For those on the fence: wait for a sale

[Nightmarian]

tl;dr: The game is objectively good. There's just not enough game. At all. You will be done with everything in a week or two, and yes that includes grinding out stuff. The PvP won't last you any longer since there's no real progression and only 3 super simple maps with barebones aesthetics and nothing new coming until 2025.

Opening

I want to be clear and repeat that I do think this is a good game worth playing. My core issue with it is that outside of the graphics, the amount of content and scope feels far closer to a $40 first time indie game. Maybe you think the "AAA" graphics justifies the $60-100 (I got lucky and spent only $70 on ultimate edition but even that feels like too much), and if so, fair enough. However, to me, the amount of things to do doesn't match up.

Presentation

Easily the best part of the game. Looks gorgeous, some of the vistas are fantastic, the sound work is top-notch, the voice acting is superb. It FEELS like 40k, which fans of the setting know isn't easy to do. You definitely do FEEL like a space marine through and through. For some, that might carry the entire experience, and at the very least, there is currently no better Astartes sim.

Performance/Bugs

I'm on a 4080 and 5800x with a 1440p ultrawide, no UW patch, so just normal 1440p. Hit 100FPS average with dips to 90~. This is with DLSS on. I've heard people struggling to run this game well. Performance-wise, there is a lot of variance, a lot of people who can't even run the game, etc.

There are also a ton of bugs I've seen reported, most of which I experienced myself. COOP not always working or breaking, wonky AI, stuff like ammo crates and stim packs having models but not being interactable, etc. Lots of multiplayer PvP/PvE matches freezing on load. So be wary of that. I haven't had anything gamebreaking but it IS very annoying. This is not a smooth launch.

And no, the day 1 patch won't fix it all. I've been gaming since the early 90s, I've heard that plenty of times, and NEVER once has it proved true. Don't be a blindly fanatical consumer, plz. Use rationale and logic.

Gameplay/Combat

All in all, very well done with some minor flaws. They seemingly treat the weapons like real world variants in terms of range and accuracy which can rip you out of your immersion sometimes, because it's hella awkward seeing a space marine struggle to shoot something 100 meters away because of recoil and/or a hilarious bullet pattern. Some weapons really suck because of that, while others are just golden boys useful at any and all range despite what they say on the tin.

Melee is fine in PvE, but kinda useless in PvP. Not many options and frankly they don't really stand out from each other aside from maybe the power sword if you're generous. Melee overall feels wonky and more like a throwaway secondary, something you do when you're forced to, and not a meaningful core way of fighting like it should be in 40k. Many games with hybrid melee/ranged combat struggle with this, and sadly Space Marine 2 got nowhere near solving it.

Melee lovers like myself beware; this is not the game for us.

Campaign

My favorite part of the game by far. Absolutely superb and a lot of fun even if it gets repetitive because of poor level design. DEFINITELY play with friends if you have any with the game. The AI is garbage, which is funny considering a ton of reviewers said they were great. There are missions where you have to do multiple objectives at once while fighting hordes, the idea being one of you, say, flames the rippers or defends the chains etc while the other two holds off the horde. The AI will do neither, so you're stuck doing it all yourself. Oh, and the enemy AI focuses you hard over your AI allies, so have fun watching gunners ignore your teammates in front of them and shoot you across the arena with pinpoint accuracy instead while those same AI allies take 10 years to kill chaff.

Aside from the terrible ally AI, my only other complaint is how linear the game is. And I mean that in design sense. It's one of those hallway sims where you go from connected arena to connected arena. Only a lot of the arenas are just boring open spaces with little thought put into them. Not exactly exciting and it gets old fast. Luckily, the combat itself is a lot of fun once you get the hang of it and saves the loop; you never get tired of the culling itself.

The second enemy faction that shows up is also a much needed and welcomed change of pace, which alienates a lot of the repetitiveness. Overall, a wonderful campaign even with the lackluster level design. I just wish there was more of it and that it had a real ending...

I clocked it in at about 7 hours, so it's pretty short... and not something you'd want to redo. I know there's a debate about that length but for context story shooters like Halo average 9 while Halflife 2 was around 11 hours, so it fits.

So then, with a campaign that short, surely the multiplayer (MP from now on) will make up for it? OOoooooo boy. No. No it will not.

PvE Multiplayer

This is clearly the focus of the entire game. The missions are ripped out from the main campaign (the game will literally tell you this during the main campaign) and fill in holes in the chain of events. You play as formal classes this time, and unlike campaign you have a perks/builds system where you gradually unlock stuff on a skill tree to create your ideal role in a team.

