Recent reviews by Valhalla

Great in every way. Just as awesome, and then some icing on the cake, compared to SM1. Operations Mode is a hoot with friends, runs smooth, gruesome executions, blood, smashing, shooting, all what you expect from an Astartes.

I recommend playing on the highest difficulty for a seriously tough thrill ride of a game. You have to really know your combat loop and trust your teammates to each take up a role.

Love it. 9/10

These games are always a treat. They look absolutely amazing, run nice and smooth, and the gameplay is always very enjoyable, with a good story to boot.

Forbidden West took everything that make the first game great, and just added to it. 17 hours in, and I feel like I have barely scratched the surface, and I love it, because it makes exploring so much more fun.

Sure, you can blow through the main story if you want, but this game shines for the interesting things you can find off the beaten path, and the interesting NPCs you encounter in the strangest of places.

Would have been a sure-in for GOTY had it not come out the same year as Elden Ring. So, an amazing game.

10/10

Core gameplay and story has been fun thus far. However, the game runs like garbage. Even on a top end rig, you are lucky to get 60FPS even with mid settings.

That being said, I prefer performance issues over gameplay/story issues. Performance issues can be patched and optimized. But bad gameplay and boring stories can't be redone.

Give the game some time to patch out their performance problems before you buy, if you haven't yet.

Game is an absolute blast! HD1 was great, but it was such a small fanbase. HD2 took off like a space shuttle on steroids. Never did HD1 surpass around 7000 concurrent players in its full 9 years. HD2 has reached a peak of almost HALF A MILLION concurrent players across all platforms. Talk about success!

Obviously this means servers are struggling as they scramble to up their capacity. However, the game so awesome, you can pretty much ignore the login issues and server stability.

Pros:
Like Starship Troopers? This game is for you.
Hilarity ensues with the friendly fire.
Very challenging on higher difficulties.
Absolute blast to play with friends.
Graphics are of good quality.
Audio is very beefy and satisfying.
You get to kill Starship Trooper-like bugs, along with Terminator-like automatons.
Everything is obtainable in game. MTX's are not forced down your throat.
Unlock system for skills, weapons, boosters, armor, etc are all gained from currency you gain ingame.

Cons:
Some mechanics are not working properly at the moment, like armor values no registering.
Pretty big resource hog, especially on 1440p and 4k. Even a 3080 is breaking a sweat.
Some enemies are extremely difficult, even on lower difficulties.
Sometimes enemies will never stop spawning, leading to endless battles that waste your mission time.
Servers are a bit unstable at the moment, due to an abnormally large player count(Almost half a million concurrent players as of yesterday) For reference, HD1 never surpassed much beyond 7000 concurrent players.

Grab some friends, and enjoy the chaos!

9/10

Loving the game so far!

*UPDATE 10/21*

So I just beat the game for the first round through, and I gotta say, I loved every minute of it. Amazing game. I WOULD give it a 10/10 for sure, if it didn't have a few irritating bugs they haven't squashed yet, and their coop/invasion servers and matchmaking are quite horrendous at this point. But I found the game to be more enjoyable doing everything solo.

**ORIGINAL**

As with all Souls'esque games, I am always tentative, because so many fail at trying to be in that genre. This one, so far, is not only doing great in that genre, but adds some of its own twists into the mix to give it an identity apart from just cloning Dark Souls.

So far I am having a great time with it.

Some are complaining of performance issues, but with my rig, I am running nonstop 120FPS on max settings without a hiccup. Smooth as butter. I think the majority of the performance issues are driver and hardware related, not the game itself.

Definitely recommend so far. Ill update as I get further into the game. But first impressions - 9/10

Game had hiccups in the start, for sure. Luckily, server problems are like 99% fixed.

Game has plenty to do for a new player, with more being added constantly.

It is currently in Early Access, so things are still developing. If you wanna be a part of that, by all means, get into it. Otherwise wait a few more months for full release when there will be a lot more to offer.

This game bleeds Warframe into almost every aspect, from each character only having 4 unique skills, to how you collect components to craft your weapons or to gain new Wayfinder heroes.

A little open world, though not massively. At least not at the moment.

This would not be classified as an MMO persay, but rather, a Third Person Class Based Co-op RPG.

Basically Fallout in Space. And instead of having one big map like Fallout, you have MANY big maps on multiple planets.

Building a ship is fun, especially if you do it manually and not automatically. Use the ship builder to manually add your pieces, to make your ship your own.

Weapons are fun and diverse. Not only to weapons have "rankings" that determine their power, they also have their "grade" being common, rare, and legendary, with random affixes on them.

Outpost building is ok, but I find it fairly useless, and you can gather components faster than using an outpost to do it for you. It IS great if you want to build a fortress like people did in Fallout.

I would give it a 8/10

Just as awesome as the first game, if not better.

A little bummed they got rid of a few things like armor leveling and such, but with the addition of Archetypes and Dual Archetypes with skills on top of weapon mods and such, you have a lot of build diversity, which is great.

Online Co-op play feels very seamless and I have yet to experience any issues regarding lag, rubberbanding, etc. The only dull part to co-op is once you join someones game, you can only spectate until the player dies and respawns, at which point you will be allowed to play. This can be bad if the player does not seem to ever die, as you may end up watching for quite a while. But on the other side, you can play with someone as long as you want. I played with the same 3 man group last night for like 3 hours with zero issues. It was a very positive experience, although, they need to introduce some sort of a communication system, especially in a game like this that may require people to play different roles.

There is a good selection of weapons, which I hope they continue to build upon as they continue to add to the game.

Performance, at this time, is a bit up and down, as we wait for drivers and early release patches to iron out the hiccups and optimize the game, but it still runs well enough that you do not feel hindered by it, or annoyed by it.

Bosses can be quite challenging, especially if you are playing on higher difficulties, which is very rewarding when you defeat them. If you start on Veteran, you may feel very squishy and underpowered in the beginning as you try to get leveled up and getting resources to upgrade gear, but that is part of the fun!

I mean, if you compare the two, the original Dawn of War 40k games are much better in the RTS genre.

But Dawn of War 2 isn't quite an RTS game, at least in my head. It is more of a tactical squad based game, that happens to be in real time instead of turn based.

You won't get the traditional resource gathering, base building, army building RTS that you loved about the original DoW.

But you do get something that still has its own sort of appeal. A game that is much more focused on smaller armies and squads, and more focused on using them strategically, rather than just trying to overwhelm your enemy forces.

It certainly isn't for everybody. In fact, I would wager than a large portion of DoW1 fans did not like the direction this game took. But I found it to have its own charm, and its own sort of identity. And the more you play it, the more you sort of appreciate the tactics the game has to offer.

But it is certainly not for everybody. Pick it up on a sale if you find yourself interested in it. You may realize you don't like it very quickly.