UPDATE: 6/10/24

It's finally excellent, and worthy of being called one of the best co-op PvE experiences on the market -- regardless of whether you're actually into Warhammer 40K or not.

The new overhaul to the itemization has finally stopped inventory management feeling like a chore, by letting you know exactly how good your loot will be at max level before you begin investing in upgrading it, and instead of relying on RNG for good traits you now unlock them through natural gameplay progression trees and can apply them at-will. It's very easy now to pick a weapon and make it exactly what you want: no more needing to check the store every hour to see if they have what you need for your new build.

They also now let you swap your weapons back-and-forth between variants of the same type while keeping all their stats. If I've invested in my hordeclearing knife but want to try out the movesets/gameplay of the single-target shank or the heavy-swing cleaver, it's just a push of a button between missions, rather than having to find and upgrade two entirely new weapons.

With the earlier addition of full in-depth talent trees for each of the classes and new missions that add very distinct environments (a snowy area, a moving train), the variety and progression side of things is finally in a good place. The UI and UX have been spruced up too, and the overall presentation is great.

The combat was always the best in the business, with the most satisfying sense of weight and visceral impact of any game out there, attached to a wide range of mechanically-unique melee and ranged weapons. The weapons really let you pick your gameplay complexity, ranging from "left click to make everything dead" to "this attack chain requires a particular combo of light and heavy attacks and can only be initiated after a sprinting slide", and with the new hot-swapping between weapon types it's easier than ever to try out new styles.

tldr: Now that the supports around the combat are good, the game really shines.

My only real complaint now is that there's still no way to earn premium currency outside of direct purchase, which means there's dozens of cosmetics that will always be locked to you regardless of how much you play the game. It's not the end of the world, and there's a lot of cosmetics you can unlock through in-game currency or completing achievements, but it'd be nice to be able to work towards one of the fancy pieces if there's one you have your eye on.

OH ALSO your characters have more dialogue and use their rarer dialogues more often now, so you're less likely to hear the same lines over and over compared to launch, which really helps add personality to each team of randoms you play with. It's still not on Vermintide's level, but noticeably better than it was.


REVIEW AT LAUNCH:

Gameplay: A
Visuals: A
Audio: S+
Voices: A
Narrative: C-
WH40k Authenticity: A+
Ability To Be An Ogre With A Machinegun: A+++

Every other overarching system including loot, progression, crafting, cosmetic unlocks, talent trees, mission selection, achievement hunting, and monetisation: D-

The game feels great. The fundamentals are incredible. When you're actually in a mission hacking hordes of baddies apart with a chainsaw-axe so friend the space wizard can explode a monster's skull with her mind, everything feels freaking glorious. Sadly it's massively let down by all the not-in-a-mission stuff, which at this point is an absolute fustercluck of terrible design decisions and missing features. The game is very playable, and a ton of fun when it's in motion, but the devs have a lot of work to do on the stuff that keeps people playing long-term.