Did you know…?
We also have a discord server!
This review is purely based on my experience of this game. I tried my best not to let other games affect my view of this game too much and rate everything on an for this game appropriate scale! This review does contain spoilers, some of which may not be marked as such!
Links:
☐ You forget what reality is
☑ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
Alright. Straight up starting off good. This game looks good. At least if you don't have to play on the lowest settings in order to get some fps..
Seriously though. I'm lucky enough to have a setup that allows me to play this game on 4k with all graphics settings maxed and sometimes even 60 fps.
Though I had to disable raytracing AND turn on dlss, without frame gen because frame gen causes lags when opening menus for me, which can make the game look real bad at times.
But as I already mentioned. If you can play the game on maxed out settings, of which chances are higher if you play on 1080p, it's looking really nice.
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
It's exactly the type of gameplay I love. Slaughtering through hordes of enemies with your squad while trying to get an objective done or simply move from one side of a map to another? I love it.
And Darktide has tons of that. If you like games like Left 4 Dead and Vermintide, then you will most probably also like Darktide. Well if you liked Vermintide then you've probably already tried Darktide..
Anyways, This game is a lot more melee focused than some of the others and you do have to learn to dodge, occasionally block and especially sprint/slide a lot in order to not to take too many hits.
The only things that bug me are.. Why the hell can you not play private without having at least one more person in your strike team.
And why the hell... WOULD YOU LET LEVEL 15 PLAYERS JOIN THE FRIGGIN "HIGHEST" DIFFICULTY (aside from extra modes like auric and havoc)?
Seriously. If you feel like you're struggling and cant really stay alive on your own in a difficulty, feel free to go down by at least one difficulty!
There is no shame in admitting that you're not ready yet for the next difficulty.
Being completely overwhelmed by hordes of enemies with a bunch of elites mixed in between which you cant properly dodge nor identify in the horde will also not help you learn faster!
Heresy and damnation have not been designed to be played at lower levels OR with gear that isn't at least close to maxed.
Even if you're actually a good player it doesn't mean you should run into higher difficulties at anything below lvl 25 and gear which is not at least around power level 400-450 with tier 4 perks and blessings.
Even if you are fully prepared you still always have to expect being grouped up with a bunch of people like those i described above, which can easily ruin a run on any difficulty, just because they once again have to overestimate themselves.
The emperor protects and the emperor provides, but he does not protect you from these kinda team mates by providing you with properly prepared ones who know their limits.
Anyways. As you can see I do not like having to play with random mates most of the time. I mean don't get me wrong, there are times when you actually get a very competent team, but especially on lower difficulties or rather non aurics the chances of that happening go down big time.
Welp. Sorry for all the venting 
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
The audio in this game sounds great and most of the music is fun to listen to, too. Sadly the audio cues are, typical for Fatshark, borked sometimes, especially if there are a lot of specials or huge mixed hordes with specials.
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma
Probably better to keep your kids and grannies out of the game.
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☑ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
Let's not talk about this. I think it might've become better than at the games release but I'm not sure yet.
My "high end" setup is kind of struggling with handling the game on the highest settings without turning on dlss and therefore lowering the quality and without turning off raytracing.
And there is barely anything I can do to upgrade it any further. Except for maybe overclocking? But those would be barely noticeable improvements.
At launch everyone seemed to be having horrible experiences in Darktide and even now I sometimes hear other people complain about the games performance.
There also are several mods which allow you to turn off even more effects and lower the graphic settings even further.
Considering all this I'd say you need to be at least a "Rich boi" if not even ask NASA if they have a spare for you to play Darktide properly.
The way I see it the recommended specs might be good enough for decent graphics on 1080p.
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (64 bit) / Windows 11 (64 bit)
- Processor: Intel i5-6600 (3.30GHz) OR AMD Ryzen 2400G (3.6 GHz)
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 OR AMD Radeon RX 570
- DirectX: Version 12
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 50 GB available space
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (64 bit) / Windows 11 (64 bit)
- Processor: Intel i7-9700K (3.70GHz) OR AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (4.2GHz)
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 / RTX 2060 OR AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
- DirectX: Version 12
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 50 GB available space
- Additional Notes: An SSD storage device is highly recommended
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☑ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
At the time of writing this review the game was a whopping 70.43GB on Steam!
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☑ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
As you might have noticed.. I really am pissed by people overestimating their own skill.
I wouldn't even necessarily say this game is "Easy to learn" as I regularly meet people on high difficulties who still can't dodge properly and still get hit and downed by the most simple enemies.
It sometimes seems like some people just don't want to learn. Seriously though. "Hard to master" would be a good fit.
Me and most of my friends think that Darktide is easy, but on my penance (something like achievements) runs, when I go for lower difficulties to have a chill time without having to care too much, I usually see the other players regularly going down.
Just from what I saw on lower difficulties and higher difficulties and from what my friends told me, I'd say the game is hard to learn but easy to master.. As in once you know how it works, it just keeps getting easier.
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
Well. This game got "penances" which are like ingame achievements. There are a lot of penances and a lot of them are simply just grinding. Especially the "Kill 1 million heretics" penance.
On the other hand. These penances are indeed not necessary to "progress". Depending on how you define "progress". I mean if you simply play for fun, most of them will come with time.
If you think "progressing" means reaching max level, which you do really fast since the actual game starts as you reach max level on a character, then you definitely wont need those penances.
If you want to unlock everything though.. Then it's going to be one hell of a grind.
I'm gonna finish this up by saying, you don't need to grind in order to enjoy the game for what it is.
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☐ Average
☑ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
Well this is once again a game in which the story can go by without you noticing it as you play the game.
It might help to know a bit about Warhammer 40k. The game does seem to be close to the 40k lore and the story doesn't seem to be too bad itself either.
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond
This is once again one of those "play until you don't wanna play anymore" games.
There is no real end to it. You play as much as you want.
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
The game costs like 39.99€. A price which I would consider worth it IF you are playing with friends. Otherwise I would rather wait for a sale.
Same for if you are unsure if you would like a game like this or if it would run properly on your pc.
☐ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☑ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
Well. BESIDES the game having huge performance issues, there also seem to be crash, disconnect and loading time issues at times.
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
Alright this is probably the hardest part for me... I do like the game.. I really do.. Especially when playing with friends. But there are also a lot of things which piss me off about it..
So do I go down on my score.. Do I still give it a good rating? Do I rate it highly because I'm still having a lot of fun playing it?
Or do I rate it badly because of being forced to play with randoms who're probably worse than bots while having performance issues and similar on my high end setup, expecting it to be even worse on more balanced setups?
I decided to give the game an 8/10 because even though I have a bunch of problems with the game... I still really enjoy playing it and that does kind of overpower the problems, otherwise I would've stopped already.