Instantly not filled with joy 
I really hope they sort some of the clunkiness as I loved the flow of SM1.
It’s really not as bad as it may sound, it just makes you a lot more vulnerable and forces you to consider each engagement more before just jumping in. But at the same time, SM2 has the new contested health mechanic which gives some classes really good melee sustain. Like I said, the system is more complicated than the SM1 one and asks for a bit more mental CPU usage to really make it work. I’ve leveled 3 classes to 25 by now and I can generally handle the average melee engagement without issue. The problems arise when you get swarmed by multiple warriors and they’re swinging at you in a syncopated pattern that becomes impossible to parry/block your way out of. I’m still trying to figure out how I deal with that on higher difficulties where you have to bash them relentlessly to get them to an executable state.
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Gonna buy it at some point either way. I suspect I will love the game and get used to the difference. Im just tempted to wait till next year (horde mode ftw!). Which will literally drive my friends crazy.
I admire your discipline! My collector’s edition statue is already sitting comfortably on a bookshelf.
But yes, that might be wise. I can imagine the game will be in a considerably more refined place by then too as well as enriched with further content. Not to mention their devs actually go on their forums and ask for and, even confirm they are adding, ideas from the community, so there’s that at least.
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Yes… discipline… thats what it is 
Im not actually sure what it is.
Whats it called when you dont want to do something as soon as someone tells you or expects you to do it? Obstinate?
Hmm:
Obstinate
Adjective
| Synonyms | stubborn, unregenerate, cussed, obdurate, unrepentant, contrary, perverse, wayward |
|---|---|
| Similar | unregenerate, bloody-minded, bolshy, bullet-headed, bullheaded, cantankerous, contrarious, cross-grained, determined, disobedient, dogged, dour, hardheaded, mulish, pertinacious, pigheaded, stiff-necked, strong-minded, strong-willed, stroppy, tenacious, unregenerated, unyielding |
| Related | disobedient, inflexible, intractable, sturdy, uncompromising |
Something in there probably fits 
Well in that case I definitely think you should refuse to buy it. In fact you should never buy it. Don’t even try to dare to even think about playing it. It’s strictly off limits but only for you.
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HA! Jokes on you, Iv bought it and played all of it in the last minute! Take that world! Im so individual and I only do what I want to do.
On a serious note, I like Pig Headed, I think that fits.
If not that then Cantankerous MunKy has a nice ring to it.
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Nope I dont like it because Im not at all disagreeable 
But it does sound good.
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Are you suggesting that 3rd person hack/slash combat has not had many years under its belt too? It’s not exactly a revolutionary gaming system! They have an insane amount of games they could riff off.
I’ve been playing games long enough to “get” them with relative ease, and SM2 is in absolutely no way a deep and intricate system that requires study to understand. I think most of us here will have got the measure of it entirely by the end of the first mission.
I enjoyed it because of what it is but dang the actual meat and bones of the combat is duller than dish water, especially after the 'nids get removed from the fighting. Just the same moves over and over again.
All the ranged enemies chipping away at you in your paper armour means you just have to Whaaaa into melee as quickly as possible (as most the guns are bizarrely the power of pea shooters unless the scoped sniper rifle with half a bullet ammo capacity).
And all whilst the AI bros are pulling each others fingers and smelling daisies.
The world was great but I honestly can’t understand if you think the combat is anything other than casual arcade lite.
If it wasn’t Space Marine themed I’d probably have stopped playing it half way through the campaign. But it is SM themed so I’ll go back and replay it sometimes soon
DT combat is the muts nuts though. King of the hill.
There’s a difference between a genre of combat and a specific iteration of it. This is a specific iteration of it. This iteration is new. It has its own world of balance and ingame application to deal with that you couldn’t just copy one to one from another game. At the same time, to imply that it has taken nothing from games like it would be insincere. GoW executions are one thing that come to mind at the moment but I’m certain there are other things as well.
I’m not implying they’re reinventing the wheel, but they are making their own thing here, let’s be fair.
Not that I even made such a claim, but it is true that there are things to learn in that game’s combat system that are not immediately apparent and easy to master and there most certainly is a skill ceiling of some note as I’ve been demonstrated time and again by random players in dozens upon dozens of online rounds.
I think that’s a disingenuous oversimplification. Yes, the gist of it is very simple to grasp, but let’s not pretend like there are absolutely no nuances or quirks to learn and adjust to that take more than one mission to get a handle on.
I never said that SM2 has a better combat system than DT. I think I actually implied the opposite pretty clearly.
In any case, this is an apples and oranges thing. Some people like one, some like the other. I’m only suggesting we be fair in our comparisons where they’re possible.
After trying out the harder difficulties of operations with bulwark
I’ve come to greatly appreciate the design of darktide, I never knew how good we had it here until I experienced that absolute nightmare. Hell darktide at its worst is heavenly compared to that absolute warp cursed mess.
