Recent reviews by Mantis Toboggan, M.D.

⚠️WARNING⚠️: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ONLINE! The devs have sold out to Epic Games and ruined the networking/matchmaking system by ditching Steam Networking. Steam was reliable and fast, but Epic is trash and slow. You will waste hours trying to join or host a lobby, only to get kicked out or disconnected. This game is unplayable online and the devs don’t care. Save your money and time and avoid this dumpster fire of a game. 👎👎👎

Don't buy it. If you're convinced that you're going to buy WoM, make sure to prioritize other DLCs first. Winds of Magic should be the last DLC you buy. It is 2/3 the price of the non-discounted, regular base game price, being the most expensive DLC. It is priced too high for the little content it brings. You can safely skip this DLC. Back to Ubersreik and Forgotten relics have superior weapons. It has mostly negative reviews for good reason.

WoM introduces only one new map (the least out of all the map DLCs). The consensus on the Weaves game mode is that it’s a bad game mode and has poor matchmaking. Currently, it is pretty much dead, especially since the introduction of the new free game mode, Chaos Wastes. Most of the community don’t play Weaves. If you take away Weaves, then the remaining content is not worth it.

It’s also the most gameplay-disruptive DLC. It introduces the divisive Beastmen and there is no game setting to toggle them off. (Opinions vary, but personally, I find the game better without Beastmen in them. I have the same sentiments as:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/f8g0ag/why_beastmen_feel_so_outofplace_like_they_dont/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/fawrsz/beastmen_still_suck_badly/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/f6m72t/fs_please_add_a_toggle_or_option_to_disable/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/csstjl/finally_figured_out_how_to_deal_with_beastmen/
https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/remove-beastmen-from-certain-dlc-maps/41605/10

(The Beastmen feedback posts I’ve linked here were all made after the Beastmen nerfs.) The game effectively has two sets of maps - one with no Beastmen (no WoM DLC) and one with Beastmen forced in them (WoM DLC) with no way to turn them off (unless you turn the whole DLC off in Steam which will prevent you from using WoM items in your inventory and playing Cataclysm).

On the Cataclysm difficulty WoM adds, it is more for players with lots of experience on the game, looking for a more challenging difficulty than Legend. Most players, especially new ones, won’t want to play at that difficulty. (Also Cata’s loot box drops are the same as Legend, i.e. it’s not for farming loot.) Another downside is the paywall: You can’t invite non-WoM DLC owners to a Cataclysm difficulty match. You won’t be able to start a Cata match if there’s a non-WoM owner in the lobby.

As another disruption, WoM will also remove Olesya from her place near the portal and she will no longer say her dialogue[vermintide2.fandom.com] after you complete a mission. This affects immersion, making the keep less lively. The player will also miss lore tidbits.

Good game with interesting visuals and narrative.

A co-op game that actually encourages co-op play. Classes have well-defined roles and players are encouraged to use different classes in a team as they complement each other. A large variety of character perks (skills and abilities), weapons, weapon mods, environments (from "deserts" and "icy" locales to "radioactive" and "acid" locales), enemies (grunts, disablers, exploding enemies, flying enemies, digging enemies, a combination of those, and more! - heck, even grunts have multiple types). You can also keep a pet grunt called Steeve.

There are a lot of customizability - skins, hats, beards, eyebrows, you name it. No sh❤️tty greedy DLC monetization schemes. There are no DLC-locked weapons, maps, and game modes - all DLCs are cosmetic only. I give this a two thumbs up. :47_thumb_up: :47_thumb_up: Rock and stone! To the bone!

The original Borderlands has solid shooter / gunplay mechanics, so a free graphics overhaul on top is nice. Fixed the field of view bug too. Added QoL features from later Borderlands games like: Buy max ammo button in vendors, Item locking/trash markers in inventory, etc.

Aside from those, not much has been changed. Networking code and matchmaking is still horrible, despite changes to Steam matchmaking which the developers should've taken advantage of. Also, wasn't really updated to fix bugs reported when it was released. Seems like this was just released to promote Borderlands 3.

Full list of changes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NF9yenf7_nO3e-C3I7tC30nkgoAarkzphoM-KLDaUwY/edit

Overall, will recommend but only because the original game already had solid mechanics.

Pros: High replayability factor due to a huge variety of weapons. Melee weapons with their unique attack angles, attack patterns, tweaks to movement speed and quirks. Ranged weapons ranging from sniper types to crowd killing types. Combine this with the different careers each with their own talent choices, active and passive abilities to have unique gameplay with each of them. Nice mix of enemies, with different types of disablers, elite infantry, hordes, and bosses. Interesting dialogue and banter between characters. A large variety of levels: from sunny forests to dark underground Dwarven cities. Sanctioned mods support and anti-cheat mean fewer hackers and cheaters (compared to Vermintide 1). I've only seen one cheater in this game and it's been months since I last saw a cheater. Sanctioned mods also support better UI, better bots and many QoL improvements.

Cons: Less grimdark themes in levels compared to Vermintide 1. Some careers are just plain weaker than other careers. E.g. ranged-focused careers like Huntsman and Bounty Hunter are less strong individually and as team support compared to their non-range-focused counterparts. They are still fun to play, though. Some weapons are just plain weak: e.g. shield weapons — it is not fun to play with them. Some harder events don't have better rewards (e.g. Twitch and Weekly Events which are harder but offer the same rewards as regular levels). The damn RNG in giving out red (highest quality) items. Also, RNG in re-rolling traits and properties. Should have a better system in addition to the RNG. i.e. guaranteed red items every ~10 emperor vaults (highest quality reward) or so. And allow paying a specific amount of dust to get the traits and properties you want.

Overall: The fun and replayability factor greatly outweighs the cons. Would recommend.

Pros: Gun shooting and hitting enemies feel satisfying. Most weapons are balanced. Challenging, and fun to play with a team. This is unlike its successor, Payday 2. But like Payday 2, it is moddable too with good UI mods like WTFBM.

Cons: Very slow loading time when waiting for player to join an on-going game. Few levels. Some weapons are just too weak compared to others in the same category. Enemies don't change behavior or intelligence when going into higher difficulties, they just deal more damage and have more hitpoints.

Bland gameplay. Character movement is uncomfortable.

Multiplayer has no master servers (list of games you can join). There are also no relay servers or hole-punching, which could mean manually fiddling with router settings to open ports. You need to direct connect to host by IP address to join (or be invited), which makes finding games hard. Won't recommend this game even at 90% discount (which is when I bought it).