Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Reviews
Warhammer: Vermintide 2 is a game that stands alone, as one of the few follow-ups to the cooperative formula that Left 4 Dead established. It also perfectly captures the feel of Warhammer fantasy: the missions are hard, with players wading into blood and fire to dispatch the hordes of Skaven and Chaos. Being a coop game, your fun will live and die on matchmaking and group composition. Unfortunately, that matchmaking is sometimes spotty and players lack tools to really manage the group. Despite that, Vermintide 2 is still the best time you can have hacking apart evil together.
The Chaos Wastes introduces a mass of randomness and unpredictability to your playthrough, changing up things as fundamental as the construction of levels, with certain paths being blocked off, or starting and ending points being moved about or even reversed. Loot also takes on a more significant role, as the game isn’t afraid to let you become overpowered, or even just oddly built, with bizarre combinations of boons. All is stripped away after completion. This is Vermintide 2’s endgame — and its best facet. Forget all the cosmetics; forget your “Power Level,” specific equipment, or career. Jump into the Chaos Wastes, with friends, and smash your way through the hordes, relishing in the fact that you’ve no idea what’s next. Since the beginning, Vermintide 2 has had a solid core, capturing much of what makes these kinds of horde games so enduringly popular. But it’s also proven, over time, that it has something new to offer, with The Chaos Wastes adding some much-needed volatility to this endless procession of fantasy brawls.
Vermintide 2 is a bucket of gory fun made even better by a solid progression and loot system.
Even without microtransactions, loot boxes manage to spoil another potentially classic game, although the core combat and co-op atmosphere still shine through.
Vermintide 2's combat and level design are so feverishly fun that I'll put up with its bad matchmaking and RPG progression if it means chopping more ratmen in half.
A highly accomplished sequel that innovates without losing sight of what made the first one great.
Warhammer Vermintide 2 is a beautifully dark game, and I'm in love with its hard-hitting, meaty melee weapons. It's a gorgeous game with tons of fun play styles and customization options to uncover, even if most of the loot you earn for your efforts is a letdown. But thankfully you don't need to pay much attention to it to simply enjoy the hack-n-slash, Left 4 Dead-inspired co-op fun of bashing hordes of rats and zombies to a pulp.