Operations compared to the campaign is a night and day difference
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I booted up Space Marine 1 after reading your comment, and I have to agree with @AlphaOmegaMan with everything they’ve said.
The big difference to me is that in SM1 I felt like I was in control of a Space Marine; the screen shakes combined with a heavy thudding sound with each step at a sprint, ploughing into Orkz and Gretchin and tearing them apart.
Going in there on Veteran was more than doable whilst still presenting a challenge and not undermining the powerful Space Marine feeling.
Also, and this might sound petty but … I did not have to wait 10 seconds at each door switch unlike in SM2 where you run up to the switch and stand there until the AI bother to join you.
If they change SM2 to be more like SM1 with its difficulty etc, it would definitely be a better game than it is now.
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hugs I also like Vermintide 2 as well.
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really cant even see how people can defend SM2 combat , its just so simplistic sure if you just want to see the spectacle and play through the campaign it gets the job done but for a system to learn and spend time on… how?
from technical f ups like the m+kb port not changing direction of attack from facing to aiming … real basic stuff to the complete lack of depth , one combo ended by an increasingly effective ae/block break. the counter /dodge system can have a pretty tight window but that’s accuracy not depth
only one pve mission gets played (so glad DT never caved and put that mission select in so many wanted) the AI director might not exist… not sure theres definitely a few minor variables but nothing to dictate pacing for sure .
and we havent got to the complete lack of enemy diversity or the lack of arsenal choice, 15 differnt bolters that all do about the same then a few decent weapons. 5? melee weapons that all work almost the exact same just minor differences in speed and cleave.
its like if you took arkham combat and removed all of the special enemies that make the combat interesting, you would pretty much have a better system than SM2
i am beyond dissapoint.
So many of these critiques strike me as implied direct comparisons to the Tide formula as if it’s a foregone conclusion that the Tide formula is some benchmark SM2 was aiming for. Yeah it’s not as deep. It’s not trying to be. It’s a simple, straightforward hack and slash game with enough complexity/mechanics/quirks/whatever you want to call it to give it a decent skill ceiling that you can’t blaze through the hardest difficulties on the first few attempts. Is it comparable to the depth and complexity and the height of the skill ceiling in DT? No, because it’s not trying to be. I’m not sure what some people expected from this game. Seems like some expected some kind of DT equivalent loaded with as many weapons and as wide a spectrum of playstyles and all the rest but that was never the proposition of SM2, so of course that’s not what it is. The game has been out for just over a week and obviously there’s stuff that needs tweaking, rebalancing, reworking and refining, but that is the natural process for the overwhelming majority of new online games that come out. As far as a lack of content goes, there’s been a public roadmap out for SM2 for some time detailing new content as far forward as mid 2025 if I recall correctly, which is a better display of forethought than many of its contemporaries. They’ve confirmed future additions of maps, weapons, classes, enemies and cosmetics and things they don’t yet want to reveal.
What is even the beef here? That it’s not Darktide: Space Marine?
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Yeah, despite Darktides (and FatSharks) many, MANY flaws, they have made the best combat system bar none.
Haven’t bought SM2, but have considered it (and come close) a few times, but every time I look at the combat system I come to the same conclusion - it would just disappoint me.
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i don’t think a game needs to be as complex as DT its just easy to compare what you are familiar with.
my problem with Sm2 is simple 15 hours in and im bored to death with it , its not fun and i don’t think its well made/designed. i think it offers atmosphere and feels out the wazzoo but he game itself i think is poor.
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Well, despite AMD driver timeouts trying hard, i finally managed to get through the campaign and get some ops and pvp done, and I’m meh on the whole experience.
Ops are serviceable, pvp is the same, it’s… fine.
Personally It’s no darktide “killer”, but i see them as different fixes much like HD2 vs Darktide.
One thing confuses me a bit though, It’s been what, almost two weeks now of people raving about the writing and story, and i just have to ask, really?
That was some daytime soap/high school level drama nonsensical writing for the first 2/3, and the last bit while slightly better felt like some fairly cliche set-pieces hammered in because it looked cool much more than making any kind of sense for the flow of things, and less said about the epilogue and character moments there the better.
Leaving it there for the sake of spoilers.
To paraphrase TTS somewhat, “That was dumb Vulcan, DUMB!”
In fact, it reminded me a lot of the few recent marvel’ish outings I’ve bored myself through with the kids.
So we’re clear here, i don’t mind in the slightest that some like that kind of thing, but christ on a bike the hype train has gone entirely off the rails praising this as some kind of exemplar of writing quality.
I’d argue SM1 was significantly better on the writing and story side, so that was a bit of a disappointment.
Nice visually through and the horde flow/tyranid models looked really good, so kudos for that.
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I do still love it with all my heart, from the deepest depths of my soul, from my fingers to my toes, from my head to my butthole.
I will deffo go back and play it and will probably still have times where the mood takes me and I grind it for weeks on end again. Its not Darktide. Totally different pacing.
I feel the same about V1. Its not V2. Its kinda nice to go back sometimes.