I’ve been playing Vermintide 2 again and I find the melee gameplay to be strictly worse in Darktide in so many ways… It’s not only more demanding, but dodges, pushes, stagger and cleave also feel more unreliable. Comparing Malice to Legend, enemies are clearly much more aggressive in DT, and they use their running attacks much more frequently even when you stand still. Hit registration is wonky and laggy when many enemies are present (server issues, most likely).
Weapons are just that bit too slow and/or clunky. For example, one of the Catachan sword’s light attacks are a copy of the Falchion, but come out slower, just enough to throw you off. Exact same thing for the Combat Axe’s lights versus the one-handed axe in VT2.
The bad optimization and the stuttering does not help make melee feel fluid. Overall, a less enjoyable experience, at least for me.
It’s getting clear, since the Closed Beta, that part of this is intentional. Just because our ranged weapons have more ammo and are marginally better, does not mean that melee needs to feel terrible or excessively punishing !
I’ll probably revisit DT in 6 months to see how it evolves, it still feels very Early Access even though it’s supposed to come out in 3 days…