This is basically campaign + and is a lot of fun, though there are a limited number of maps (they're big tho, like full campaign missions and might even be bigger than the campaign itself together ironically enough.) Unfortunately, they are just as linear with very little variance seemingly, so grinding them will definitely feel like a chore unless you simply don't care if everything is exactly the same.

For better or worse though, it seems like it won't take long to be done with it; people have said you can max a class relatively fast, and that's without being efficient. You can also solo run these, but seemingly can't do so with bots. It's either alone or humans.

If this is your main interest it might hold you for a while if you want to max every class, but there's not much to do after that and once you've done every mission once you've seen it all. It's not at all like say Darktide.

PvP

Christ, the biggest letdown. I was looking forward to this since the first game's PvP was fun while it briefly lasted (it devolved into a small cluster of sweats within like 4 months). However, barely any effort was put into the PvP at all.

There are only 3 (!!!!) tiny maps, all of them with barebones level design that had zero thought put into them, and they are carbon copies regardless of the mode you're playing in, so there aren't even variants for different game types. There is nothing great about these maps, let alone anything memorable. They feel like something a first time modder would make, and we've seen waaaay better maps in arena shooters and the like for decades (!!) now.

I'm actually shocked at how bad these three maps are, as well as the fact there's only three. But wait, it gets worse! There is no real progression. What you do get is tiny armor upgrades per class rank. So one rank gets you a skull on your power pack, another one gets you a tiny weeny grenade holder, another one gets you a logo on your knee.

Then, suddenly, the last couple ranks gives you a relic which are completely new models, but only one. So, what do you think everyone is going to look like at max level? Yep, you're going to have squads of chapter masters who all look the same fighting each other. Fantastic.

What's even worse is that Chaos doesn't even get that, they have preset models and all you can do is change the color. No DLC for them, no unlockable gear outside of weapons, nada, and to my knowledge you can't pick which side you prefer. So one team gets to wear their progression and DLC while the other team gets shafted with the recolored basic skin. Fun.

Not that big a deal though, right? It's just cosmetics.

Well, that's all you really unlock... there are no perks or skill trees for PvP, just gear unlocks per rank. But each class minus tactical marines has an incredibly limited number of weapons to choose from, and sometimes no alternates at all. For instance, Vangaurd only gets one sidearm, period. For ranged, two choices. So if you don't want a long ranged 3 burst rifle on a class with a grapple hook that brings you in close (lol), guess you're stuck with one weapon forever.

This is going to, of course, lead to a very clear A is better than B meta. I would have much preferred an inverse with most classes being able to use most weapons and have a single one or two exclusive to a handful of classes.

This results in an incredibly stale loop where you basically never change your loadout, never earn anything new except throwaway cosmetics until max rank, and are always a carbon copy of every other player from your class more or less.

It gets stale quick. I would have preferred more options to great more dynamic matches and variance, like favoring long range weapons on the citadel map with the open center, and a perks system like for example trading armor for an extra special charge or the inverse, extra grenades, movement speed or bonus armor after melee kills...

Stuff to make the matches dynamic and exciting. What's worse is that melee isn't even really viable atm, so some of the classes aren't fun to play. You can use it, or play more supporty and get in melee strikes when you can, but 99% of the time melee just gets you killed. In a lot of cases, you can be gunned down by your victim faster than you can melee them to death, which is insane. And it'll get even worse once people remember to parry, or when the winning meta, which is clumping together, becomes more commonplace because you will rarely ever be able to melee without suiciding due to all the assist fire.

Unfortunately, no new PvP maps until next year according to the road map either, lmao... and I think one new weapon which for all we know could be another reskin variant rather than an actual new weapon.

I don't think PvP will last that long. I don't think it'll even survive September, to be brutally honest. It just gets really repetitive fast and there aren't any options to toy with for strats or counterplay. People will try it, maybe max out their favorite class, then bail.

Conclussion

Overall, I think this IS a great game, I love the foundation, but I feel kind of cheated by the content. The campaign being so short is sad but not a huge problem, but in exchange there really should be twice as many PvE maps and three times as many PvP maps with its own perks and abilitiy tree just like the PvE side.

I feel like I will find myself slowly doing less and less PvE and PvP matches over the next week before finally just uninstalling...

Who knows though. Maybe you will somehow find the lack of content isn't an issue, but I figured I'd just point it out. What's here is barebones, and now that I've seen that, it feels more like their roadmap isn't new content but actually finishing the game's intended content, lol.

Just my two cents.

[PETROL SNIFFER]

aint no one reading all that

[RobeRonin]

ty i think this is a fair and accurate thing to say and good for gamer`s to talk to other gamet`s like this i appreciate your help very much :)

[RobeRonin]

this developer seems to have a track record of lacking content and rescuing games later or letting them die ! ie both evil dead and world war z launched with tiny content and kinda sucked because of it ! world war z got saved and re released with more content evil dead got put in garbage to die!

