This review is based on 100% completion and 31.7 hours of gameplay.
[h1][b]Recommendation:[/b][/h1]
Would I Recommend this game? No, not by itself. There is an Enhanced Edition of the game, so if you want to try it, I would recommend getting that version instead. I purchased the Enhanced Edition, and the original came with it for free anyway.
The game itself is OK. It can be very clunky and janky at times, but overall it is a decent experience. However, I also ran into achievement issues that turned what should have been a straightforward completion into a huge chore. On top of that, there is simply an Enhanced Edition available that I would recommend over this version.
As I have already completed and reviewed the Enhanced Edition, and the two games are essentially the same, most of my thoughts from that review still apply here. You can find a link to that review [i][b][url= https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198132665097/recommended/816090/] here. [/url][/b][/i] I'll just expand on a few things from that review and share my thoughts on this version.
Gameplay-wise, the campaign takes around 4 to 6 hours depending on how quickly you move through it. Having already completed the Enhanced Edition, I found the difficulty fine, but new players may find it harder than it should be, even on the easiest difficulty. The combat and controls can feel very clunky and janky, with a variety of weapons and abilities to try, although some are much stronger than others and can trivialise the gameplay. I'll touch on this more in the achievement section.
The AI is also not great and can be pretty frustrating when playing solo, so this is definitely more of a game to play with friends. That said, the AI companions are manageable if you don't have anyone to play with.
Movement is a bit hit and miss as well. Because you're wearing Terminator armour, you move at a very slow walking pace with only short bursts of sprinting. I do like the bobbing and swaying, as it adds weight and makes you feel like a walking tank, but the overall movement can still feel quite clunky.
When it comes to the audio, I actually had quite a few issues. Dialogue would sometimes have missing audio, weapon sound effects wouldn't play, and music could cut off abruptly. It was very unreliable. When it did work, though, the voice acting was decent and the sound design was good for the most part.
As for the visuals, this is a really good-looking game, especially if you're running it on maximum settings. The enemy, environment and weapon designs all look great, and the environments feel suitably grandiose as you would expect from a Warhammer game. Since I had already experienced the game before, I decided to play this run on the lowest settings to focus more on performance, and even then, it still looked perfectly fine overall.
Narratively, I think it's fine, but nothing amazing. It's easy enough to follow and gives you some context for what you're doing, but the story isn't the main focus for me. I see this as more of a fun horde shooter, either solo or with friends, where you can enjoy slaughtering Xenos in the name of the Emperor.
Overall, the game itself is an OK experience, but between the clunky gameplay, technical issues and the achievement problems I ran into, I can't really recommend this version. If you're interested in playing it, I would recommend picking up the Enhanced Edition instead.
[h1][b]Achievement:[/b][/h1]
[i][b]There are a few achievement-related bugs in this game that you should familiarise yourself with before starting. Most achievements are straightforward, but one can be particularly problematic. This is also the achievement that normally requires another player unless you encounter the bug that prevents the tracker from counting correctly. There is also a separate bug that my friend experienced with campaign-related achievements, which appeared to require the campaign to be completed in a single run. I did not experience this issue myself.[/b][/i]
Personally, I had no issues with any achievements besides the assists achievement. There does appear to be a bug where campaign achievements may not unlock properly across multiple sessions, although I didn't experience this. I had one crash during Chapter 2, died several times and reloaded saves without any issues, so based on my experience, you should be able to split the campaign across sessions. However, this may not be the case for everyone.
All of the relics were also where they were supposed to be for me. I didn't encounter any of the missing relic issues that I have seen other players mention.
There is a useful Steam guide by [b][i][url= https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2378640115]Predestruction[/url][/i][/b], which covers both the original and Enhanced versions of the game. I would recommend checking it out before starting, as it goes over some of the known bugs and also provides useful tips and tricks for the achievements.
There are also a couple of things that can make your completion much easier. The standard Heavy Plasma Cannon is easily one of the best weapons in the game and can trivialise a lot of encounters. I would also recommend saving your stat points until the end of Chapter 6, as this allows you to unlock all of the skill-related achievements at once.
Once you have those achievements, put points into the perk that stops your weapons from overheating, as well as the perk that gives your companion a Plasma Cannon. With those, the rest of the game becomes much easier.
The only achievement I had a major issue with was [i]Brother in Arms[/i], which requires you to perform 1,111 assists in multiplayer mode or the Special Missions.
For whatever reason, the tracker for this achievement would not increase no matter what I tried, either on Steam or third-party achievement sites such as Completionist.me. We tried multiple methods, including:[list]
[*]Multiple multiplayer sessions farming assists using the tunnel method, both as the host and as the other player. This didn't work either way. The method did work for my partner, but my assists and kills simply wouldn't count.
[*]Trying the method with Codex rules both enabled and disabled.
[*]Trying to see if it would work at all in single-player.
[*]Trying the Special Missions with bots.[/list]
Unfortunately, none of these methods worked for me. After doing some research, I found there are two methods that appear to reliably make the tracker increase if you run into this bug.
The first is the Servitor method, where you tag enemies and then use the Servo Skull ability to finish them off. This does work, but it is extremely slow because the ability has a fairly long cooldown.
The other method is the barrel method, which is what I ended up using. It still takes a while, but it is much quicker than relying on the Servo Skull. You load up Chapter 7 as an Apothecary so you can heal yourself, then loop around two rooms while tagging enemies and using explosive barrels to finish them off.
It can be a little tricky to get into a good rhythm at first, but I found it much better than the alternative. [i][b][url= https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2402467874] Last Boy Scout [/url][/b][/i]has a good Steam guide covering the method, and [i][b][url= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0jOG0RmYzM] CHONO2CH2ONO2x2 [/url][/b][/i]has a YouTube video showing the route to take.
Other than [i]Brother in Arms[/i], I had no major issues with the achievements. But just be aware that this game can be a buggy mess.
[hr][/hr]For more in-depth yet straight-to-the-point reviews, feel free to check out my curator page [u][b][url= https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45595645/] here. [/url][/b][/u]
