So obviously I’ve been playing SM2 campaign and yea it’s very cool and looks amazing and the game is surprisingly polished, but the combat pales in comparison to DT. I might be alone in thinking this but it feels messy and samey.
It has made me truly appreciate what FS have done with combat. I tell people that DT basically has the best combat I’ve ever played in any game. It’s so visceral and kinetic…it’s the closest thing to VR without being VR and is damn satisfying. Nothing beats the melee in DT. It’s the absolute pinnacle.
Yes everything else around the combat has been flaky but it’s certainly coming to a head with the new update at the EOM. Once SM2 campaign is over I will be looking forward to exploding DT heretics once more.
It does also reaffirm my burning desire to see something like the SM2 campaign but with FS’s incredible first-person combat, fighting all manor of grimdark enemies. One can dream.
Keep my seat warm in any case. I’m sure many others will be returning after finishing the SM2 campaign.
I think the combat is the only reason any of us still play this game. I enjoy both quite a bit though. I will be flip flopping between Darktide and SM2 a lot
Yeah I feel like the average reviewer just doesn’t see the flaws in the combat because the rest of the game has decent polish on it (and isn’t missing half of its secondary/tertiary features on release like a certain other game I enjoy)
It’s a good game, but (PVE) combat only really hits during certain moments/executions. Also you can’t animation cancel into parries and the parry system itself is one of the weaker ones I’ve seen. Dunno if that is because it is bugged or the window is just very finnicky.
Melee weapons all feel pretty good to use, but some ranged weapons don’t feel as meaty as they do in Darktide. Something about the non-heavy bolters just feels…weak? I don’t know what it is, they just don’t give off the big dakka feel when I fire them. Plasmas are ok, I prefer the woosh noise they make in Darktide though. The meltas are all rad as heck and considering how the weapons feel on average in Darktide, I am even more excited at the prospect of a melta on the Zealot than I was before.
Campaign also needs better solo balancing, played it on the “intended” difficulty as written in the description and while not difficult, it was frustrating. AI does literally nothing and aggro seems weighted towards the player, so it feels like you are being shot by every gun across the map at the same time you are trying to fight in melee. Definitely detracted from my enjoyment in certain sections. Boss fights were pretty fun though.
PvP is alright, some classes definitely feel better than others. Class options are decently varied, build-a-marine is cool and I also like how melee ignores shields. It’s not going to revolutionize anything, but it’s solid.
Have you used fencing? This is a game changer. It will probably become the meta.
The problems with the combat are easy fixes. Melee weapons needs more stagger, elite units like tyranid warriors are too spongy and too stagger resistant, the AI director SUCKS with even on the highest difficulty having large amounts of downtime with zero enemies or hordes spawning in, as well as terrible enemy denisty, the horde engine is amazing so they should be able to bump the hordes up tremendously with more frequent spawns, hordes should stagger more easily in melee, chip damage needs to be drastically reduced (a hormogaunt shouldnt take a full armor bar), we need a passive armor regen like in Darktide, and guns need to hit way harder. All of these are actually pretty minor issues that they should be able to fix quickly, if they listen. They can buff the players quite a bit and if they increase the enemy density, it will make the game feel wayyyy better.
Have not tried fencing yet, will have to look into that.
I agree 100% on the chip damage, I shouldn’t have to parry/dodge/block every single hormagaunt, it’s silly. In the lead up to the game I was expecting to cleave through hundreds of little dudes while having to bring my A game for the medium to large dudes.
Instead there’s barely a hundred enemies and the little dudes tear through my ceramite like it’s paper mache if I don’t stop them.
Also I don’t know what late game weapons look like as far as ammo goes so I might be wrong here, but can a battle brother get another mag or two? I know in campaign at least only 12 shots on the fusil made me a sadstartes.
Agreed. I will get SM2… maybe in a year on sale. It’s not something I am that excited for, looking at the trailers and playing the first one, I knew the combat would be lack luster. Even if they fix lack of resources, spongey-ness and lack of map objective options… looking at their road map I just don’t think the core gameplay is designed around it.
