Recent reviews by Kalergi's Top Guy

TL;DR:
Buy on sale and be ready for plenty modding or disappointment. The game by itself is like 5/10, but its a great modding platform and a good experience in both multiplayer and solo IF you're willing to put time into configuring it and basically finishing developing the game on your own.

TL;DR2, the short review:
The game has been in an alpha for years. Results? Worse performance, simplified mechanics, a bunch of bs difficulty increases that don't actually make the game any more challenging and instead serve as time wasters. 7D2D became neither good sandbox nor decent action-RPG. I personally only recommend it because its modding community does wonders and kindly un♥♥♥♥s the game after every update, while adding features players actually desire. Very good skeleton to hang some meat on, not impressive otherwise.

-The updated graphics that game received over the span of several years don't make it all too appealing and will simply tank your performance. Game looks like Minecraft with shaders and "Ultra Realistic Texture Pack" thrown onto it.
-Animations for EVERYTHING are clunky and not in a "good" Resident Evil or Silent Hill way, where its thematic and fits the game/adds challenge.
-Both sounds and soundtrack are not impressive either. They do their job, but there's nothing all too memorable or immersive about them.
-Tool/melee/gun models look low quality and outdated. Guns are ESPECIALLY bad.
-Vehicles are boring to use and few in number. They feel weak, slow and floaty. They also get penalties if you're "too smart" and attempt to use them to escape the horde.
-Skill and crafting system evolved BACKWARDS and became a boring RNG-based grind with a bunch of nonsensical crafting locks and tiny stat bonuses.
-Enemy AI became both smarter AND dumber more on it later, in the example section.

1.Primary needs, thirst:
-Player needs to consume water every now and then. Player can easily find it or fill up empty bottles from any natural water source.
-Developers say "nah, its too easy". Developers make it so that empty water bottles no longer exist. You can now get water from random loot or a "dew collector". Dew Collector generates "heat" and attracts in zombies. Dew Collector can hold up to 6 water bottles at best. You can rather easily acquire several collectors and generate plenty of water passively, as you progress through the game.
-What it means for a new player: finding no water in loot and realizing that its easier to "despawn" yourself to restore thirst. Later getting dew collectors and never thinking about water again.
So the whole change achieves almost NOTHING in the long run and doesn't make the game all that difficult unless you're a new player that doesn't know where and how to scavenge for resources and decided to do a hardcore run for some reason. If you're an experienced player, you can still get water relatively easily, but you now KNOW that your playable character deletes water bottles out of existence and is too dumb to use them to collect water.
2.AI and zombie pathing:
-During Blood Moon zombies know exactly where you are, no matter how well you hide.
-If you build a bunker or a sky house they will quickly demolish the weakest parts of the structure and burrow into it or bring it down to get to you.
HOWEVER
-You can build a maze out of thin ramps, held up by pillars, 10 blocks high in the sky, place a tiny house at the end of it, held up by 1 pillar and sit inside it.
-Zombies will choose to go through the WHOLE MAZE, as long as the path is not obstructed, without care for gunfire or automated traps.
-Even if they fall, they will get up and try the maze AGAIN, in hopes of reaching the door you sit behind, instead of destroying 1 pillar your tiny house stands on.

Developers are too busy too add any real improvements and instead focus on limiting player freedom to make everyone play a certain way. I personally wouldn't mind that too much if there was a point to it, yet there's none, afaic. Leveling system, gearing, primary needs, AI - all of that gets changed around slightly with every major update with no actual worthwhile additions. Changes happen for no apparent reason or increase in "fun" and most of the time these changes are so forced, they WILL take you out of the experience and make it all feel too fake, gamey and frankly lazy. At this point I have more faith in modders, who come up with huge overhauls and tiny but impactful QoL improvements and gameplay additions. I think I could get better results by paying some madlad $300 to make new animations for all melee weapons than waiting on the devs to do the same thing. I've been observing this game for over a decade and got more joy out of what players do with it, rather than its developers.

Installs EPIC on your PC along with the game you buy and download from Steam. It does allow you to opt out of it partially right away though. Appreciate the thought, don't appreciate the simple fact that I'm not asked about it BEFORE its thrown at my machine. More and more devs pull that stunt, it seems.

I don't even care about all that "spyware" talk about it, mind you. Its just that there isn't even a word about it on the store page right now, aside from the mentions that the game can also be purchased there. What I'm saying is - if you're going to force that junk on me, at least be VERY open about it or cut it out completely. I don't want any funny surprises like this and it won't be the first product I refund because of that reason, sadly enough it probably won't be the last.

Might repurchase later if the game turns out fine.

Good people at Gearbox protect me from slop and bugs by making the new DLC unavailable in my region. Thank you, very cool!

