This is so cute its like Vermintide 2 but harder

+ I like the story and love the party dialog - the voice actors are fantastic and you can hear them best in solo play with bots.

Unfortunately, I hate just about everything else. XD

- Whoever designed the UI should be fired stat: who the f--k will look at the bottom of the screen for info?
It's always placed where it's nicely visible, not hidden from view, especially HP values (here you only have bars and colors, but the principle is the same).


- Whose bright idea was it to ensure shields block your view?!
I tried playing with the human soldier, but his shield takes about half the screen.
Your job is to ensure easer play, not BS for the sake of it.
If I wanted realism, I'd be doing fencing or some other sword sport, not playing video games - this is the one and only game where I've had this problem, so it's not even a first person only thing, just a "we made it badly" thing.
And the dwarf has the same problem, except in a smaller scale.
No excuse either way.

+/- I'm neutral on the bots: they like to fight a bit too much, so they won't run after you if a new objective pops up and you need to head to a different spot, while there's ratmen to kill in the immediate vicinity, but it makes sense since stragglers can summon reinforcements. They'll be along if you let them fight first and follow you after.
Good luck not being dragged off, though. They ignore that, unless you're really close to them. I can see that being a huge annoyance later on and it's unclear visually what enemies do that - the bigger sin in my eyes.

- Someone told me to be prepared for a tough game, but I have the opposite problem: it's braindead easy. XD
So much so that on easy the bots can literally clear a level by themselves even if I do nothing at all. Ultimate fail for a GAME.
Balance not remotely achieved and as a result it's beyond boring and I just want it to be over.

- No interesting loot: it'd be way more engaging if I could get weapons in the field, but all drops beyond heals are meaningless to me (bombs sound cool, but I want mouse wheel scrolling to only switch between weapons, not extra stuff - it's cluttered this way and blocks you from efficient item management, which is very counterproductive in a game like this).
What you do get after a mission is RNG based on some kind of dice - might be a nice touch of lore (I wouldn't know), but it's less engaging as a mechanic. I'd like to at least pick a category of gear to prioritize getting something for.

- I get you don't have home field advantage and the ratmen do, but that doesn't mean there should be swarms of rats coming at you every once in a while just because, especially not from nearly all directions and in areas you've already cleared.
It's tedious, not "blood pumping" or whatever they were going for.

- I remapped some keys, but none of those worked, so I got lost some on my way since I had no access to a map.

+ Graphics are pretty good (though excessive blood getting in your way visually is bad, not more reason for a higher age rating or whatever the Hell they were going for) and it ran fine on 120 FPS.

- I think even the Chaos gods have no idea what the f--k the stamina limit is doing in this game. XD
Commit to a souls-like and that demands a reworking of how the game and its pace work, or make actions have no limits like a proper battle royale styled game. This is BS just for BS's sake, it's arbitrary pulling back for a few moments for no reason.

- From what I understood, the player count for Vermintide 1 is as good as dead, so it's bots or nothing.
Make it clearer that bots will join you BEFORE a game starts. They auto spawn in with you and even teleport to you if you're far away ingame, but it should be clear from the onset, not mere moments AFTER starting a run.

- Given how interesting different Skaven units are, it's such a missed opportunity to NOT let you play as them: I mean gas weapons, machineguns, rat ogres - if your enemies steal the show from your heroes you're doing something wrong by not letting the player take the bad guys for a spin.
The opposite of this game would be a 1000 times more interesting and I mourn the fact that we don't have a single action game that do let you play as the Skaven. (Beyond 4 strategy titles that I know of - Mark of Chaos, Mordheim: City of the Damned and the Warhammer Total War 2 and 3 games - none of the Warhammer PC games feature the ratman as playable in any capacity and that's beyond sad, given how cool and resourceful the ratmen are).


For the devs sake, I sincerely hope Vermintide 2 has a different foundation because 1 is uninspired, tries to be different in all the wrong places and is beyond boring - its only redeeming qualities are fantastic voice acting and a cool setting, but for that alone it has no business taking up a little over 100Gb with all DLC, or around 50GB to download.
Avoid like the plague, there's nothing to grab you here, unless you like tedium with larger HP bars and more enemy waves.