If you’ve come here looking for a Warhammer game review from a certified Warhammer expert, I have bad news. I knew little to nothing about the Warhammer franchise, other than that the rat-people you mowed down in Warhammer: Vermintide 2 were called Skaven. I played a good amount of Vermintide during the COVID lockdowns, enjoying the Left 4 Dead-style of co-op horde adventuring despite having not a single clue what was actually happening. Much of this holds true for Vermintide’s spiritual successor, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. Even after 40 hours of play, I still couldn’t really tell you what’s going on, but I’ve been enjoying the ride down to Atoma Prime either way.
Before we dive into gameplay impressions, I should preface this by mentioning that Darktide released nearly a year ago, on November 30, 2022. I cannot attest to the state of the game prior to Patch 13, which was released last month. This patch reworked Darktide’s character progression alongside a wide-ranging balance sweep for the game’s many weapons, which has largely been met with applause from the community. I have a lot of opinions on Darktide’s progression and weapon systems, which I’ll dive into more detail later in this review, but I do unfortunately have a limited perspective on the state of the game prior to this update.
The premise of Darktide is fairly straightforward – conscripted convicts team up in groups of four to mow down hordes of zombie-like monstrosities, pushing through levels while completing a variety of objectives along the way. Players begin by choosing one of four classes – Veteran, Psyker, Ogryn, or Zealot. Thinking carefully before choosing a class is very important – each class provides vastly different strengths, abilities, and even usable weapons, though you are provided with a good number of character slots to try out each class for yourself. From there, you get to pick a number of choices to customize your character’s backstory before being launched into Darktide’s robust character creator. Once you’ve finalized creating your convict, you’ll soon be thrusted into one of 17 different strike missions. These missions have a good variety of objectives, ranging from stealing supplies to repairing infrastructure to assassinating VIPs. While the objectives may vary, the end goal for players is always the same – work alongside your teammates to push through hordes of heretics and make it to the end in one piece. This is easier said than done, given the hundreds, if not thousands of enemies that you’ll be facing in a single mission, which often includes randomly-spawning bosses that are always ready and eager to ruin your day.
By far, Darktide’s biggest strength lies in its’ engrossing melee combat. Bashing through swarms of zombie-like heretics contains a surprising amount of depth and players combine slews of light, heavy, and special attacks to brilliantly gory results. You won’t find much success just button mashing your attacks, as carefully timing dodges, blocks, and class-specific abilities are key to staying alive on Atoma Prime. Melee combat isn’t the only thing you’ll have to master to find success – swarms of melee enemies will oftentimes be accompanied by squads of ranged heretics, quickly chipping away at your health with laser rifles, miniguns, or even brutal sniper rifles that can delete half your health bar in a single shot. Naturally, these ranged threats will frustratingly sit just out of range of your swings, made even more difficult when dozens of melee enemies are blocking you from reaching that pesky sniper. This is often when your ranged weapon comes into play, and thankfully Darktide’s gunplay is just as engrossing as its melee combat. There’s an excellent variety of weapons to choose from as well, with wacky options such as grenade-launching gauntlets and magic staves offered alongside a more traditional arsenal of assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols. My personal favorite weapon is the Veteran’s plasma gun – a semi-automatic rail gun that you can overcharge to deal devastating damage. Regardless of whether you prefer to use swords or firearms, the beauty of Darktide lies in quickly deciding what weapon your current situation calls for, swapping between your melee and ranged options to keep the heretics at bay. These kinds of micro-decisions, along with managing key resources like ammo, health, and grenades, bolster Darktide’s excellent combat with a strategic layer that rewards proper teamwork and coordination.
Regardless of which of Darktide’s four playable classes you choose from, your character will inevitably start off pretty weak, mostly only able to handle the game’s lowest-difficulty missions. Luckily, finishing missions will reward you with precious experience points, regardless of whether the objectives were completed or if your party was wiped out. Players will earn a skill point each time they level up, allowing them to visit Darktide’s talent trees to customize their character build. By spending your precious skill points, you’ll be able to upgrade your character’s base stats and give them new passive and active abilities, many of which can drastically alter the way you play the game. These recently-reworked talent trees are fairly straightforward, but allow plenty of options for players to mix-and match to create the ultimate soldier. That being said, progression can be a bit of a slog. Getting a character to Darktide’s level maximum of 30 will take players roughly 20 hours. I had no problems spending time slowly building my first character to level 30, but have been less than enthused to experience the same grind when trying to upgrade my second character. This is made worse given that experience rewards are drastically increased on higher-difficulty missions with extra negative modifiers, meaning that the most efficient way to level up is to drop an underleveled character into a tough mission and hope your teammates are strong enough to carry you. This unfortunately leads to a negative play experience when underleveled convicts don’t participate much in missions as their stronger teammates are forced to step up and pull some extra weight.
