Darktide vs Space Marine 2

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Wow. You don’t really realize what you have either until its gone or you are presented with dogsh*t.

First off I’d like to thank the dev’s for the work they did on Darktide’s melee/gun/gore/ragdoll systems. Maybe after playing for nearly 1500 hours I started becoming numb to the reality of how lucky we are with this games combat. Unfortunately the combat is hindered by the current dev’s team inability to release anything actually meaningful with each of these updates. Let’s hope the itemization update is the start of a new era.

Onto why I made this post - Space marines 2 melee combat is atrociously bad. The game is fun, it looks amazing, environments are amazing, story is interesting and engaging. That’s where it stops though.

The combat itself leaves a TON to be desired. I feel like I am swinging a toothpick around mindlessly while enemies rip through paper mache armor my mother made for me. Yes, I know the Xeno’s are this ever evolving threat with insane adaptability and much more. It doesn’t change the fact that trying to melee in a horde is a similar experience to a Psyker running a dueling sword and trying to melee in the midst of a 100+ horde - it just doesn’t work.

Anyone else have similar thoughts? Anyone think I am just completely wrong? I would love to hear some opinions

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I started on the 3rd difficulty and did 2 missions. It was insanely hard and requires a lot of thought. I turned it back down to the 2nd difficulty and now I’m at the end of the campaign.

If you think the combat is mindless and easy, I would implor you to increase the difficulty. I’d say it’s on par for Darktide on damnation at the 3rd difficulty.

Also, once you start seeing the other enemy types and races, it starts to get a lot more varied. I’m having a lot of fun at the end

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Also, there is combos you have to learn for melee for each weapon that do different things.
I dont think anything compares to the fun combat of Darktide, but SM2 gameplay is much deeper than I thought it’d be

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I was having fun in the beginning until half the missions started throwing ranged enemies that shoot you from literally 200 yards away. Then you start being thrown into missions that require you to defend stuff with these horrid AI bots and it makes all the shortcomings even MORE apparent. I know you can parry practically every melee attack even if its not glowing but man this game needs a basic block button lol

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I wouldn’t call adding combos onto melee weapons deep especially considering you can’t achieve a combo if you can’t START the combo because you’re being bombarded with melee attacks from 10 directions.

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Yea I know what you mean. I actually started using my guns more for that kind of stuff. There’s definitely a lot more types of enemies in SM2 so it makes it a lot harder to strategize for me

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What difficulty r u playing on, that was happening to me difficulty 3, but not 2. I figured I’m just not good enough to do 3 yet

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I was playing on veteran then I lowered it to 2, then after doing the defend the giant glowing blue spinning thing and getting destroyed I am considering keeping it at 1 until I finish the campaign.

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lol fair enough! I think it’s just gonna take awhile for all of us to get used to the combat.

Try PVE missions though! I don’t like the default ult you get in the campaign. The jetpack and grappling hook are much better imo for my gameplay style. Also you level up your guy, like Darktide, so the gameplay starts to get faster and easier

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Yeah the jetpack alone makes it into a completely different game where I actually feel capable of dealing with any threat lol

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I suspect thats quite common in many games. Burnout is a real thing after all.

Im gonna say it, and I dont care who hears me…

I prefer Darktide over Vermintide 2 now.

There, I said it.

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I’ve tried going back to v2 about 5 different times in the past two years and every single time I load into a mission and start meleeing enemies I instantly want to go back to Darktide lol.

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Darktide’s core competency has always been the combat loop, it’s amazing. That gem is what has made anything about this title worth squat and differentiated it from ither titles, and expecting others to match that is a tall order. Darktide’s problem has been everything around that central combat loop was poorly executed or fundamentally unfun.

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The base idea of melee combat is great imo… dodging and blocking specific attack patterns… blocking or dodging an attack at the right moment u get a timed window for an “melee shot”… U shoot ur enemy right in his ugly face after he screwed his attack… Rinse and repeat till u softened that lump of meat to finally disassemble it with an glorious execution… That part is very satisfying… What feels weird is the staggering from all the little critters who trying to kill u in that time where u face the big guys… That’s the part where the “Space Marine” feeling drops and u think u are actually made of sugar… Some adjustments needed here imo…
I’m excited to see what they make of it…

One suggestion: ppl have to stop comparing DT with SM2 … Apples and pears and so on… We should be happy that we now have both games

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I think that is my biggest gripe - while I enjoy the melee system to a POINT it is majorly hindered by the constant barrage of chip damage from these tiny enemies that go straight through melee attacks and more. Then you combine that with spawning 10 ranged enemies 100 yards away on a ledge who have near 100% accuracy. Not to mention the dude who shoot the icicle poison spikes at you THEN the flying glob of skin that shoots the poison balls at you. Like bruh. I need a f*ckin turrent mounted on my shoulders to deal with this stuff properly if I am partied with AI bots.

I think that’s causing some of these issues though. The enemy AI HARD focuses the player themselves rather than the AI. Once you get one or two other actual players in there stuff becomes much more enjoyable.

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the thing that made me crinkle my nose from the gameplay videos i’ve seen was the more experienced players surviving by spam rolling around

they should made it like in witcher 3 where you can dodge attacks by just stepping aside

works well with ranged attacks aswell unless you don’t dodge into those, but needs some sort of lock on system to work though

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If you have a jet pack you can do side steps lol. It’s on a cooldown though which kind of ruins the stepping fun

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yes this would be tons helpfull, but with no cooldown and for all classes, just by using your leg power

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Man, Witcher 3 combat was something else. Absolute beauty.

Funny thing is even in Darksouls doing back-step+counter is way better than spamming dodge in a lot of situations.

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well dark souls combat was pretty bad if taken out of the context, it paled compared to newer more combat oriented games like for honor, it was fun though, exploring all the combos you could do, i miss dark souls a lot

back step ye it was kinda working, but only for very very experienced players, you needed to master it and still you would get hit anyways sometimes

in witcher 3 was way more safer to use