[Kaz]

Solid post overall.

I was going to argue about the melee point, (for the campaign, arguing about PvP melee is to deny reality) but thought about it.

Really, melee-ing is for when it's needed, however for me that felt like all the time because the ranged weapons felt... well lackluster as well. Hence my initial intention to argue about it before thinking a bit more on my experience. I think the game would do better with a buff across the board, and if somehow possible do expand a bit on the melee combat.

My only point of contention therefore is that other than agreeing that I wish there was more content, I can't exactly find a fault in the length of content given per dollar. Especially when compared to other shooters of recent times. I think you give it a fair comparison by comparing it to Halo and Half-Life however (games of the past), and when thinking of it in those terms; I think the PvP is just such a major failure unfortunately. They really need to think about how to redesign it within scope. That or focus on the PvE side for replay-ability *cough* horde mode *cough*. But just overall, I think the price of it as a normal released game is worth it if to simply tell game companies to focus on decent stories and amazing set pieces to go with those stories. Doubly so when a Horde Mode comes out (similar to Gears series - I mean who played PvP for those games... certainly not me........ *cough*)

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

Yeah the pvp was just a bait for the old guard xD

Graphics dont justfy anything anymore today, every bob can do it with U5 and an ai ...

Its a bit sad to me that every game review today starts with the words "it looks so good ..."

The focus on "gameplay over visuals" has really shifted over the years :-/

Yeah no UW support and no FOV slider in 2024 is a nogo xD

Good that they skipped the beta to polish the game ... doh :-/

Sadly the majority of gamers today are blind, fanatic and overhyped :-/

They are even willing to pay for early access, wait dont you .... doh xD

Makes anything else questionable ...

[Sovery_Simple]

Thanks for the heads up.

[Bonk]

i dont know why every game has to give you weeks and weeks of content these days. Its a game where i play a space marine and i can stomp around with my friends ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stuff up. I do that for like 5-10 hours and have fun....then i'll do something else. In a couple months i'll do it again when i wanna be a space marine

[reges crucesignatis]

only read the tldr and hard agree, you're not missing out on anything crazy besides the story other then that i just played a couple mp modes and already feel satisfied with what i played and moving on to satisfactory 1.0 update.

(also i dont condone pirating...)

edit: also notices how i didnt say "unsatisfied" cause the story is just that good and operations add on to that too

[ColdFish]

Fair assessment of the game.
Echos most of my thoughts exactly. You should put that up as a review, if you haven't done so yet.

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

Originally posted by Bonk:

i dont know why every game has to give you weeks and weeks of content these days. Its a game where i play a space marine and i can stomp around with my friends ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stuff up. I do that for like 5-10 hours and have fun....then i'll do something else. In a couple months i'll do it again when i wanna be a space marine

Maybe because people have waited more than 10 years for this sequel, and are worried that they will have to wait another 10 years for the next 40K 3P/1P action title. That could be the reason that they expected a lot more from this game, but that's just a guess ... doh :-/

[McDinglefart]

I have 500 hours on helldivers 2, 300 hours on darktide and SM2 probably will be 150 hours.

For comparison, SM2 feels like little brother of Darktide. Combat feels slower, not that fast and less action. Darktide feels cooler.

It still decent and a good distraction if you already played too much of those games and looking for another distraction.

Maybe SM2 will keep getting content and improve. It has good foundations.

[Hairy Pothead]

thanks for the review, glad I didn't fall for the 'advanced access' scam this time around. PVP sounds extremely disappointing.

[Ichi-niiPL]

Damn it i was hoping PVP was better. I'm not PVP player generally, but with only 10h max campaign and 6 operations, I was hoping PVP would provide more content :/
But 3 small maps - sigh - i guess i'll wait a bit till at least those 2 operations on roadmap come out before buying, unless i get some good sale somewhere.

[Grim@FU_BARRACUDA]

Originally posted by Ichi-niiPL:

Damn it i was hoping PVP was better. I'm not PVP player generally, but with only 10h max campaign and 6 operations, I was hoping PVP would provide more content :/
But 3 small maps - sigh - i guess i'll wait a bit till at least those 2 operations on roadmap come out before buying, unless i get some good sale somewhere.

Im honest, i wonder if these 2 operations come at all :-/

[[HN]]

The best argument for waiting for sales is the roadmap the devs gave us.

Its full of stuff that should have been there at release (and probably was ready for release but got cut of to pad the "seasonal free content", which is literally just window dressing to the cosmetic DLC milking) so waiting for the sale will not only give your a cheaper game, but one that is more complete.