To handle Darktide’s toughest missions, you’ll need more than just a max-level character – you’ll need the biggest gun you can find. Both the selection and power of available weapons will grow incrementally as you level up your character, but once you hit the max level, you’ll have to utilize Darktide’s crafting system to optimize your gear. I’ll do my best to explain crafting in this game, but it’s a bit of a doozy – you can use currency and crafting materials to change a weapon’s perks, giving it small bonuses such as increased reload speed or higher damage against specific types of enemies. You’ll likely need to Google what groups of enemies these specific types fall into, as Darktide will place them in vague categories like “Elites” and “Specialists” that are woefully open to interpretation. You’ll need to choose carefully, too – once you change a perk, it seems to be locked on to the weapon for good. You’ll also want to reorganize your weapon’s traits, which are more specialized passive effects, such as refilling your health on critical hits or a stacking damage buff every time you stagger an enemy. Traits are rather fun and can drastically alter your build, but unlocking new ones is highly clunky. If you want to use a different trait on a weapon, you’ll have to buy an identical weapon model from the in-game shop that happens to have the trait you want. Then, you’ll need to take it to the refinery, destroy it to unlock the perk, and then, and only then, can you equip it with your favorite weapon. This system is beyond clunky and requires an absurd amount of Googling to make a weapon strong enough for Darktide’s toughest strike missions.
In those rare quiet moments in between hordes of heretics, I can’t help but stop and gawk at Darktide’s gorgeous visual presentation. Despite its grotesque inhabitants, Atoma Prime is starkly beautiful, and the developers at Fatshark have gone above and beyond to make Warhammer 40,000: Darktide one of the best-looking multiplayer games out there. Regardless of whether your convict crew navigates the brooding gothic architecture of Tertium’s city streets or fights through the red-carpeted candlelit halls of the Archivum Sycorax, each of Darktide’s many playable missions is uniquely stunning. This excellent visual presentation is aptly matched with Jesper Kyd’s equally impressive dark synthwave soundtrack. I cannot understate how cinematic it feels to hear Kyd’s pulpy metallic beats kick up as a squad of four fights their way through hundreds of heretics in each mission’s high-pressure finale.Tying all of this together is some shockingly good voice acting performances for your custom characters. Voice acting for create-a-character games is oftentimes hit or miss, but each of Darktide’s 21 unique voice options completely knocked it out of the park. It’s rare to have voice performances this memorably strong across the board, and the frequently humorous banter between party members gives Darktide a lovely breath of levity in an otherwise very intense game.
While Darktide’s audiovisual presentation is absolutely laudable, the same unfortunately cannot be said for the game’s story, or lack thereof. The story kicks off with a compelling start: starting out as a lowly convict, you manage to escape from your besieged prison. While escaping, you succeed in getting your death sentence annulled after you rescue one of your previous captors from certain death. Afterward, you’re transported to the primary ship and central hub, the Mourningstar, where you begin participating in strike missions on Atoma Prime on behalf of “The Inquisition”. Even with my complete lack of Warhammer knowledge, that’s pretty easy to follow along with. Unfortunately, that’s where Darktide’s narrative-focused gameplay largely stops. Every few times you level up your character, you’ll get a laughably barebones cutscene, almost all of which consist of your character staring silently at one of the Mourningstar’s NPCs, who each tell you something along the lines of “do better, and you might become useful one day.” While I personally don’t have a problem with mowing down hordes of heretics and ignoring the story, I can imagine many Warhammer fans being disappointed at the underwhelming narrative.
You don’t need to be an established Warhammer fan to become hopelessly addicted to Darktide. The brutal, dynamic combat is some of the best I’ve ever experienced in a co-op multiplayer game, and the vast catalog of missions to overcome and enemies to defeat always keeps me coming back for more. These outstanding mechanics are excellently paired with gorgeous visuals and a bombastic soundtrack to create one of the best play experiences out there. While Darktide is certainly a visual and technical marvel, it comes at the cost of a laughably weak story and a confusing crafting system that leaves much to be desired. As it stands right now, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is one of the strongest cooperative multiplayer games on the market right now, and with more updates on the horizon, I am optimistic that we’ll have even more reasons to revisit Atoma Prime soon.