were ranged challenges added that included getting headshots and more challenges that included hunting down specific special enemies and killing a certain amount of them.
The Hub
With the limited access we had to the hub there really isn’t much to talk about besides it being utterly beautiful and all the vendors were very easy to find. I am interested to see what opens up on full release. My only gripe was that my friends and I could never be in the same hub together, I would strongly recommend making this a feature.
Summed up
This is my first time really diving into a Fat Shark game and with just a taste of the closed beta I am truly in love with what was made and enjoyed every second playing to the point that I was never bored and didn’t want to stop which that was with a limited version of the game. I am very excited for release and honestly have few negatives with the game overall, all of my play time was with the veteran and I can absolutely say you guys have beautifully done this class and allowed me to truly feel like a guardsman which is what I’ve always wanted. I love everything about this game and want to congratulate the dev team on everything they have accomplished. For me I would need to spend more time in the full game to find any new issues I might have with it but for now again they are very minimal. You guys did awesome and I would recommend this game to all my friends new or old to the 40k universe.