Recent reviews by --E@T TH3M!--

This game has been out for 3 years (4, if you include early access), and let me tell you now that it really has not offered that much more since, which is a pity because I used to enjoy it, but over time, the problems became even more evident.

PROS
- It scratches the looter shooter itch by offering ARPG-style magic bonuses and magic find on equipment, so you will always strive for that one perfect piece of weapon and/or armour.

...that's it. That's literally the only good point.

CONS
- The animations are clunky AF. Melee combat is quite the nightmare because your character lovingly lunges forward into the cold arms of zombies with every attack. It gets to the point where many times you have to constantly flick your aim away from the enemy in the middle of your attack animation so that you don't fly face first into zombie attacks, which brings me to the next point.
Oh yes, how could I forget, your melee attacks do not do cleave damage when you hit more than 1 zombie in a single swing. Because it's apparently not bad enough that you fly forward with every attack, but those 3 zombies you just hit? Only 1 of them actually took damage. Have fun continuously swinging as you continuously lunge forward into the loving arms of zombies while more of them continuously shamble towards you and continuously not take cleave damage! (Oh dear, that was so many 'continuously' in a single sentence...)

- Hitboxes can be very whacky, especially against child zombies. The left-click melee attack that you do is a downward swipe from your left to your right, but some times the child zombie just phases right through the hitbox and smacks you.

- Game balance is just ridiculous. For a time until just a month before posting this review, a boss in this game could deal 800 damage on its leaping attack that has an extremely fast startup and goes around obstacles. To put this into perspective, a max level player usually averages around 200-250hp with 40% damage mitigation and 30% armour absorption. Doing the math:
800 - 40% = 480 damage after mitigation.
480 - 30% = 336 damage after armour absorption.
That's right, this one attack will instantly kill almost any average player (assuming damage is calculated like that and not via some convoluted way), and it doesn't even have a long windup. Just le-pounce, and you're le-dead. Fun! At least the developer had an epiphany and halved the damage from this attack in a recent patch, but the fact that it took him so many years before realising just how absurd it originally was... Oh well, just wait till you see the other bosses including the event ones~

- The world map. Previously, the 'world map' simply consisted of 3 areas that correspond to the 3 outposts you could go to. These areas were just a street with several buildings you could visit and that was it. Now, they've given us an actual open world to run around with. Should be great, right? Nope. It doesn't take long to realise that the world map really is just the previous 3 maps copied and pasted many times over, while shifting the buildings and fields around to make it look new.

- Loading lag. Yes, this is a thing. Every object you search for loot churns out a brief loading period before showing you what you looted, followed by another brief loading when you proceed with looting or using the item. This means looting itself is subject to server hiccups, where your character is stuck in that spot waiting for the loot to 'load' while zombies seemingly far away lumber over and potentially get free hits on you. Thankfully you are rendered invulnerable during the loading segments, but as mentioned, that doesn't stop zombies from noticing and surrounding you, potentially hitting you as soon as you're out of the loading periods. Quite the nightmare for those who like to quickly grab loot and run.

- Inventory management in this game is extremely tedious. There is no option to move multiple stacks at one go, nor is there any way to move items quickly by doing, for example, shift+left-click. Instead, you need to click on the item, then click on a button to move it, then if there's multiple stacks you repeat this process again and again. Want to take those 10 stacks of ammo out of storage? Have fun clicking for each individual stack? Oh, I should also mention that every item movement is also at the mercy of loading lag.

-The community. Ignoring the fact that the trading community is collectively run by a single brain cell - because that is really the players being stupid and not the developer - the reason why the game hasn't changed much is because the moderators are too busy smashing the ban button while hiding behind the excuse of "trolling" and "unconstructive criticism". Calling them out on balance issues? Banned. Telling them that the game hasn't changed much at all since? Banned. Telling them that all their Dead Frontier 1 instakill shenanigans don't work in Dead Frontier 2 because you do not have a bird's eye view of your surroundings at all times? Banned. After all, the game isn't bad if there's no one around to tell them that it's bad, right?

All in all, don't expect too much from this door simulator. It offers ingame purchases of Credits that can be used for cosmetics or to improve QoL (of problems that the game itself creates, what a surprise), but it's really not worth it. You'd be better off supporting a game whose developer(s) actually bothers to take feedback and has enough brain cells to rub together to hire competent community managers who don't hit the ban button faster than you can say 'unbalanced'.

UPDATE
Oh my gosh, do my eyes deceive me? Is that actually a balance patch I see??? REJOICE PLAYERS! After 3 years of sending out his drone mods to ban people who criticise anything about the game, the dev has finally acknowledged that his game is an unbalanced cesspool of faecal matter!

...well, it really still is, but hey, at least this is a step in the right direction...right?

- Probably the best change is reducing Creep's damage and increasing the time window we have to shoot Optics. Although for the latter, it still doesn't address the glaring issue of the entity not suffering hit reactions if its eye is closed. So you're telling me if I hit this thing with a friggin missile and it just so happens to close its eye, it's not going to stumble backwards at all? What is this, Bleach The Thousand Zombie War?

- Tentacles stunning for 0.5s instead of 1s is good...I guess? I still stand by my stance that aura damage is just about the laziest, blandest, most unimaginative thing you could slap onto enemies to make them harder, not to mention melees get cucked even more when there's the obvious issue that whoever designed the animations *coughcough* doesn't understand physics at all - you smack zombies and they fall towards you instead of away from you. Have fun eating that aura damage!

- The addition of new skills and buffing of existing ones barely changes anything since we still have a meager amount of skill points to work with, and most of them are for mandatory ones like mobility, damage, and weapon buffs. You could maybe find a use for Kickboxing or whichever buffed skill that gained jog/sprint speed?