I really liked Space Marine 2, mostly because of how faithful it is to the source material. You can tell a lot of thought went into the world and its little details. The background dialogue is especially good: Commissars and Militarum officers giving speeches, Astartes talking amongst themselves, the Mechanicus interacting with servitors, servoskulls speaking to you, and all the little bits of dialogue happening around you. The imagery and iconography are also spot on. It really feels like Warhammer 40K.
The voice acting and dialogue were pretty good too, although I thought the actual narrative was probably the weakest part. It reminded me of the old Call of Duty campaigns, especially the Modern Warfare 1 and 2 era. It's perfectly fine, but I feel like they could have gone a bit further with the spectacle. There were a few moments where it felt like they were holding back. My biggest complaint, though, is that the campaign is just too short.
I played the whole thing co-op with a friend who isn't particularly familiar with 40K, so I probably enjoyed it more than he did simply because I understood more of what was going on. One thing I really didn't understand was the decision to warn players that Operations could spoil the campaign. I actually think the game would have been better if the Operations missions had been presented alongside the campaign as another perspective on what was happening. We played the corresponding Operations after the campaign missions and I didn't feel like they spoiled anything. It would have been really cool to go campaign mission → related Operation → campaign mission, and so on.
The gameplay itself is a lot of fun. I mostly played melee, especially Bulwark with the Thunder Hammer, because my friend preferred the Heavy and wasn't a fan of melee. Smashing nids with a giant hammer never gets old.
The combat does take some getting used to, though. The attack indicators can be a little misleading. You can't really rely on them the way you might in something like the Batman Arkham games. Sometimes an enemy attacks long after the indicator appears, and sometimes they'll follow it up with several more attacks without indicators at all. You eventually learn the attack patterns and enemy types, but the indicator itself feels a little inconsistent. I do like the blue/red distinction for parryable and unparryable attacks, though.
Most of our time was actually spent in Operations, and we had an absolute blast with them. Since I bought the game this year, there were already a lot more Operations available than there were at launch, so there was plenty to play through. The class system and customization were also pretty fun.
I didn't spend much time in PvP, aside from getting a few achievements. Personally, it just felt like Call of Duty with Space Marines, and I'm not really a big shooter multiplayer person anyway, so it wasn't really for me. I'm sure plenty of other people will get much more out of it.
Overall, Space Marine 2 is a really fun 40K game with an excellent sense of atmosphere and attention to detail. The campaign could have been longer and the story could have aimed a little higher, but the world-building, combat, and Operations more than made up for it. As someone who already likes 40K, I had a great time with it.
