Recent reviews by Retroperspect

TL:DR at the bottom

The gameplay is fantastic, and I love the visuals and theme of the game, however with that said.
the game suffers from many issues as of writing this review, and should you be interested in this game I recommend waiting a few months until player count naturally has reduced and the developers have had time to fix many of the issues I'll list now.

In regards to the dreaded kernel AC known as NProtect, it's blown out of proportion with the fear mongering, this AC can be uninstalled, just do some searching on yt and you'll see examples of people showcasing this to be true, with that said a kernel level anti cheat program for a coop game is questionable at best. their tagline is "we most protect players in public matches from malicious hackers" which is a laughable excuse for "we must protect our bottom-line with out microtransaction".
whatever it isn't the biggest issue for me.

next we have online only, and this is currently the biggest issue with the game. being unable to play the game because the suits wises for more DRM to protect their microtransactions is inexcuseable, and the constant disconnects from time to time, missions not giving rewards and sometimes being unable to login is down right frustrating, again it's a coop game that they force a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ connection system that require them to pay for enough infrastructure and have good enough software to handle running a live service game, which the last few days since launch have shown to not be the case.

it does have one benefit though, if the host crashes because of their ineptitude you're still able to play :D

next up is game balance, or the absolute lack of it. I don't understand the amount of issues I and my friends have found during my time with the game, was allowed to ship but you know the story with live service games, ship it and fix it later.
These issues are the following:
1: Armor rating not actually doing anything, this means the only armors you should use are light because stamina is the only factor.
2: Natural weak-points not being weak-points, from what I've gathered from others and my own testing, only damage with explosive tag does full damage to the glowing weak-spots, so forget your guns shooting heads or other logical weak-spots.
3: Hit-boxes and armor in general, in particular Heavy Chargers which sides open up when exploded, however good luck hitting the large wound cause the hit-boxes are utter ♥♥♥♥, likewise the amount of armor in general at higher levels means you're forced to have the entire squad bring anti armor loadouts, because many common enemies, especially from the robot faction, have medium or higher armor levels which invalidate many options, and don't forget the weak-spots that you need to flank, you found that tank and gonna shoot it's heatsink? HAH I hope you got medium penetration cause your flanking move is worthless otherwise.
4: Weapon balance is questionable at best, just about every weapon with few exceptions are "light armor penetration" what the ♥♥♥♥ does that even mean? if all have it then none have it. likewise medium penetration is so important in regards to the previously mentioned issues that most guns are obsolete at higher levels, add to that the information is downright WRONG in some cases, the premium warbond revolver is said as light penetration however it functions as a medium penetration. the general balance also feels like all weapons are undertuned compared to the Breaker shotgun, and if it's the opposite then I fear the gameplay gunna suffer if they nerf instead of buff in this case.

these issues are glaring and sadly doesn't surprise me in this age of video games being half baked and thrown out in the name of greed, it doesn't help the premium warbond is the only option for medium armor pen weapon in your pistol slot, and also the only early explosive primary, which as mentioned earlier is really important in regards to weakspots.

Other than all this Ranting, the game is fantastic, it's a really good coop game if not one of the best out there, the graphics and sound design aswell as the themes sell this experience, but it's best to let them fix the issues before you enjoy it fully.

TL:DR
The game is underbaked, the servers are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Wait until the servers aren't ♥♥♥♥♥♥ AND after they fixed the many issues plaguing the game in general, probably wait 6 months. I absolutely recommend the game, it's fantastic experience especially coop with pals. however you'll do yourself a favor and let them bake it a little more before you enjoy it.

Speaking from the campaign experience only, where i feel mixed on it but leaning on positive and I'll try and convey why.

TL:DR
Pro:
Upgrade tokens per mission to personalize your future missions.
Custom missions with unique challenges.
Lack of self harm with explosives is fun for reckless play styles.

Con:
Some missions are Randomly generated and drags out in time while you have limited tools.
Lack of tools early to mid game feels restrictive weapon wise, prepare to use dual pistol 90% of the campaign
Lack of self harm with explosives creates terrible habits that breaks game balance in my opinion.

The problem is the campaign drags on once's you hit the mid point and it starts throwing huge randomly generated maps at you while you don't have all tools unlocked yet. This left me running dual pistols with both upgrades to both conserve metal because the assault rifle requires more to compete, as well as the other weapons wasn't unlocked until later. Once the RPG got unlocked I quickly learned that there's no self damage and I proceed to use it to fast travel through the cave walls, running face first into walls shooting the RPG to speed up the general flow of these missions. while it also was the best option for killing nests and huge enemies that have armour.

The feeling of the campaign dragging also comes from the previously mentioned randomly generated missions have between 20 to 25 waves, with each having 10-20 minutes between waves, yes you can speed up the waves to make the missions shorter, but the line of safety to avoid redoing the mission or reloading a save earlier, makes you risk averse until you have a doom wall or 2 depending on the enemies approach.

I feel mostly jaded from the lack of options as the campaign tries to drip feed you tools for each mission, the good thing is some missions are cool with custom designed challenges and cave layout, I just wish they had more of those and shorter "filler" missions.

If you decide to get the game now, I recommend doing the tutorial to know what to do and then proceed to do skirmish instead of 15 hours of "tutorial" as the final mission is essentially endless mode where you can use the campaign's upgrade tokens to go down better each run.

