1.6 hours played
Written 9 days ago
It is a great improvement in terms of gameplay over the first game.
Most likely not a game for me, though.
+ It's faster, it's easier and unless the enemy has a huge HP bar it'll be dead in seconds - finally appropriate since 1 felt like ordinary units were too tanky.
1 was boring this is very nice to play and you have abilities and other options that you could spam or save for critical moments.
+ It looks a lot nicer and colorful, even in environments not meant for color - I get lost much less since the "it all looks samey" problem is now completely gone.
+ The party banter is nicer and more like comrades now, though it makes sense they've weathered a storm or 2 together by now.
+ I was worried I'd be scared of enemies visually, but while the chaos spawn boss was gross, I could back away from it and rest while someone else fought it for a while. Anything non-boss was dead too fast to linger in any way, so I wasn't scared at all. Nice on that front.
- I'm so f-ing confused: I clearly set the options to the equivalent of "NO ONE can join my game" and yet when I played, I saw player names and nearly no "bot" markers.
I hate having my preference ignored or overwritten this is NOT acceptable.
- I'm now convinced there's just no classic map I could look at: I tried both the remapped key and the default one, nothing.
+/- Playing with other players depends on the group and I hate such variables in my games.
1 The first group was great.
They let me be in front despite me plying for the first time and with the human knight, I was just killing nearly everything in a few hits. Glorious and chat off, so I could get plenty of party banter. I got lost a bit, but figured it out eventually. It felt so authentic I almost didn't suspect I wasn't playing with AI until I saw the player names. - Though it was suspicious how they always helped me out of a ratman snare. XD
2 The second run with the elf was merely OK.
People were in such a hurry I was left far behind, confused, disorientated and lost. We got the mission done faster, but speedrunning a game is not the damn point.
I don't do gambling, especially not with experiences, so I'd much rather just play a single player game or only have hosted sessions in games where multiplayer is adjacent, but not the main focus and make sure sessions were preagreed upon.
E.g. Co-op in Elden Ring is great with a friend I know IRL and we use Steam's chat to predefine what we'll be doing and when. I love that and I knew what, who and how for every session.
In contrast, Vermintide 2 is a coin toss of who you'll be randomly paired up with and you end up in a player party WITHOUT consenting to it seemingly automatically, regardless of your OWN settings. NOT REMOTELY how to go about it.
- Probably the thing I hated the most: there's no way that I could find AT ALL to play missions in any semblance of story order - Vermintide 1 at least had that much right - just what kind of (forced coop) session you want to have, no map with clearly labeled missions.
If the prolog of the game is the best and most structured part, the game has failed on a different level then the first one.
If the whole game was a series of small, structured missions like the prolog I'd love it, this way: I can't forgive it for jamming coop down my throat no matter what.
I hated how Vermintide 1 played and I like how 2 plays, but I hate it on a structural level. Given I don't see a fix here, I'd rather dive into a single player title.
P.S. You can play as Skaven in the Versus mode, but it seems even more chaotic and with less instructions than regular gameplay. Not for me.