Warhammer Vermintide 2 takes us back to the gritty, gruesome and dirty world that’s at the end of times. With seemingly infinite hordes of rats out to get to you and stop you from succeeding, Vermintide 2 really ups the ante in every way possible. An absolutely phenomenal sequel that does everything right, a rarity in this day and age. Developed by Fatshark who have really laboured to make this game great and published by them too, Vermintide 2 is out now for the PC with a possible release for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 coming soon. So, let’s dive right into what makes this game such a great sequel.
Vermintide 2 continues after the events of the first game and takes place during the early days of the End Times, an even that destroyed the Warhammer World. Set in the Warhammer Fantasy world, we take on the role of the five Heroes of Ubersreik who have been captured by Rasknitt. With the heroes out of the way, Ubersreik has fallen and Rasknitt has been working on constructing a giant portal called the Skittergate to summon the Chaos Champion and his Rotblood army, but the portal doesn’t work too well so he can’t summon the entirety of his army and one such attempt led to the freedom of the Heroes who then go on a quest to save the world and kill Rasknitt and the Champion.
There are 5 playable characters, each with 3 careers to choose from which are essentially builds that the player can tailor to his or her liking. These careers add a lot of variety and replayability along with giving the player the freedom of choice to play to their strengths. The best part about these skills are that they can be switched, which means that you can play around with them and choose what you specifically want for a mission or just until you find the right set. I absolutely loved the addition of careers and the ability to switch them .
Gameplay is still quite the same with emphasis on the blocking and parrying to survive the hordes of enemy and for effective crowd control. Weapons have different subsets so while some weapons have an overhead hit, some have swinging motion which is more preferable for crowd control. The weapon rating from the previous game returns with Orange and Red being the top most tier that adds an additional effect to your weapon. Weapons and items can be salvaged in the new crafting system so you can craft better items or skins. The best part is, there’s no loot boxes or microtransactions.
Everything is earnable in game by playing it and not locked behind a paywall, even the skins for you character. There’s also new enemy types for both the special enemies and the regular ones. I did feel that the special enemies in game spawned quite frequently and while they can be dealt with relatively easily on the regular difficulty, upping the difficulty means that teamwork is an absolute must in this co-op game, if you want to survive the onslaught. The enemy spawning is all done with the help of what they call the “AI Director” which helps keep the pace and flow of the game while also introducing uncertainty since enemy locations are random. This does create issues like the spawning of too many and too frequent special enemies but that didn’t really hinder my overall experience of the game.
Visually the game yet again nails the aesthetic of the world that has fallen into despair just as it did with the prequel. There’s a lot of level variety which really does a fantastic job of building up this dying world that you’re so desperately trying to save.Every level has various routes you can take to reach the end at which there is a boss waiting to take you on. The level design of the various levels are quite interesting. With these various routes, the game has sprawling open spaces and even cramped narrow corridors that really gives you the best of both worlds. It is extremely fun to explore these levels over and over again to see everything it has to offer. The sound is fantastic with an emphasis on the way sound is delivered to the player to provide information. You can identify the type of enemy and direction just from its screech or the sound of scurrying away or towards.
This is very important in a game that emphasizes team work and has you battle hordes of enemies since it helps you by allowing you to utilize your sense of listening. The voice direction is good but the repetition of lines does get old, especially just to break the silence. However, there is variance in dialogue based on your career which was interesting to see. The soundtrack has been done by Jesper Kyd and if he is involved you can damn well be sure that it’s going to be good. It has the primal feel to it which oozes from the aesthetics and gameplay of this and completes the trifecta of good visuals, audio and gameplay.
Warhammer Vermintide 2 is a phenomenal sequel that builds up on the previous game to give an extremely fun experience. With a lot of replayability, no mictranscations or lootbox bullshit it is absolutely worth its $30 retail price so grab your friends and start saving the world.
