Recent reviews by Javik

overall a very fun game, if you liked any of their previous games its a no-brainer, this is the best of them. im hooked on the gameplay loop and having a great time. managing your own customisable mad max style battle wagon in a wasteland full of hostile gangs of different flavours is a great concept.

TLDR edit: after playing some more all of my complaints (except for the lack of direct steering as an option) are moot, it gets better and better the further you progress. just buy it already.

The Great:

• combat feels very engaging and fun, lots of enemies, crazy maneuvers, explosions, and flying wreckage
  
  
• battle wagon customisation and upgrading is very fun and flexible, you can go pretty wild with your designs (as long as you have the resources)
  
  
• levelling up your crew is impactful and their abilities and perks are fun to use in combat, as well as planning ahead when to use the limited ones during a mission, calling reinforcements that will drive in perfect formation with you and engage enemies is very immersive
  
  
• planning out your routes and what to engage/skip is a very nice risk/reward decision youre making several times each mission as youre limited by how much of your defences are still intact, whether you have ability charges and enough fuel left etc.
  
  
• the attention to detail is great, the overall atmosphere and art style is great, i think what i mean by attention to detail can be best summarised by the band back at your stronghold, their animations actually make sense for their instruments and what they are currently playing, unlike literally any other game out there, Rockstar Entertainment with their quintillion dollar budget should take notes
  
  
• the enemy variety is quite nice, theres lots of different factions and vehicles to fight, although i wish each of them had their own opening cutscene akin to the games trailer, the big bad is definitely stealing the show and some of the character and unique design of all the others is getting lost
  
  
• the game is feature complete, has a crazy amount of content (probably easily 100h of playtime if you dont exclusively rush main missions) and ive only encountered 2 bugs so far, one where a resource truck i had to escort from one of my fortresses to an outpost got stuck on a signpost and had to be nudged out, and one where an enemy convoy i was supposed to destroy (but failed) got smacked by their own fortress gate and blew up. there is a bit of janky physics here and there but they add to the hilarity of wrecks flying past you left and right, the only thing that could use a bit of work is path-finding for allies, they like to drive into walls (or your rear) while trying to stay in formation

The Meh:

• while building your battle wagon is a LOT of fun and theres tons of layouts you could come up with, i currently have 15 "special blocks" that are crazy expensive and dont seem to do anything at all apart from being structurally interesting, 4 weapons (including the mostly useless starting one, and one being a straight upgrade to another, so basically just 2), one extra engine option that only increases my wagons weight limit and nitro tank capacity, but not speed or fuel efficiency, and actually seems to have worse cooling capacity, and still no new cab variants or wheel types. (after playing a bit more i noticed all the juicy stuff was from missions i held off on for too long, once you get fortress missions just go for them)
  
  
• crew armour of the same rarity seem to be all side-grades and its really hard to tell whats better for your purposes, because while theres 6 damage types, their damage reduction is mostly minimal, so youd be spending sorely needed resources on trading 2% blast resistance vs 2% toxic resistance. also the UI doesnt show you the stats of any given armour, just the total stats of a character and the increases, so you have to add together the resistance total and compare it to the (quite high) walk speed penalty for every single piece to see if its worth it. only upgrading to rare armour has any tangible impact, and its locked behind special faction based currencies and has a lot fewer options so far, i wish these numbers would come more into play earlier instead of not being a worthwhile consideration in early game at all
  
  
• battle wagon steering should have an option for direct control, while the directional based one (you change heading by holding the input) can be convenient when travelling longer distances, it can become a bit frustrating in combat when e.g. your driver decides that you cant steer around the entry of a highway and instead does a sharp 90° turn to go onto it, or goes the wrong way around when you try to do a 180° turn, hitting a wall, making you a sitting duck for 10 seconds, a direct control toggle would be very appreciated for such moments.

all in all id give this game an 8/10, especially for the price, once some of the little annoyances (that i went into detail with because i love the game so far) are fixed and maybe the early game progression is padded out a bit with meaningful unlocks it could easily be a 9/10.


EDIT: after playing a bit more i noticed i was holding off too long on certain missions that did in fact unlock the things i wanted, and could have done them earlier, still no new cab or tires but a total of 6 meaningfully different weapons instead of just 2. also finally realised how the engines work and the upgrade that you get is much more significant than i thought even though their base speed is the same. also after realising how much content this game has and how early in it i still have its definitely a 9/10 from me. (playing another session i did in fact get a new cab, 4 new tyre options and 5 different engines, with the amount of fun im having currently and how much the games complexity ramps up over time id even say its a 9.5. the amount of content is actually crazy)

one new complaint though is that all recruits (even the rescued legendary ones) seem to be 99% of the time generalists that arent really good at anything, and since their starting level is so high its really hard to specialise them from that point onwards. out of the 7 rare/legendary ones i have access to only 1 was decent because his legendary perk is pretty OP, and he wasnt even a rescue, just randomly popped up in recruitment, all his other stats are garbage though. (this turned out to be less of a problem than i thought, since XP gains increase exponentially further into the game and im leveling at about the same rate)

great premise, great writing and character interactions, great UX, great graphics.

decent base building, decent (if basic in the demo) building outside of base.

mediocre exploration, mediocre resource scanning/management and crafting mechanics.

absolutely try the demo, it feels very polished and fresh, I got high hopes for a full version of this one.

