The action in HordeCore can be mindlessly entertaining, but the game is riddled with baffling design decisions.

While you automatically pick up crafting supplies by walking over them, you have to press the "A" button to pick up weapons, armor, and consumable items. "A" also happens to be the button for your first character's special ability, which can lead to you accidentally using that special when you are trying to pick up items in a hurry.

Why does the collectible card game exist? It's not particularly fun, and its tournaments waste nodes on the map.

Why does crafting or cooking require you sit through a timer (lasting a couple of seconds) before you can do anything? You can only craft or cook at your home base, where game time does not pass, so this serves absolutely no purpose other than to annoy the player.

Why does stepping on a twig in an optional stealth section trigger the same extended flood of zombies that setting off an sustained alarm does? And why does this also draw more zombies that running around guns blazing?

You can spend significant resources to get items you can equip on characters that bestow some unique ability. These items are single-use, and the game doesn't bother to tell you the ability that they bestow. This seems to exist as pure end-game game padding, with the player expected to grind away to get multiple copies of each item so they can test them out on each character until they find which items they ultimately want each character to have.

The crafting system seems to exist just to fill a check box for a zombie survival game. You can dismantle junk items for a single random crafting component. You can then use a number of those components to create the same kind of junk items that you already have too many of. You can use skill points to unlock higher level weapons and armor, but the whole system just feels half-baked.

The cooking system has its own weird decisions. You can unlock higher level cooking recipes through a skill purchase, but the higher tier food recipes appear to be worse than the default. At least for me, the limiting factor on food was by far the amount of wood used, not the raw meat. Yet the advanced recipes seem built around consuming more wood and other crafting resources so you can use less raw meat.

I could go on about all sorts of annoyances. The armor you can equip can add to both your armor stat and your max HP, but the game never explains how the armor stat works, so you are completely in the dark as to which armor is actually better. Some armors show the armor stat and then the HP, with other armors show the HP and then the armor stat. The game floods you with weapon pick-ups, that are all identical because there is only one weapon in each tier for each class with no variations. But really there are other negative reviews that explain the issues with the game better than I've done.

The action in HordeCore can be mindlessly entertaining, but the game is riddled with baffling design decisions. While you automatically pick up crafting supplies by walking over them, you have to press the "A" button to pick up weapons, armor, and consumable items. "A" also happens to be the button for your first character's special ability, which can lead to you accidentally using that special when you are trying to pick up items in a hurry. Why does the collectible card game exist? It's not particularly fun, and its tournaments waste nodes on the map. Why does crafting or cooking require you sit through a timer (lasting a couple of seconds) before you can do anything? You can only craft or cook at your home base, where game time does not pass, so this serves absolutely no purpose other than to annoy the player. Why does stepping on a twig in an optional stealth section trigger the same extended flood of zombies that setting off an sustained alarm does? And why does this also draw more zombies that running around guns blazing? You can spend significant resources to get items you can equip on characters that bestow some unique ability. These items are single-use, and the game doesn't bother to tell you the ability that they bestow. This seems to exist as pure end-game game padding, with the player expected to grind away to get multiple copies of each item so they can test them out on each character until they find which items they ultimately want each character to have. The crafting system seems to exist just to fill a check box for a zombie survival game. You can dismantle junk items for a single random crafting component. You can then use a number of those components to create the same kind of junk items that you already have too many of. You can use skill points to unlock higher level weapons and armor, but the whole system just feels half-baked. The cooking system has its own weird decisions. You can unlock higher level cooking recipes through a skill purchase, but the higher tier food recipes appear to be worse than the default. At least for me, the limiting factor on food was by far the amount of wood used, not the raw meat. Yet the advanced recipes seem built around consuming more wood and other crafting resources so you can use less raw meat. I could go on about all sorts of annoyances. The armor you can equip can add to both your armor stat and your max HP, but the game never explains how the armor stat works, so you are completely in the dark as to which armor is actually better. Some armors show the armor stat and then the HP, with other armors show the HP and then the armor stat. The game floods you with weapon pick-ups, that are all identical because there is only one weapon in each tier for each class with no variations. But really there are other negative reviews that explain the issues with the game better than I've done.