It was entertaining but some missions dragged down the enjoyment so be aware of that.

play ultrakill™

If you come from RE2 remake then this is more action focus which was to my taste, but the game stumbles at the last parts of the game and there's some very wonky mechanics that results in instant death if you're not prepared.

Id say I had fun? but the end sours that experience greatly, if you are desperate for more content like RE2 remake and want more action spiced in then get this on sale.

the intensity of rhythm based input, aggressive music and dynamic fps combat mechanics in this game results in a fantastic experience for any fps fans and especially for fps rhythm fans, I could try and put more clever wording but eh, it's pretty simple to figure out if you like this, just try the demo.

the idea is pretty nice, but it ends up being mostly idle with small section of intense micro management clicking to setup things correctly and then go back to idle again, mainly when your making larger expansions of the company, problem is there's very little Quality of life options to make the tedious clicking less tedious so personally I stopped when I realised the last tier required me to click 3 times as much to setup a idle farm.

the game doesn't really give you much in the way of complexity, the majority is just front page upgrades to victory because the next tier of features requires so much more development time that you're gonna retire before much is achieved. it's also extremely basic in the management of the employees, simply have 1 one each misc item "somewhere" and you satisfy the one developer crammed in a corner, the different buildings don't leave much space for you to fashion up the place for your own enjoyment as the amount of developers will quickly eat up what feels like 90% of the available space, so you can't really cut up and divide rooms for smaller teams with the walls unless you wish to sacrifice performance in a time limited game.

Short story is I don't recommend this title, even after 88 hours of experimentation it has mostly been sunk cost fallacy, there's a lot of systems that's either under developed or broken though much of the broken stuff like a mission failing to spawn that soft locked a 22 hour save at launch seems to be fixed.

The longer story is that there's some good things in this sequel to the original, but some downgrades aswell which most nostalgia goggle wearing people slams it for. In my honest opinion I feel the quality of life improvements that EG2 presents here are a god send, most critically the ability to deconstruct rooms and change them on a per tile basis, the original used a two island setup where you learned how it worked on the first, and then moved to the second one and did a better design there. the issue is how long the time you spent on the first island, could easily rival som other games AAA single player games length, where you mostly just watch the ant hill do it's thing, with minimal interaction when you made a good designed base, or end up with you struggling and having to restart hours of effort from critical errors that made it too much of a hassel.

but while the quality of life is improved, many other systems suffers from downgrades, example being interrogation being locked to only a chair or traps while in EG1 you could utilise many different objects from research equipment to mess hall pot. Many things like this make it feel hollow in it's execution and likewise some mechanics have been simplified for better or worse.

World domination screen is a hot topic where people cry about it's "mobile" nature with times, but from my perspective the money making aspect is much improved in EG2, for reference in EG1 you placed various types of minions on a country and occasionally took a glanch at it to check if any agent had placed themselves on that country, as they would start to murder your minions rapidly if they stayed, some will say that the UI actually lights up in the corner but this is easily missed and many don't know about it, I didn't until later that I read about it and contantly tabbing in to stressfully micromanage that was anoying. In EG2 you send out the minions on a mission you evaluated the risk factor at the point you make the choice and thats it, no micromanagement in the future except for much futher down the line you choose to plan around the heat mechanic which was a interesting experience.
but where the money making succed the EG1 clearly wins on story mission and general flavour, I don't feel I need to explain how well EG1 did this but the amount of times I actually read the story missions text in EG2 was minimal since many missions repeat and you start to tune out even when optional missions starts to pop up.

I could keep writing comparisons but know that EG1 isn't the holy grail some people proclaim, yes you can fix many issues with modding, but then we aren't talking about the raw EG1 experience, and the room construction issue mentioned earlier is a massive issue for newer players, while veterans know excatly what goes where and can plan around pre existing knowledge of all the items each room type has that they can bypass this issue.

With all that said, the reason that I became motivated to write this review is with the recent 1.4 patch, where within said patch they introduced several items which would have been critical in base management in those 20-30 hours sessions which I fail to see why they weren't in the base game other than to sell as season pass DLC, it's on disk DLC shenanigans all over again and my mediocre modern EG experience had to suffer for this greed.

this should have been in the base game, I'm honestly offended that they kept this for the season pass when it would have had massive effect on how you'd play 10-20 hour campaigns, it takes more than the launch windows time to model/animate etc and implement this stuff's.

we're back to on disk dlc except now it's just kept away until it's drip feed to us.

This is a early access title launched as a finished product, it is not finished.
the desync issues at launch and after the first patch are still insane, and it's sometimes possible to lose a normal or boss key preventing progress futher into the dungeon. people fighting "phantoms" as things never sync well. It seems like the best option is possibly to play with steam couch coop and just have all progress attached to that one player that owns the title.
I'm pretty sure I can't get a refund with the time invested and it's a shame the game is in this state given it's potential, but even as a singleplayer it seems half finished as I read up on unfinished zones and collectables that aren't possible to be optained.
and that's skimming past the classes not having thier passive abilities for the most part, imagine speccing into mage and then finding out the mage doesn't get more damage to spell as advertised? the best bet is just go damage/health and disregard everything else resulting in a shallow experience.
I'm frustrated at the devs/marketing for releasing a product in that should have been an early access release.

This game isn't for everyone. just as much as I have great distaste for the experience of being scared and would avoid a horror game experience, this game is more in the sense of taking your feelings and putting it into a blender.

depending on how you are as a person, the milkshake will be different, as for me.

made me cry 10/10.