I liked this game initially, but I think that was just the result of the overwhelming amount of negativity surrounding the game before its release. I might've been a little more positive just out of spite towards this era of cancel culture- however the game's faults has nothing to do with that can of worms.

If you're a huge potter-head, you might just want to play it for the fanservice, which there's a lot of. (Quizzes, Adhering to the canon the movies set up, Weasly predecessors, and much more that probably went over my head).

The game isn't necessarily "bad" all things considered, but it's not exactly ahead of its time either, quite the opposite in fact. For the low low price of €60 I expect something that has a lot more polish and care put into the part that makes it a game, and not a movie or book.

• Main character is either overbearingly sympathetic and caring, or a complete prick, these are your two options during dialogue where you are given the option to respond, it feels extremely unnatural and takes me out of the fantasy it's trying to draw me into.
  
  
• The "open" world is composed of 3-4 very detailed areas (Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, forbidden forest, etc) but the rest of the map is empty, sprinkled with "puzzles" or groups of enemies where there's a chest to loot, akin to Far Cry 5. There's no random events or people/enemies to interact with outside of these areas, enemies even respawn if you move too far away.
  
  
• You are limited to 16 spells, cycling between 4 "loadouts" (for lack of a better word) with 4 spells each.. However if you want to engage with everything the game has to offer, you need to use every spell in the game, which is more than 16, so you will have to move around spells constantly in the "loadout" menu.
  
  
• Mounts are slower and "deploy" slower than your broom, even without upgrades.. What is the point?
  
  
• Maybe it's just me, but the "room of requirement", which is basically your home base where you can make potions, harvest plants and "ingredients/crafting items" from your pets/mounts offered nothing outside of "mandatory sidequests." It's set up like an idle phone game, where I have to return to the base after x amount of minutes to harvest/pick up what I want, what a joke.
  
  
• I'm not sure who started this rumor or selling point, if the devs had nothing to do with it then ignore this, but from what I saw before the release, it seemed like you were able to pick your side, good or bad. However this is just not the case, you cannot kill or even hurt non-enemies, and at the end of the story where you have a choice to do something bad, it makes no difference, and nobody (story related npcs) reacts to it.
  
  
• The story-beats are incredibly transparent and I at no point was surprised, rather I knew what was going to happen before it did.
  
  
• Of course the game also uses an arbitrary armor rating system while also giving you the option to pick how your armor appears, but when you get a new piece of armor with a better rating you have to pick how that looks again.
  It is one of the worst additions to singleplayer games ever made, leave this stupid armor rating system to the MMORPG genre please, it has no meaningful reason to exist in singleplayer other than to burn you out from opening and closing the equipment tab 10000 times during a full playthrough.
  
  ^I played the game with no potions, no combat plants, not caring what armor rating my armor was, no loomed gear, and I still had no issues with dying or spongy enemies (more than normal), and that's not to flex, but rather to get across these were unnecessary additions to the game, had they not existed the devs would've spent more time on other important aspects of the game.

I will be comparing the game to Vermintide 1 & 2 since it's by the same developers, and many aspects have been directly lifted from it, which I think makes it fair-game. They even had the gull to name-drop Vermintide 2 on the store, in the combat section. Simply tonedeaf..

I don't care about road-maps, if you do then you are what's wrong with this era of lazily developed games. I am not investing in a product, I am paying for a product. Either you release it finished or you adjust the price accordingly, accounting for what is "missing" in the game when it becomes purchasable. If you don't, I'm within my right to give a negative review on that fact alone..

Darktide has very little content, (atleast in the early-game) clunky movement & slowpaced combat, 3-4 extremely linear compact maps that discourages exploration, and does not have any secrets you can find for extra rewards (those are reserved for harder difficulties, and they are just randomly spawned in the open) The game genuinely feels like it's 2 years away from release, this is what I'd expect from early access games in their infancy stage. I'm playing two of such games right now in fact, both from solo devs, which are infinitely better games than this garbage.

You're much better off playing Vermintide 1 & 2, they have A LOT more content & quality packed into it, for a cheaper price, with fast paced combat, significant skill ceiling to climb towards, fluid movement, open maps that reward platforming & exploration without overwhelming you with enemies. This was true on those games initial releases too btw.

I could go on for much longer, but put short; anything this game does, Vermintide already does better, and the new things they are exploring are underdeveloped to say the least.

One major gripe I have is that since these maps are so compact, and the faux openness are really just major backdrops with pitfalls, enemies and explosives scattered around the map take advantage of this fact. I rarely die when I play, but when I do it's by being thrown into the void by being pushing by a charging enemy or a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ explosive my teammate shot.

The only saving grace here is that one of the devs semi-confirmed refunds will be available for those who bought the prerelease. I say semi, because he can't actually confirm this, only Steam can.. Fingers crossed. Oh and while we're on this subject, the devs also cannot make their mind up about whether or not your progress made during this prerelease will carry over to the full release, what is the point then, I'm not here to playtest.

Adding onto my thoughts on that, this seems to just be a situation where the devs are dangling the possibility of progression carry-over infront of the prerelease/beta players, knowing full well that's not going to happen, only to gain a large amount of positive reviews that'll lessen the impact the negative ones will have when they have to release the game and reset progress. I say this because the devs have been asked about the carry-over many times and keep giving the same "can't say yet" answer. Assumedly this is due to exploits, but there's already plenty that boost your level exponentially, but even if it's not, there's still other options you can pick instead of resetting progress for everyone. Give the community a clear answer so they can refund, nobody wants to re-grind their progress back, imagine losing a save in a semi-linear game you are 1+ hour into, fun right?

I didn't play the game for 20~ hours. I actually fell asleep at my desk because I was so bored of the game, I was watching something on my second monitor and suddenly dozed off.

This review aged beautifully, the people who god-defended this game and negatively reacted to my review can suck my farts, told you so.