Weight in the Hands and Heavy Swings
Pick up the controller and the weight hits immediately. Lieutenant Demetrian Titus moves like a walking tank, exactly as he should, and your basic strikes carry real momentum through the startup into the active swing. You feel the resistance when a blade connects with a target instead of just slicing through empty air. The recovery on heavy attacks is long enough that you cannot button-mash your way out of trouble, which forces you to commit to your attack strings.
Dodge steps are short and ground you quickly, so you are never skating across the floor. Parrying has a clear defensive window that rewards waiting on enemy telegraphs, turning incoming attacks into point-blank openings. English voice and interface options are solid right out of the box, with clean subtitle timing during high-action fights. When you are fighting three or four major targets at once, the combat loop is firm and responsive. My inputs came out clean without ghosting, and the rhythm of striking and parrying feels tight.
Swarm Engine Scale Against Combat Precision
Saber Interactive built this around their Swarm Engine, and it floods the screen with hundreds of Tyranids at a time. Watching a living carpet of creatures scramble up walls and spill over barricades looks incredible from fifty yards away. The trouble starts when that carpet crashes into your boots and wraps around your camera.
In tight melee scrums, small grunt enemies stack up directly on your model and obscure enemy telegraph indicators. You will hit your parry timing on an elite warrior only to take chip damage from behind because three smaller bugs clipped through your attack arc mid-swing. The game tries to help with directional threat cues, but when twenty bodies occupy the same five feet of space, visual clarity breaks down. You have to lean hard on your ranged weapons to thin the herd before you commit to close-quarters melee, because standing your ground inside the thickest part of the pile is a quick way to get blindsided.
Class Variety and Weapon Builds
Outside the campaign, character progression widens out across seven unique classes. Each class gets up to 25 perks to unlock, along with specific weapon perk trees and a big stack of armor pieces to customize your Marine. Grinding through these upgrades gives the melee kits some much-needed flexibility. Certain perks cut down recovery time on specific swings or grant brief defensive armor buffs when you execute a wounded target.
Building out a loadout takes time, but testing weapon perks on the firing range and taking them into operations gives you a measurable return on your inputs. A weapon with tuned recoil and higher stagger values fundamentally changes how safely you can step into an engagement. The cosmetic unlocks let you paint specific armor plates and swap out pauldrons without gating your stats behind visual skins. It is a straightforward grind for $59.99, devoid of confusing progression tricks.
Multiplayer Pressure and Siege Waves
The cooperative and competitive modes shift the pacing away from Titus and into squad survival. PvP puts Space Marines against each other in brutal corridor skirmishes where positioning and corner checks matter far more than brute force. If you miss a swing or blow your dodge in PvP, another player will punish your recovery window before you can reset your guard.
The 3-player Siege mode throws wave after wave of Tyranids and Chaos forces directly at your barricades. You earn points with every cleared wave, and then you have to make fast calls at the supply stations. Do you spend your stash on ammunition, equipment charges, and Medicae Stimms to stay on your feet, or do you pool everything to call in Cadian infantry, Space Marine allies, or an armored Dreadnought to hold a chokepoint? Having an AI Dreadnought clear out heavy Chaos elites while you manage the perimeter gives the mode real endurance. It is punishing, it tests your resource discipline, and it rewards crisp teamwork over mindless swinging.
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Good to hear Siege mode with the Dreadnought call-ins is actually solid. Definitely looks like a fun 3-player co-op grind with buddies.
Try rebinding parry to a different button. Helps with the clutter.
Total letdown.
Try rebinding parry to a different button. Helps with the clutter.
The melee weight sounds like the best part. I love when a game makes you feel every slash. Hope the perf is stable on mid-tier rigs.
Looked incredible until hour five. Then the swarm just became noise.
@Cereal KillerTotal letdown.
Hey outofpaperagain – have you checked the class selection screen? The review says seven classes with 25 perks each, so they're probably class-specific. Also, if you're struggling with the off-screen hits, try binding the dodge to a more comfortable key. I always do that in heavy horde games. What difficulty are you planning to play?
So the parry tells are hidden behind a wall of bugs. Sounds like my last online match. (At least those bugs were other players.)
@cr91If the parry tells are hidden by bugs, can I at least use my power fist to sweep them away? Or is that too much to ask from a game that clearly wants me to eat damage?
Y'all, sixty bucks is tough on the wallet right now. That's like two diner breakfast platters I could've had instead. But if that 3-player Siege mode actually keeps me busy for weeks, maybe it's worth dropping the cash. How long does the campaign even take anyway?
Oh wait, I just saw the review – 25 perks per class? Are they all unlocked right away or do you grind for them? And can you save different loadouts for each class? I really hope there's some kind of skill tree or something, I love customizing builds. Also, do you think they'll add more classes in DLC later? I'm already dreaming of a Techmarine or something.
@outofpaperagainIf you're asking about perks, I think the grind is part of the fun. Reminds me of leveling a paladin in a JRPG, except you're stomping bugs instead of slimes.
@outofpaperagainPerks are per class, unlocks through leveling. Loadout saving is there, but it's per class loadout, not one big list. No more classes at launch, but seven is plenty to start.
@outofpaperagainGood to hear Siege mode with the Dreadnought call-ins is actually solid. Definitely looks like a fun 3-player co-op grind with buddies.
Fair dinkum, mate, 8.2 with that many Tyranids in your lap? Sounds like a lawnmower hitting a hornet's nest. Melee weight is good, but my wrist hurts just reading about those recoveries. Do you at least get a chainsword that doubles as a back scratcher for those off-screen pokes?
@pjh81pjh81 asking the real questions. Can I use an off-screen Tyranid as a back scratcher? Asking for my overloaded inventory. Also, is there a perk that lets you parry while doing a handstand? Because that's the only way I'm surviving those recoveries.
Honestly, I kind of want the horde to feel suffocating even if it messes up my parry timing. Getting buried in bugs fits the setting, and I'd take that over clean empty arenas any day. Calling in the Dreadnought when you're completely cornered sounds so badass too. Just hoping the game lets you catch your breath between waves.
Wait, 25 perks per class? Does each class have unique perk trees or are they all shared? And can you save loadouts? I'd love to try the Siege mode but I'm a sucker for wave defense.
I get the criticism about off-screen chip damage, but the class perks sound genuinely nuanced. Seven classes with 25 perks each? That's the kind of depth that keeps me tweaking builds for hours. The Siege mode with Dreadnought call-ins is a nice reward for surviving the chaos.
So the horde's so thick you can't see the parry? Sounds like a tyre shredding in a gravel pit. I'll stick to racing games where the only swarm is a pit crew jacking up your car.
@prost_paulCute analogy, but Tyranid spawns are just scripted spawns, not gravel on a track. Still, stick to the pit crew if you want, more power to you.
@prost_pauldude the swarm is the point you want to feel overwhelmed like you are in the actual 40k universe gravel pit racing sounds boring