Warhammer 2: Vermintide 2 Review

Basics

Developed by Fatshark games, Vermintide 2 tasks you and three warriors with stemming the tide of an unrelenting horde aligned with chaos and evil. Your team will stop the aforementioned unrelenting horde by equipping strong weapons, casting powerful spells, and scrounging for ammunition. Choose from five distinct champions, each with their own unique arsenal, and then get busy completing missions and leveling up, finding better gear in the strange lootbox-ish reward system, and unlocking perks and skills. You've got to know your weapon in order to be useful in combat; for example, ranged weapons certainly excel at exterminating foes, but this mass of evil isn't going to hold still for you.. Each player must become adept at melee combat to survive, utilizing various strikes along with blocks and dodges.

Story & Flow

Set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe, Vermintide 2 is a direct sequel to the first Vermintide. The five Heroes of Ubersreik who fended off hordes of rat-men called the Skaven have been captured and in their absence, the Skaven have joined forces with the Nordic Rotblood warband to lay waste to Ubersreik. A great portal, known as the Skittergate, is built to send the massive army to invade more lands, but it inadvertently allows the heroes to escape. Now, it's payback time.

The story is largely in the background. Missions occasionally delve into lore, but you won't be concerned with any pesky plot or character development. There are twelve missions across 3 acts, with a final 13th mission available after completing the rest. Each mission is tightly focused on completing one particular objective. There are no checkpoints, so when everyone dies, it's back to the beginning. Throughout a mission, you will come into contact with random groups of ratmen and northlanders, and although the majority of the horde is made up of standard cannon fodder, tougher, elite variants with strong armor and stronger attacks are prevalent as well. Special enemies appear periodically that can render players helpless and quickly drain their health if not stopped, like a hookrat that grabs your neck and yanks you away, or a blightstormer that raises tornadoes to trap you. Boss monsters come to destroy your team at random times and as part of certain set pieces, and unprepared players can quickly fall to these massive abominations.

Four different difficulty settings are available for each mission, as well as 'deeds' that affect mechanics like how often special enemies appear or that cause instant death when players are down. Even on the easy difficulty, Recruit, your team can very quickly be wiped out. Your combat effectiveness is determined by your total power level, which is increased by equipping weapons and trinkets with higher power levels. Harder difficulties are locked until your chosen hero reaches a certain power level with their equipped items.

Graphics and Sound

Given that it's a Warhammer game, the tone is dark, gritty, and gruesome. The multitude of foes you face have distinct designs to separate themselves from their peers, and two separate armies of Skaven and Rotbloods just means you get more types of enemies to slaughter (or be slaughtered by). The aesthetic designs of both the hero and monster characters are very well-made and fit the theme perfectly. Environments range from ruined farmland to ancient forest groves to dank caverns; everything bleeds detail and conveys a daunting and grim atmosphere.

The sound effects fit perfectly with the grotesque visuals. The rats chitter, Rotbloods scream for your head, giant chaos beasts emit gutteral growls, and your blades make meaty thunks as you strike and slash through them all. Hordes are announced by way of distant warhorns or clanging bells, building serious tension before the swarm of evil creatures arrive. The best part is the library of dialogue from the heroes, each of whom get plenty of quips and comments delivered with great performances and solid, believable accents.

A few things do mar this otherwise great presentation. The biggest is the lighting; I found it difficult to see with recommended settings due to the lack of artificial light sources, and, with sunlight being the only light source, environments get washed out with one overbearing color and look much blander than they are. Most of the time I can't tell teammates apart from enemies, making it easy to lose track of everyone in a rough scuffle. Animations are also lacking in several respects. Characters are missing facial expressions and movements, often not having their face visible at all. The lifeleech is particularly egregious; he does little more than lift an arm and open his mouth when attacking, and shimmers out of existence when killed. In general, animations are stilted and lack fluid motion.