Great core gameplay marred by all the other systems that surround it, and an incomplete and very buggy release.

Performance: Frequent crashes, sometimes several in a single mission. I'm on the luckier side, but still get crashes now and then. Framerate issues occur more on certain maps, but aren't infrequent.

Loading times are quite long even on an SSD, and you're forced to reconnect to the servers and load the entire hub every time you finish a mission or even change characters.

Update: After some patches, performance generally seems to have improved - though, like I said, I was on the luckier side to begin with.

Bugs and Other Issues:

Update: I've removed the "UI issues" segment I previously had here, as the two examples I used have been fixed. The rest appear to still apply:

Ungettable Goods: Scrips/Grims (items required for side-missions) frequently are unable to be interacted with, preventing you from being able to complete those side-missions without several attempts.

Twitching: Server connection issues occur frequently: trying to swap weapons will sometimes have your character twitch back to the weapon you were trying to switch from; sometimes your Lasgun will flash, or your launcher will let out a thoom as a grenade flies from it, only for the game to twitch and roll that shot right back into your mag, like it never happened.

Phantom Slaps: Shooting an enemy in the head will sometimes play the headshot sound, have blood burst from the enemy's head, only for no hitmarker to appear, and the enemy to be uninjured. Even if a hit registers, sometimes enemies will just ignore your attack's stagger, sometimes even several times in a row. Sometimes dodging a leaping dog will have it spin 90 degrees in midair to home in on you regardless. Against enemies for which these things are supposed to be the counterplay, the lack of reliability is ridiculous.

When selecting a mission on the 4th difficulty and with no modifiers, then checking the details mid-mission, it will always say you're playing a high-intensity modifier. The devs have claimed this is just a UI bug, but some people have doubts about that.

The Ubersreik 5: Occasionally, you'll notice you've got 4 squadmates. Plus yourself. This is a 4-player game. In every mission this has happened to me in, the extra 5th character is a bot - and yet, at the end of the mission, it's always the actual player that the game kicks from the group.

The Hub:
Incomplete on release, but still grindy now: You're no longer forced to check the shop every hour in hopes that the base weapon you're looking for appears - but that doesn't mean the RNG isn't still harsh. You can buy the base weapon type you want, but its stat total and distribution are still randomised, which can be significant.

Completing missions also now gives one item guaranteed, with higher difficulties supposedly having a higher chance to give higher rarity weapons/charms - I've yet to receive one weapon with a good stat total, though.

Upgrading gear is a little less painful, due to the adjusted material drops, and the ability to replace one of two blessings on your weapon. You just need to hope you get a weapon with decent stats, one good perk, and one good blessing, instead of two.

Timers: Everything's on a timer. That weapon you wanted but didn't want to RNG so hard on? Not in the shop, check back in an hour. That mission you wanted to run? Not there on the right difficulty, or with the right modifiers, check back in an hour. This is made even worse by global conditions, so almost every mission has even more buggy dogs to deal with. That cosmetic in the premium cash shop looks pretty nice - would be a shame if it disappeared soon and you missed out, huh?

The Cash Shop: Crafting wasn't ready for the full release, but you know what was? Yeah. After backlash, they removed the visible timer in the cash shop, but commented that it may be added back in later, once more cosmetics have been added to the game. Their reasoning was that having too much in the shop at once was confusing to the players.

Naturally, the paid cosmetics generally look far more visually impressive than the free ones. Yet they have their own issues with clipping, or Zealots' thumbs being disconnected from the rest of their hands.

Also naturally, they have their own premium currency, which you have to buy in packs either too small or too large for the cosmetic sets, to try to wring more cash out of you.

Story: It's not there.

Characters:
NPCs: There are a few of these who talk to you on missions. They're alright.

Player Characters: You can select various aspects of your background, your appearance, one of 4 classes, and one of 3 personalities for each class.

Classes are important mechanically. Personalities affect your character's voice lines. Background details appear to do nothing.

Characters will "interact" with each other during missions. Because there are so many possible combinations of squadmates, most of the conversations sound like the characters are talking past each other instead of actually conversing.

Classes:
Veteran: At higher difficulties, enemies with guns melt every other class - but Veteran has twice as much base Toughness (a sort of shield which blocks ranged damage and mitigates melee damage), more ammo, passives which let him regen toughness at range, an ability which boosts his ranged damage, cuts ranged damage taken by 75%, highlights priority targets and refreshes its duration when one of those targets is killed.