For me it’s the opposite of my problems with Darktide. Darktide the skeleton was always good. It was the rotting flesh on top of it that was bad. Space Marine 2… it’s the skeleton that’s cracked and broken with a pristine flesh and muscle on top. They would have to reinvent so much of the game to make the combat as good as Darktide, it’s not feasible. Darktide, they got the hard part figured out, it was all the supplemental systems on top of it they needed to resolve.
But there are a few good VR melee games. Fatshark making a VR Game would be… interesting.
Absolutely. Few months ago I had a good laugh when reading some of the troll posts on Steam forums which claimed how SM2 is going to be the Darktide killer. SM was an average game in the W40k setting. SM2 improves on that formula, but its overpriced for how content light it is, also it is fairly shallow in terms of the combat experience.
This is the biggest problem. Fencing is absolutely huge for this, but the animation cancel issue is still annoying. Dodging is the bigger issue. If you start an attack, and suddenly the enemy does an unparriable attack that comes out faster than yours you will take the massive damage hit. Being able to more consistently dodge and parey out of animations would be huge.
But for a fundamental combat issue parrying is your only way to create space. Parryng is the equivalent of a push attack from DT which is dumb and means that weapons with a “block” defense will always kind of suck. If you have a frag grenade that can work to create space but obviously that is an equipment charge, and even classes that can regen them have a pretty stingy timer on it. I would like an easier way to create space in hordes as well as the other suggested changes.
Also some sort of stagger prevention, if not a “slot” system like DT has would be very helpful as well.
Also remove Tzaangors with shields. Hate those guys.
Very big “if” there which is always worrying. Also will depend how frequently they actually want to update the game.
I’d like to point out a flaw in my previous post, the AI is crap…except for the Imp Guard in the campaign. They’re precious, every one of them. Idk or care how much damage they do (although it seems like they might actually do more than my stupid Spark Margerine AI brothers).
Got to agree that my biggest gripes so far has been the inconsistencies. Like i can definitely “time” my parries and dodges well enough that i should not take any damage (played enough games of this sort to know it) but if you are in an bad animation and attempt to parry you are just cucked.
Dodges/parries should always get priority in a game like this where 1 crappy mistake can take most of your health bar off in a single hit.
space marine can’t be an horde shooter like darktide or deathwing, its a different game, and don’t expect you can do like ‘‘tank damage’’ because its not going to work out well for you
i havn’t tried the game so i’m speaking from my space marine 1 160 hours experience
but my contacts tell me that its just a SM1 reskin with better graphics so far as gameplay is concerned, just with a shorter single player campaign and don’t even know if i’m buying it to be honest
Spam M1 with your Knife vs actively reacting to quicktime events and dodging because otherwise you’ll loose 1/2 -2/3 rd HP is indeed a pale comparison to DT where half of the sector shooting at you without the character breaking a sweat because we are evading or just sit on so high DMG reduction that we don’t care.
The irony of the whole thing is that in Space Marine 2 you feel way more squsihy (obviously talking about max difficulty) as a big ass Primaris Space Marine then as a random homeless reject in Darktide, even without hard disablers lurking around every corner.
You want real meaningful and challenging melee combat? Play Vermintide 2. The only thing that kills you in DT is boredom or a silent trapper shooting you trough terrain.
vermintide 2 had more damage spongy gameplay compared to darktide, DT devs have choosen to go down a different path after game was released for console, and no, i don’t like it one bit
damage sponge was shunned upon in vermintide after cataclysm difficulty was released, but without that game is boring, so i’d settle for the damage sponges
its not a chance that nurgle blessing malestorms is the hardest modifier
I mean horde mode is actually listed on the roadmap.
But even disregarding whether or not it should or should not be a horde shooter, the (PvE) combat still needs more polish.
I’m not asking to tank everything, but chip damage being the main source of health loss is pretty lame. Although I guess that comes with the territory of the bigger enemies not really being that hard to fight.
I can’t tell if you are serious here in trying to make QTE’s sound hard or if I am misreading your post.
QTE’s lack any semblance of challenge, there’s a reason that every single AAA game used them in the late 00s and 2010s during cutscenes, because even casuals can do them.
i think they mean what in SM1 was the last stand scenario, i didnt knew it wasn’t out yet, anyhow its not like you could go in with any tactical marine build and do well, you were restricted to using the most overpowered builds for that if you wanted to be somewhat successfull, like assault marine with thunderhammer
