I will be unfairly 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. Fair enough, they did release it as prerelease beta (artificially, 2 weeks away from full release) but there's no shot they are fixing this mess in that time. What we have today took them 4 years, with two of the best games of this genre, that they made, to draw inspiration and assets from.

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 of which I have 65+ hours in, both of which have much less quality potential behind them, one of which has a solo developer, one of which is free to play, the other being 5€.

You're much better off playing Vermintide 1 & 2, it has 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, ofc both games have been given content and updates overtime as well, but even if you take that out of the equation my point still stands strong :o)

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, while I'm carrying a grimoire / scripture.

There's also a 1~ hour prologue & tutorial before you can get into the game itself. The cutscenes in the beginning are hype, but that's really the only positive. I feel like this was only done to prevent refunds, as you can't refund a product you've spent more than 2 hours on.

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, glad people woke up.