The game is a buggy mess, especially in coop. Bugged interactions that make you permanently unable to do anything, random disconnects that throw you to the main menu saying you can continue the run but then continue is greyed out, disconnects where after 20s of loading one person will be back in while the other wont (and no way to rejoin, bricking the run), progression blocks that require 3 players to do something simultaneously, with no way to do it if someone disconnects. My game freezes for a solid 5-10s when dragging things in my inventory, sometimes resetting and sometimes not when i try to consume things, you cant split stacks, you cant grab wood from your downed friend to turn on the furnace needed to revive them, its overall not a good experience. The concept is great, the execution is sloppy, get it on a 90% sale for single player but do not expect to finish a run in coop without running into gamebreaking issues regularly.

Very fun, quite well designed if a bit bare bones for now, tho thats fair as its a demo. As many people said already its basically a M+ standalone with out the crap that turned me away from WoW.

No questing, no rep grinding, no complete invalidation of the gear you farmed every few months, no RMT/bots/screwed auction house economy, no subscription on top of pricey expansions, no destroyed keys and griefers (at most youd lose a few minutes of progress but i havent met a single one in 35h), MUCH less hassle to find a group despite comparably low player numbers.

I really liked the handful of adventures (12 min dungeons) and dungeons (25min dungeons) they had in the demo and having to figure them out without a manual, the characters are all really well designed and fun to play, even more so once you go further down the line with gems that feel like their own skill tree in a way.

You always get a piece of gear that is most of the time an upgrade and if not you can reforge them or turn them into upgrade materials, you never get nothing at the end, and upgrade mats are shared between all characters so you can get a bit of a headstart when trying out a different one.

Higher difficulties get very challenging in a good way and its just overall a blast to play. I was hooked basically immediately.
8/10 in its current state and with more content and a few bug fixes, as well as a better ingame chat easily 9 or above.

after trying the demo and being impressed by how good the game feels and looks i immediately bought it for myself and a friend. the first game never managed to keep my attention but this one has me hooked even over PoE2. combat is very smooth and despite being inherently hectic, especially in melee, it never feels overwhelming to a point where you cant tell whats going on on the screen.

i also really enjoy the mix of different character progression systems combined with your skill progression as a player which feels very rewarding. you get lots of small bonuses from different sources and theres a ton of stuff to upgrade and grind for. the replayability is quite high as the classes all play differently from each other and i love that you can equip whichever weapon type you want with any class as long as you meet the stat requirements for it. just as an example, theres a longbow that needs strength and a shortbow that needs dex, you can play a ranger with high strength and wear heavy armor or high dex and trade survivability for stronger crits. you can also just grab a longbow as a warrior or paladin without having to change your build, or even just keep it in your inventory as a backup for boss fights that are difficult as melee, or whip out a shield any time to get past nasty arrow traps easily. you also get a slight buff for all of your characters for each level of any class you play, for example a slight amount of armor for each level of paladin, as well as getting attribute and skill points for all characters for achievements, so the more you play the bigger your headstart is going to be when trying out a new class.

once you defeat bosses you can also skip their whole game section while getting at least a decent amount of trinkets and upgrades all at once which is really nice and reduces repetitiveness.
the pixel art is beautiful and both the music and sound design fit the game very well.

if you like rogue-lites and ARPGs this is a must try and fortunately theres a free demo, just be aware that your progress there doesnt carry over to the actual game. highly recommended.

The game is pretty amazing, anyone who liked the concept of castle story back in the day or enjoyed they are billions is going to get more than their moneys worth.