So he must be weak in melee, right? He's got one of the strongest melee weapons in the game, so not particularly. Veteran can kinda do it all.

Zealot: The melee specialist, who is passable at melee. Yells, recovers half toughness and runs at people for his class ability. But he only recovers half of his toughness, so enemies at higher difficulties will shoot you once, eat all your toughness and stagger you. Get used to spamming sprint and crouch to slide and hope nobody manages to shoot you.

Psyker: Explodes heads with his mind - except at higher difficulties, having your head exploded with mind powers isn't fatal. Even a dog can survive having its brain blown up once. Unfortunately your mind powers are also blocked by guardrails, even if there's a foot-high gap that you can easily see through.

Psyker's passives are a mess of missing synergy, unless you happen to take a flame staff, and they're very squishy unless you happen to take a force sword with deflect and a particular passive to let you block more. The update also nerfed his passive quell rate with non-force weapons, making him a bit clunkier again.

Ogryn: Big Boys who struggle to find cover, constantly get shot in the back by their teammates, and are really good at knocking enemies over and carrying things. Has more health and takes less damage than other classes, but still melts to gunners at higher difficulties.

Weapons:
Distinctiveness: Darktide's weapons are good overall, but seem less distinct than Vermintide 2: several weapons are shared across 3 classes, while Vermintide 2 weapons were mostly unique to each class.

Several weapons are different marks of the same base weapon, like the three devil's claw swords, the various combat axes, the three heavy swords, three dueling swords, three Lucius, Kantrael and Recon lasguns, three sharpshooter and braced autoguns. Each weapon variant has a slightly tweaked moveset or stats, but they often feel and look quite similar, and one often outperforms the rest in general.

TL;DR: Go play Vermintide 2 until they've fixed this a bit.