People running EGS like timed exclusivity. And my cash is about to become a timed exclusive for people behind EDF until they remove anything "EPIC" related from the game.

Pretty meh all things considered. I don't even care enough to finish it. Can't recommend a full-price purchase. It might pass as a good piece of content if you're new to Remnant and not visiting the jungle for the 4th or 5th time.

In terms of gameplay:
-Combat feels boring because enemies are unresponsive stone golems. They stagger you on most of their attacks, ignore bleed(cause rock, duh) and don't flinch when you attack them. Not challenging, not fun either.
-You get a debuff on you that only matters if you're running an armor-dependant build that developers seem to hate with a passion. I get it, someone on the team watched hbomberguy and decided that all souls-likes should be based on dodging. Whatever, get something new on the menu already.
-There is more platforming and one-shot-and-you're-dead-style "puzzles" that depend mostly on you not having full control of your character. I wouldn't mind that as much, but I already did plenty of it in the rest of the game and I have better ♥♥♥♥ to do.

In terms of story:
-There's the usual "DO WHAT I WANT OR ELSE" from one of the character, except now you don't even get to just shoot it in the face right away.
-Big surprise! Everyone is dead or dying and the local deity is very mad!

In terms of visuals:
-Its a color-swapped jungle that you've already seen in all Remnant games.
-Perfromance is somehow worse than in the bootleg Bloodborne areas that look much more interesting than a messy combination of trees and rocks.

You can shoot a giant M1911-looking handgun, one-handed, at endangered animals and police in a wildlife sanctuary. All while being carried in the air by a bald eagle sitting on your other arm and being followed by an AK-wielding monkey with a marijuana-looking-leaf head accessory.

TL;DR: A good L4D-like live service game in a WH40k setting. Doesn't take much to get into, doesn't expect you to be some WH lore master and provides plenty of fun. IRL cash shop so far only sells appearance-related items.

Positives:

• Its WH:40k. Nice visuals(style), music, audio and banter between characters. Might not be 100% true to lore, but if you're not some zealous WH buff, but simply like the universe - you'll certainly enjoy what I mentioned.
  
• Meaningful customization. 4 classes, each with 3 sub-classes you can spec into. Each class/sub-class can perform different actions and essentially be a "specialist" at some specific thing. Gear also plays into it.
  
• When the game works gunplay and melee combat have a great feel to them. Almost every impact feels meaty. Gore system and ragdolls are quite well made too.
  
• Most of the features you might want, such as weapon customization and scoreboard can be added via mods and devs are fine with it.

Negatives:

• Servers are not great. For the last few weeks I've noticed that logging into the game or even accessing merchants takes more time than it did before. I've also noticed that more and more enemies simply shrug off my attacks. Hitreg is seemingly server-side, so you can guess how much of a nightmare it is when you're dealing with hordes of enemies along with 3 other players. In a game with punishing combat, reliance on timing and strict ammo economy something like that is unforgivable.
  -Not fixed since initial release, gotten worse in some ways
  
• RNG-based gearing and mission selection will drain the fun out of you. Everything is random. Good luck completing weeklies, getting missions you prefer or finding a good gun. Its an endless dice roll and odds are not in your favor.
  -Fixed partially, but only in regards to gearing and is still very RNG heavy
  
• The game is full of bugs. Some terrain doesn't have proper meshes so you get shot through cover. Some enemies outright ignore cover. They're usually the kind that can knock you out with 1 attack. Some enemies are simply unpredictable with their movements, jittery and with non-existant mass at times. Certain gear or abilities don't actually provide the promised benefits.
  -Fixed partially, but everything mentioned still occurs and is even worse if you experience connection issues
  
• In-game achivements, "penances", expect you to run a discord catboy squad in order to complete them. Otherwise they outright demand you to sabotage yourself or your team. One of the achievements asks you to finish a mission with 100% accuracy and 0 ammo remaining. Considering hitreg issues and the fact that one of the classes can restore your ammo by simply killing an enemy near you - good luck with that. All you get as a reward is an outfit piece slightly differing from the one you got completing some other "penance".
  -Fixed partially, some penances now have a private party requirement
  
• Speaking of sabotaging your team - game is balanced in a very weird way where it wants you to be selfish and score kills for benefits. Yet at the same time it promotes co-operation. Example: to power up a certain class needs to dispatch enemies in a somewhat time consuming way; game expects you to either wait on them or ignore the enemies they're dealing with, meanwhile you ALSO need to kill same enemies to receive buffs for yourself and your teammates. Imagine doing that with a group of randoms you know nothing about. Not even their build.
  -Fixed partially, as some abilities now activate even from teammate kills
  
• There's a crippling lack of non-chat communication options. You can't say "yes" or "no" via your character. You can tag stuff, ask for ammo/healing or point at some area where enemies are. That's it.
  -Fixed partially, the only thing that was added was a "cheer" option. The mod that featured "cheer" first, however, DOES have "Yes" and "No", fully functional, with voice and chat functionality.
  
