Recent reviews by Blueback Dyck McCumber

Very similar to Vampire Survivors.

A bit annoyed with the game design currently after dying to the second level's boss.

Each run is 30 minutes of survival which is a good chunk of time for no saves and no ability to come back to it later. As soon as you hit the 30 minute mark there's an end of level boss that is an additional indefinite amount of time based on how quickly you're able to kill it. I spent easily 20+ minutes AFTER the initial 30 minutes running around the boss moving out of the way of his four attacks as he infinitely spawned in exploding orbs that bunch up and track you. The orbs also block the boss from coming near enough to hit with a good portion of the attacks/spells you get and the only way to get rid of them is to run up and touch one so that it explodes. Just felt bad and like a huge waste of time chipping away at a boring boss with 2000x more health than any other enemy you've fought so far. Absolutely zero incentive to ever go back there as I have no desire to repeat the fight. I know I can finish it, I just don't want to experience that boredom again.

Review is positive despite that glaring issue, for 5 bucks the levels themselves are still fun to play. If they balance the end of level bosses it would be a 5/5, but as it sits I can only give it a 3/5. Doesn't respect the players time by wasting it with health sponges for bosses, rather than implementing challenging mechanics.

90% of my played hours were with at least 1 other person in my group I knew, frequently I'd even get to play with the full group of friends.

As far as I can tell, this is the only fun way to play this game.

It has engaging combat that promotes teamwork and exploration of the level, but the majority of groups you'll find of random people have little to no concept of working together. The Call of Duty mindset prevails in modern games from modern gamers, "I'm a one man army!" This is the absolute worst way to play tide games.

While I'm exceedingly grateful they added in the ability to do private matches, the bots are extremely dumb. Vermintide 2 had workable bots that would even allow you to play the max difficulty level with only them, but these are dumbed down versions of even the worst players. Meaning it's impossible to just play the game privately to work around that issue.

So, I reiterate, play with friends. The only people left playing alone (as far as I can tell) are the types addicted to gameplay loops that want to rush the missions as fast as they can because it's their 500th hour and they're just ticking another mental checkbox. The real kicker is the social system is so broken and terribly done that you can't even block people that play like that; it's nearly impossible to find someone after you played a match, good or bad. They entirely removed the ability to party up after a match because of issues with it and claims they'll fix it, yet the entire social system isn't functioning.

The casual players were scared off from the horrendous launch of the game and probably won't be back for months, if not years depending on if Fatshark and Tencent can figure out if they want to continue to be totally souless in their game design or actually have our best interests in mind.

Currently everything in this game needs work other than the combat, which was basically ripped straight from Vermintide 2 with minor tweaks. There are about a thousand fires they're running around trying to put out to make this game playable and fun, and the playerbase is suffering because of it.

Asking for a refund.

Weapons are extremely unrealistic and slow to a painful extent, no such thing as a quick stab or thrust. Reminds me of stage combat in a way. If the combat had been worthwhile to learn I may have enjoyed it more, but as it is I can't see myself every playing it again. After the first hour I realized I was wasting my time to an extent I wasn't comfortable with in a video game; that is to say it has no real redeeming value.