• the building is very satisfying and you can keep it simple or spend ages paused between attacks to make your defenses more efficient and pretty
  
  
• you are often somewhat limited in terms of space for your economy buildings, especially in endless mode, which encourages building efficiently, and stacking buildings on top of each other, which is very fun compared to just spamming them in a 2D space
  
  
• the unit types are varied enough to encourage building walls specifically for them (different height bonuses and ranges)
  
  
• there are tons of extra building pieces to buff certain units standing next to them, giving many ways to improve your walls other than just building higher/thicker, even the way in which you stack basic building blocks matters in how they break and tumble down
  
  
• the art style is very cohesive and well executed
  
  
• balance and progression feels nice, you start quite simple in terms of units and building pieces but unlock more things to build and plan for with every campaign level, perhaps with a slight difficulty jump on a certain boss that requires very different planning than your normal static defenses but is very easily beatable once you know what to expect
  
  
• you can rewind every single wave or to manually set points at any time when ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan, you never need to restart a level, which is very helpful when facing new threats or fixing mistakes in your defenses, making it very enjoyable to play at harder difficulties, even if youre just barely scraping by
  
  
• i have not found any bugs, my only criticism would be a few lacking QoL features and controls like dragging to delete all blocks in a row, better unit selection for groups (its a bit unintuitive), a "rebuild all" button, a toggle to force displaying the range of all selected troops as it only shows when your mouse is on them, which doesnt work through windows, and an easier way to see inside structures, currently moving your camera inside the walls is very difficult

currently we only have access to what seems to be about half of the campaign but you can already easily get 14h just out of that, not counting endless mode or custom maps.

highly recommended, very fun.

EDIT6: They backpedaled on the 2/3 warbond for 4x the price and gave the second half to everyone for free, lets hope they wont try this crap again.

EDIT5: They said only cosmetics in the FOMO store. Now theres Weapons in the FOMO store. Dont take this crap laying down.

EDIT4: Sony walked back their decision.

EDIT3: it is now mandatory to link your steam account with a PSN account, permanently locking people from some countries who are way past their refund period permanently out of the game. absolute L move by sony.

EDIT2: Had no problems for several days, theyve been patching stuff and the hype has died down a little so you can once again play without server issues.

EDIT: Changed to negative due to the devs not increasing server capacity enough almost 2 weeks after release when they have been full constantly for a week. Wait before you buy. You most likely wont be able to play anyway. Even with their massive success (and most likely crazy sales) they still dont manage to provide adequate servers.


Just what i wanted from 3rd person helldivers. It plays great, it looks great, its also very immersive and atmospheric, as well as having the most badass loading screens of any game I ever played. Theres just a TON of attention to detail in this game, even just moving between mission locations while in orbit looks nice. Throwing an orbital strike beacon on the head of a heavy and being able to look up to see your destroyer fire it down is great. You can also slightly steer your own drop pod which is very fun.

Changes to progression are a mixed bag, you now have a semi-linear battle pass to unlock armors and weapons instead of free choice and theres no weapon upgrades anymore, instead you have weapon variants that you unlock separately. Neither is there several levels of each stratagem, but instead overarching upgrades to your ship that boost all stratagems of certain types, which is fine, but they cost a ton so you wont be unlocking one stratagem upgrade every 1-2 missions but instead unlock 10 every 10+ missions at once.

They sadly removed vehicles from the game but added a few other stratagems, i feel like its more than helldivers 1 had before dlc packs. Not a huge fan of the battle pass progression, also that they added a premium one that is basically 3 of the ol loadout pack dlcs in one, basically day one dlc, except this time you can actually buy them ingame with the premium currency that is also grindable in missions which is amazing. Matchmaking was basically non-functional on release day but its already fixed the day after, I had one crash in 10h and one mid mission disconnect, but over all the game seems pretty stable now (on day 2).

If you liked the first game or if you like games like DRG, L4D or coop shooters in general you will most likely get your moneys worth here, especially if you enjoy (an even more over the top) starship troopers painjob on it.

Amazingly satisfying, fast-paced gameplay. Many fun secrets to find and quests to complete. It was already very fun in early access but now even more so as it lets you have all the cool toys you had to choose a few from before at once (gadgets). Gearing in a run is very fun and finding the right items for your build feels good. Rogue-lite progression is also very engaging, if a bit fast. Highly recommended, bring a Brobot!

11/10 soundtrack, highly recommend the OST

its a good rogue lite, tinkering around with builds is very fun. itemization is quite in depth and min-maxing your party is rewarding. meta progression has lots of impactful options that you can reset and redistribute between runs to try some quite varied builds. it seems to progress very slowly in the first few hours giving the impression of an insane grind but once you get the ball rolling becomes quite fast, maybe too fast.

the UI has some rough edges but is serviceable if you enjoy the gameplay loop. balance seems to be quite WIP currently, with some builds being very OP even without meta-progression upgrades but this is mostly about formation bonuses which lock you into a specific build and are easy to avoid if you enjoy a challenge, and easy to pull off if you just want to farm.

overall would highly recommend already and its only going to become better from here, whether you just need something to casually throw on and not overthink or want to sink your teeth into some pretty deep customisation.

they should have given it at least another 6-12 months, it wasnt even near ready and they completely ruined what was a great gameplay foundation out of pure greed. corpo suits are gonna suit (themselves).

looks like they turned it around now, lets hope they keep going.