Great core gameplay marred by all the other systems that surround it, and an incomplete and very buggy release. [u][b]Performance:[/b][/u] Frequent crashes, sometimes several in a single mission. I'm on the luckier side, but still get crashes now and then. Framerate issues occur more on certain maps, but aren't infrequent. Loading times are quite long even on an SSD, and you're forced to reconnect to the servers and load the entire hub every time you finish a mission or even change characters. [b]Update:[/b] After some patches, performance generally seems to have improved - though, like I said, I was on the luckier side to begin with. [u][b]Bugs and Other Issues:[/b][/u] [b]Update:[/b] I've removed the "UI issues" segment I previously had here, as the two examples I used have been fixed. The rest appear to still apply: [u]Ungettable Goods:[/u] Scrips/Grims (items required for side-missions) frequently are unable to be interacted with, preventing you from being able to complete those side-missions without several attempts. [u]Twitching:[/u] Server connection issues occur frequently: trying to swap weapons will sometimes have your character twitch back to the weapon you were trying to switch from; sometimes your Lasgun will flash, or your launcher will let out a [i]thoom[/i] as a grenade flies from it, only for the game to twitch and roll that shot right back into your mag, like it never happened. [u]Phantom Slaps:[/u] Shooting an enemy in the head will sometimes play the headshot sound, have blood burst from the enemy's head, only for no hitmarker to appear, and the enemy to be uninjured. Even if a hit registers, sometimes enemies will just ignore your attack's stagger, sometimes even several times in a row. Sometimes dodging a leaping dog will have it spin 90 degrees in midair to home in on you regardless. Against enemies for which these things are supposed to be the counterplay, the lack of reliability is ridiculous. When selecting a mission on the 4th difficulty and with no modifiers, then checking the details mid-mission, it will always say you're playing a high-intensity modifier. The devs have claimed this is just a UI bug, but some people have doubts about that. [u]The Ubersreik 5:[/u] Occasionally, you'll notice you've got 4 squadmates. Plus yourself. This is a 4-player game. In every mission this has happened to me in, the extra 5th character is a bot - and yet, at the end of the mission, it's always the actual player that the game kicks from the group. [u][b]The Hub:[/b][/u] [u]Incomplete on release, but still grindy now:[/u] You're no longer forced to check the shop every hour in hopes that the base weapon you're looking for appears - but that doesn't mean the RNG isn't still harsh. You can buy the base weapon type you want, but its stat total and distribution are still randomised, which can be significant. Completing missions also now gives one item guaranteed, with higher difficulties supposedly having a higher chance to give higher rarity weapons/charms - I've yet to receive one weapon with a good stat total, though. Upgrading gear is a little less painful, due to the adjusted material drops, and the ability to replace one of two blessings on your weapon. You just need to hope you get a weapon with decent stats, [i]one[/i] good perk, and [i]one[/i] good blessing, instead of two. [u]Timers:[/u] Everything's on a timer. That weapon you wanted but didn't want to RNG so hard on? Not in the shop, check back in an hour. That mission you wanted to run? Not there on the right difficulty, or with the right modifiers, check back in an hour. This is made even worse by global conditions, so almost every mission has even more buggy dogs to deal with. That cosmetic in the premium cash shop looks pretty nice - [i]would be a shame if it disappeared soon and you missed out, huh?[/i] [u]The Cash Shop:[/u] Crafting wasn't ready for the full release, but you know what was? Yeah. After backlash, they removed the visible timer in the cash shop, but commented that it may be added back in later, once more cosmetics have been added to the game. Their reasoning was that having too much in the shop at once was confusing to the players. Naturally, the paid cosmetics generally look far more visually impressive than the free ones. Yet they have their own issues with clipping, or Zealots' thumbs being disconnected from the rest of their hands. Also naturally, they have their own premium currency, which you have to buy in packs either too small or too large for the cosmetic sets, to try to wring more cash out of you. [b][u]Story:[/u][/b] It's not there. [b][u]Characters:[/u][/b] [u]NPCs: [/u] There are a few of these who talk to you on missions. They're alright. [u]Player Characters:[/u] You can select various aspects of your background, your appearance, one of 4 classes, and one of 3 personalities for each class. Classes are important mechanically. Personalities affect your character's voice lines. Background details appear to do nothing. Characters will "interact" with each other during missions. Because there are so many possible combinations of squadmates, most of the conversations sound like the characters are talking past each other instead of actually conversing. [u][b]Classes:[/b][/u] [u]Veteran:[/u] At higher difficulties, enemies with guns melt every other class - but Veteran has twice as much base Toughness (a sort of shield which blocks ranged damage and mitigates melee damage), more ammo, passives which let him regen toughness at range, an ability which boosts his ranged damage, cuts ranged damage taken by 75%, highlights priority targets and refreshes its duration when one of those targets is killed. So he must be weak in melee, right? He's got one of the strongest melee weapons in the game, so not particularly. Veteran can kinda do it all. [u]Zealot:[/u] The melee specialist, who is passable at melee. Yells, recovers half toughness and runs at people for his class ability. But he only recovers half of his toughness, so enemies at higher difficulties will shoot you once, eat all your toughness and stagger you. Get used to spamming sprint and crouch to slide and hope nobody manages to shoot you. [u]Psyker:[/u] Explodes heads with his mind - except at higher difficulties, having your head exploded with mind powers isn't fatal. Even a dog can survive having its brain blown up once. Unfortunately your mind powers are also blocked by guardrails, even if there's a foot-high gap that you can easily see through. Psyker's passives are a mess of missing synergy, unless you happen to take a flame staff, and they're very squishy unless you happen to take a force sword with deflect and a particular passive to let you block more. The update also nerfed his passive quell rate with non-force weapons, making him a bit clunkier again. [u]Ogryn:[/u] Big Boys who struggle to find cover, constantly get shot in the back by their teammates, and are really good at knocking enemies over and carrying things. Has more health and takes less damage than other classes, but still melts to gunners at higher difficulties. [u][b]Weapons:[/b][/u] [u]Distinctiveness:[/u] Darktide's weapons are good overall, but seem less distinct than Vermintide 2: several weapons are shared across 3 classes, while Vermintide 2 weapons were [i]mostly[/i] unique to each class. Several weapons are different marks of the same base weapon, like the three devil's claw swords, the various combat axes, the three heavy swords, three dueling swords, three Lucius, Kantrael and Recon lasguns, three sharpshooter and braced autoguns. Each weapon variant has a slightly tweaked moveset or stats, but they often feel and look quite similar, and one often outperforms the rest in general. [b][u]TL;DR:[/u][/b] Go play Vermintide 2 until they've fixed this a bit.