• Missions and objectives are very repetitive. Optional objectives are even more repetitive, but also unrewarding and difficult to complete. Difficult in an easy, but boring, time-wasting way.
  -Not fixed since initial release, the best you can expect are completely new maps and they take a long time to get made
  
• Almost every playable character is extremely ugly and "committee approved". Best part is - you won't get to cover even your own "ugly grin" unless you spend cash or until very far into the game.
  -Not fixed since initial release

This game is very similar to 7 Days To Die. Both feature crafting, zombies and melee combat. Both use same anti-cheat. Both are equally "well" optimized. All in all, I say it's pretty good for an alpha of an indie-game. Hope next patch separates sprinting and dodging while also fixing whatever mess that port is. I also hope it finally adds button icons for M&K to general HUD. Some modders did all of the above for Dark Souls 3. Mighty developers that had the time to rename male and female to "body type A/B" instead of fixing decade old issues should be capable of that too.

Great game if you like fast-paced simple gameplay. Compared to original HM, story is better fleshed out and way easier to follow. Message of the game is far more obvious and somewhat similar to Undertale lmao. Gameplay offers more variety - there are more enemy types and some levels have very tricky weapon and enemy placements. Sadly, boss-fights(if you can even call them that) in HM2 are way less spectacular than the ones in original HM. HM2 also offers more challenge(I'll elaborate on that one below). Soundtrack is great too, at least if you like music done by Carpenter Brut and M.O.O.N. Steam Workshop and Level Editor potentially provide infinite amount of content.

That all sounds nice and I really like the game, however, I have to address certain issues HM2 has when it comes to being "fair and balanced". Original Hotline Miami, while being a difficult game, was never TOO difficult. You could always get by, simply by learning the level and memorizing enemy positions. Maps were smaller and enemies not as numerous. HM2, however, is different in that regard:
-A lot of maps are big and open. It means that sometimes you get sniped by AI so far away from you, you couldn't even see them to avoid the danger in the first place.
-Maps also have way more windows - it means that you'll be getting shot through walls may more often.
-Windows wouldn't be an issue, but after replaying the game several times and beating it on Hard difficulty, I've noticed something. Enemies actually spot you easier if you stand behind glass or 2 layers of glass. Example - if you attempt to aggro an enemy out in the open, they will ignore you(even if you swing a melee weapon around), yet if you simply walk near a window, enemies will attack you with lethal precision. Perhaps russian mobsters use magnifying glass for their windows, idk.
-Issue mentioned above is made even worse by AI having weird detection zones. As in, sometimes enemies have easier time noticing you when you're behind them. Certain maps have enemies placed specifically to use that "mechanic" in order to cheese the player.
-When it comes to HEARING the player, enemies sometimes outright ignore shotgun blasts and AR bursts, turning aggro and ambush into an RNG-based process.
-Picking up a weapon is still extremely unreliable. It results in you picking up a gun that is far away from you when you're attempting to grab a melee weapon right below you, or picking up an unloaded gun while trying to get the loaded one you're standing on.
-Sometimes enemies phase through wall corners(same can happen to players too). Sometimes they glitch INTO doors, becoming invulnerable but still capable of instantly killing you.
-Enemy finishers on certain characters are EXTREMELY slow. Finishers also seem to draw enemy attention the same way windows do. Meaning - you can shoot/melee someone and no one will spot you, but try and finish off someone and you'll get sniped.
-AI tends to roam around and that sometimes breaks maps by making them way easier or harder.

Issues I've described make HM2 combat very random and create artificial difficulty. Unlike original HM, its less about planning and memorizing and more about managing whatever chaotic mess you end up in, the "enemies are predictable" tip no longer applies. Basically, as amazing as it is, don't expect HM2 to be a perfectly smooth skill-based experience.

Developers sacrificed mod functionality for the sake of an update that adds a 20 minutes long useless event mission promoting a good-for-nothing cash-grab live adaptation, done by a creep producer who gets a hard-on from filming low-quality, low-effort movies with his malnourished talentless wife in the role of a protagonist. I now get to enjoy UI pop-ups about that movie with the face of said malnourished actress staring at me menacingly every time I log into the game.

If before I would simply ignore the movie in question, I now despise it with passion, as I have to repair my game without actually getting any new content to enjoy. I actually lost community-made content that made my game better. I hope the movie tanks, I hope it turns out to be so bad that Crapcom outright deletes everything that could remind anyone that the event that is currently happening ever existed, and I hope that whoever decided to put that crap into the game gets fined, fired and decides to get minecrafted with sonic underground.