Warhammer 40,000 Darktide

Introduction

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is Fatshark's four-player co-op horde shooter, released on 30 November 2022 at NZ$64.95. From the studio behind the Vermintide series, it drops players into the underhive city of Tertium as Rejects fighting hordes of heretics and daemons with a mix of guns and melee weapons across distinct classes. It sits at 76% positive ("Mostly Positive") across 91,028 English-language Steam reviews — one of the larger corpora this outlet has covered. This review read the 100 most-helpful negative reviews of 22,126 total, plus a sample of the 100 most recent English reviews.

Combat almost nobody disputes

The single most consistent thing across this review's negative sample is praise for the moment-to- moment gameplay. "The gameplay slaps," reads one of the most-upvoted negative reviews, 512 hours in, before detailing everything else that frustrated the reviewer. Another, with over 2,600 hours logged: "the game has improved quite a bit... Every class now has a good amount of variety in how you want to build around your character and playstyle." A third calls the setting and combat "excellent... incredible" while still recommending against buying at the time of writing. This isn't faint praise — reviewers with well over a thousand hours invested keep returning to how good the core loop feels even while explaining why they can't fully recommend the game.

A notorious launch, in the negative sample's own words

What earned Darktide its reputation is specific and repeated almost verbatim across independent reviews. "Released with 'coming soon!' features but also a fully functional cash shop with its own premium currency and timed skins. Real classy," reads one launch-week review. Another puts it as a checklist: "day 1 optimisation ✗ / day 1 promised features ✗ / day 1 mostly bug free ✗ / day 1 full featured 100% bug free cash shop ✓." A third, with 408 hours logged, lists "Terrible optimization" among a string of launch failures while stressing "I love this game, I really do." The consistency of the specific complaint — a working cosmetic shop alongside missing promised systems — across reviewers who otherwise disagree about almost everything else is what made this launch genuinely notorious rather than merely rocky.

A real recovery, and what's still missing

The data shows Fatshark did meaningfully improve the game: recent English reviews run 89% positive, 13 points ahead of the 76% lifetime figure, and reviewers specifically credit an October 2023 "Class Overhaul" patch for reworking build variety and adding harder difficulty tiers. What hasn't resolved is a related, ongoing complaint about pace and promises. "What the game needs is actual content. There are like 16 story missions you can play, and some of them are variants of maps you have already played," reads a June 2026 review. Another, from August 2025: "All I want is to be able to play solo so I can explore the maps. It was promised it'd be added after release. Three years is a joke." A cluster of reviewers specifically cite a community-maintained document tracking Fatshark's unfulfilled roadmap promises as their reason for distrust, alongside continued frustration that cosmetic shop content ships more reliably than new missions or performance fixes. This review found the same complaint from a reviewer in December 2025, word for word, that another had posted in February 2023 — a specific sign the underlying grievance, not just its intensity, has persisted.

AMD performance, specifically

A smaller but consistent cluster of reviewers — 9 of the 100 negative reviews read — raise performance problems specific to AMD graphics hardware, some alleging a technical partnership favouring Nvidia disadvantages non-Nvidia setups. "Experience on AMD hardware is terrible," reads one December 2025 review, echoing an April 2025 review describing "constant traversal/loading stutters... mostly [on] AMD GPU's." This review could not independently verify the alleged partnership's technical effects, but the hardware-specific pattern recurring across separate reviewers months apart is a real, checkable signal for AMD owners to weigh before buying.

Verdict

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide pairs some of the best co-op combat in its genre with a launch history genuinely notorious enough that reviewers still reference it verbatim years later. The recovery in this review's data is real and substantial — recent sentiment running 13 points ahead of the lifetime score reflects genuine post-launch investment, not just fading launch-week anger. What keeps the score from going higher is that the underlying pattern behind the launch controversy — cosmetic-shop investment outpacing content and a specific unfulfilled promise (solo mode) — is still being reported by reviewers in 2025 and 2026, not resolved alongside the technical issues. Worth it for the combat alone if you're a 40K or horde-shooter fan, with eyes open about what Fatshark has and hasn't delivered on.