STAY CLEAR OF THIS PIECE OF ♥♥♥♥

The idea is sound - take Left4Dead and add DarkSouls combat and items with unique attack patterns to it... except that only works when the game is tough but fair and rewards your skill and mastering the combat, unlike this broken grindy trash where you can fall and/or get dragged under the textures, get killed by attacks through walls, including long range specials using AoE while being outside the boundaries of the map with no line of sight at all, wiping the party while completely invulnerable themselves, or locked into a deathlock that every other NPC has, when they have neglected their windup animations and cast instantly multiple times in a quick succession or ignore the fact that you clearly dodged in time.
(Update: Since devs don't know what balance or coding is and can't fix any of the bugs they "balance" harder difficulties by spawning multiple specials on top of a mini boss on top of a horde AND they made enemies teleport right behind you with no sound what so ever so you can't even hear footsteps or the sound that is supposed to warn you about an attack coming from behind. Specials and just normal mobs often attack without windup, animations or delay just instantly oneshotting you with telekenesis or sometimes they windup and attack but attack you while you are behind them without - the OPPOSITE way of where they were aiming. Aside from swing direction, enemies also often ignore walls and their actual attack range so that they can reach you with their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ telekenesis when they are teleported right behind you and you are just running away because you can't possibly know they are there since they don't even make any sounds they are supposed to)

The game depends heavily on sound design so you can know when you are about to get attacked by enemies from behind who are impossible to see and often even hear because of how poor the sound design actually is. The sound is also supposed to help you find incoming specials but direction sound doesn't work AT ALL and is no help. especially when most of the time specials are in unreachable spots outside normal map boundaries where you don't have line of sight on them and only jump down when they are about to attack you or better yet - just use their broken abilities from where you can't reach them.

You need to grind gear in this game and the grind is atrocious - takes several months to fully gear up just ONE out of FIVE characters with red items that always have maximum stats without any random BS involved. Seriously - the grind is on par with pay2win mobile trash except there aren't even microtransactions so it's unclear why it is so grindy if not to strongarm you to buy some virtual trash for real money. I opened literally THOUSANDS of very hard to get top tier chests and not even a single one of my heroes is maxed (gotten all items) and I was opening them on the same character. Plus it's superbly difficult to get just ONE of those chests for a FLAWLESS run on highest difficulty with all the secrets that debuff you collected. Whenever I get a red item it's just a repeat of some low tier trash because ofcourse this gotcha game that thinks it's darksouls has no duplicate or bad luck protection...
(Update: since last review they added tons of microtransactions and the ingame currency you can,again, painstakingly grind like it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobile game, can only buy you the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ offerings that are also tied to payed DLC most of the time, while all the decent stuff just costs real money)

Devs have become notorious for ignoring feedback and pleas from the playerbase - they hardly ever fix anything and when they do they just break it even worse later. Some of the bugs and lack of basic quality of life elements are so ancient they come from the first game.
(Update: no big surprise that situation has gotten even worse YEARS later after my initial review and even longer since the game lanuched and all the problems carried over into Darktide - the gloriofied sci-fi reskin of this garbage. Disconnects are now intolerably constant and game breaking bugs even more abundant. There's lovely new bugs like bullets not hitting targets and going straight through them while in POINT BLANK range where they take up your ENTIRE screen!)

Quality of life is another thing - this game doesn't explain ANY of its mechanics, what the potions do, what are the weapon stats and benefits aside for the random re-rollable bonuses. Some weapons for example have extra crit chance or allow you to dodge more times in a row or even indefinitely, but all of those are completely hidden and near impossible to figure out on your own.

Latest DLC repeats the mistake of StarWars: Battlefront where the maps are only available to those who bought them while the game relies on players queueing up for a game, leading to new maps being barely ever played. Even EA couldn't pull it off and these guys are far from being too big to fail like EA is, but are allow themselves decissions that are equally dumb and hurt their own business just for the sake of being ♥♥♥♥♥.
(Update: they also paywalled off the best weapons and classes in the game that are pretty OP and basically mandatory for highest difficulties since devs can't/won't fix or balance the game)

Good idea ruined by UNFORGIVABLY HORRIBLE design and complete neglect from the devs.

Update TLD: Nothing ever fixed, more bugs and stupid ♥♥♥♥ added to compensate for lack of actual coding skills, metric ♥♥♥♥ ton of game breaking bugs, added lovely abundance of constant disconnects, every game by this dev is a broken reskin of this 15 year old ♥♥♥♥ engine and they religiously refuse to fix anything like it was ordained by Sigmar himself or some ♥♥♥♥ - STAY CLEAR OF ALL FATSHARK GAMES!!!

