First off, just wanted to preference all of which I’m about to say with these quick notes: first, this should in no way be misconstrued as some full comprehensive review of the game. Rather, this will just be a quick dissemination of the pros & cons as framed. Also, this is not in any way a rant by any stretch, but a decisive quick crit of the game coming from an old time vet of the first which I absolutely loved to death. So, with that said i’ll just surmise the exact reasons this game has failed to live up to the hype and how Fatshark essentially misled us:
-
Core game mechanics of sequel : Is it the right form for a true sequel? No. In fact, I would go so far to say that by going by objective measures Killing Floor 2 is a better more holistic sequel. Whereas this game throws the baby out with the bath water in dramatically doing away with team synergy mechanics in favor of moronic power heavy combos and classes with I win combos essentially rendering hard core team synergy obsolete
-
Quality control: The game’s launch has been a decidedly BUGGY mess… FULL STOP. Yes, I like to speak truth to power there is no way around this fact. they had the chance to do the adult thing and delay the game to get more time to work out constant back end crashes, bugged bosses etc
-
Classes system vs. weapon trait + spec system: Again, the system is abhorrently structured where certain classes and talents are just sooooo top heavy and favored whereas those like the battle mage class are really needless and underplayed because of it. Whereas in the weapon trait system you didn’t have bad scaling issues and imbalances galore and you could potentially have a level 36 properly fitted doing just as well as a level 300 + on cata runs which I have witnessed in the first game but now its all top heavy & incongruous
-
Itemization: Yes, it is a fact that it is sorta improved. You can potentially score a full load of weapons per just one completion and deeds further this, however, the new forge items appearing in emp boxes means this is a regression towards the mean and is NOT always better as you can still get shitty runs and does not always equate to progression of your rewards.
-
Weapon viability: They said in a stream they reworked it all for the better. Meaning, all weapons are viable now according to their Procrustean line of logic… when clearly 90% of old weapons weren’t and are rendered even more useless such as the 2h sword for Kruber and WH are not as they’re unchanged & don’t have the needed pent. Plus, the trueflight “fix,” ended up being a bust as they just made it worse with an ability that can be tailored to have virtually such a low cooldown with certain gear to be spam worthy I wins. Oh, and lets not forget the equally as inexcusable sad case with the blunderbus + huntsman ability with the max crit to just insta down bosses. GG fatshark. you really did work that out well!
-
Captivation: Last, but ofc not least important thing is this. What keeps players coming back after having gone through the levels? Well, in this game there is just one reason: to get those reds by doing deeds… the end… the side of that is to hit max but honestly the level design is FAR WORSE. when players have to wait for the cannon to be lowered on righteous stand and the many many boring asf copy and paste payload objectives and other poor level design decisions that plague the game. On top of all this, Fatshark has committed a cardinal sin in game design; you must always have some kind of sense of lasting accomplishment/reward for beating the bloody game ffs! In the first game, we had that in spades. We were given the bounty board & cool ass banner and a really cool outro/ending. What did fatshark decide to give us for enduring the barrage of bugged up end game bosses on skittergate? NADA. Oh, thanks!
-
Filler content galore: CE heroic deeds of mehness, enough said. Why didn’t they give us a selection of meaningful ones for CE? Its as if this was a tongue in cheek unintentional troll to be honest. Also, what is the deal with the flamestorm just being a copy paste weaker version of dwarf flamer? I mean, they could had just went with fully implementing the flameweave staff ffs that would not had been that hard considering the material’s already present in the first game
Well, those are just SOME of the myriad of reasons listed which I could go on and on about, but suffice it to say that I shan’t be recommending this to anyone at this time as this game is a travesty atm and I’ll just await those mod tools; players will I trust be more motivated to clean up this hastily done game and save the soul of vermintide which is now clearly left on the vine… one can only hope 
Tbh, I would not sweat not landing those reds as they ruined the aesthetic for them in my view as they all look like some rave boys wet dream and wow like in how they have glowy blue runes… On another note, the UI is also regressive as there are no longer adv notifications and they lied about implementing what they have learned from the modders… Namely, those awesome features from QoL. But tbh I still cannot figure out why you would have salvage in emp boxes … 