STAY CLEAR OF THIS PIECE OF SHIT The idea is sound - take Left4Dead and add DarkSouls combat and items with unique attack patterns to it... except that only works when the game is tough but fair and rewards your skill and mastering the combat, unlike this broken grindy trash where you can fall and/or get dragged under the textures, get killed by attacks through walls, including long range specials using AoE while being outside the boundaries of the map with no line of sight at all, wiping the party while completely invulnerable themselves, or locked into a deathlock that every other NPC has, when they have neglected their windup animations and cast instantly multiple times in a quick succession or ignore the fact that you clearly dodged in time. (Update: Since devs don't know what balance or coding is and can't fix any of the bugs they "balance" harder difficulties by spawning multiple specials on top of a mini boss on top of a horde AND they made enemies teleport right behind you with no sound what so ever so you can't even hear footsteps or the sound that is supposed to warn you about an attack coming from behind. Specials and just normal mobs often attack without windup, animations or delay just instantly oneshotting you with telekenesis or sometimes they windup and attack but attack you while you are behind them without - the OPPOSITE way of where they were aiming. Aside from swing direction, enemies also often ignore walls and their actual attack range so that they can reach you with their god damn telekenesis when they are teleported right behind you and you are just running away because you can't possibly know they are there since they don't even make any sounds they are supposed to) The game depends heavily on sound design so you can know when you are about to get attacked by enemies from behind who are impossible to see and often even hear because of how poor the sound design actually is. The sound is also supposed to help you find incoming specials but direction sound doesn't work AT ALL and is no help. especially when most of the time specials are in unreachable spots outside normal map boundaries where you don't have line of sight on them and only jump down when they are about to attack you or better yet - just use their broken abilities from where you can't reach them. You need to grind gear in this game and the grind is atrocious - takes several months to fully gear up just ONE out of FIVE characters with red items that always have maximum stats without any random BS involved. Seriously - the grind is on par with pay2win mobile trash except there aren't even microtransactions so it's unclear why it is so grindy if not to strongarm you to buy some virtual trash for real money. I opened literally THOUSANDS of very hard to get top tier chests and not even a single one of my heroes is maxed (gotten all items) and I was opening them on the same character. Plus it's superbly difficult to get just ONE of those chests for a FLAWLESS run on highest difficulty with all the secrets that debuff you collected. Whenever I get a red item it's just a repeat of some low tier trash because ofcourse this gotcha game that thinks it's darksouls has no duplicate or bad luck protection... (Update: since last review they added tons of microtransactions and the ingame currency you can,again, painstakingly grind like it's a god damn mobile game, can only buy you the shitties offerings that are also tied to payed DLC most of the time, while all the decent stuff just costs real money) Devs have become notorious for ignoring feedback and pleas from the playerbase - they hardly ever fix anything and when they do they just break it even worse later. Some of the bugs and lack of basic quality of life elements are so ancient they come from the first game. (Update: no big surprise that situation has gotten even worse YEARS later after my initial review and even longer since the game lanuched and all the problems carried over into Darktide - the gloriofied sci-fi reskin of this garbage. Disconnects are now intolerably constant and game breaking bugs even more abundant. There's lovely new bugs like bullets not hitting targets and going straight through them while in POINT BLANK range where they take up your ENTIRE screen!) Quality of life is another thing - this game doesn't explain ANY of its mechanics, what the potions do, what are the weapon stats and benefits aside for the random re-rollable bonuses. Some weapons for example have extra crit chance or allow you to dodge more times in a row or even indefinitely, but all of those are completely hidden and near impossible to figure out on your own. Latest DLC repeats the mistake of StarWars: Battlefront where the maps are only available to those who bought them while the game relies on players queueing up for a game, leading to new maps being barely ever played. Even EA couldn't pull it off and these guys are far from being too big to fail like EA is, but are allow themselves decissions that are equally dumb and hurt their own business just for the sake of being dicks. (Update: they also paywalled off the best weapons and classes in the game that are pretty OP and basically mandatory for highest difficulties since devs can't/won't fix or balance the game) Good idea ruined by UNFORGIVABLY HORRIBLE design and complete neglect from the devs. Update TLD: Nothing ever fixed, more bugs and stupid shit added to compensate for lack of actual coding skills, metric shit ton of game breaking bugs, added lovely abundance of constant disconnects, every game by this dev is a broken reskin of this 15 year old shit engine and they religiously refuse to fix anything like it was ordained by Sigmar himself or some shit - STAY CLEAR OF ALL FATSHARK GAMES!!!