HELLDIVERS™ 2

The game is good, but I have no reason to play it.
Every few months they drop a new war bond with 1 or 2 decent items in it. Everything else is just there to take up space.
What am I supposed to do in the months between? Farm samples? The buffs are so insignificant it isn't worth doing.
You can only store 1/4 of a war bond's worth of medals, so those aren't worth farming either.

Mostly been playing with friends but I`ve enjoyed it havnt gotten to the point were the game gets super grindy so I`ll see if that kills my mood for it. I played a lot of the first game was super suprised to see this one pop off the way it did.

I used to be able to run the game without any issues, but after some recent updates, I can no longer play. (haven't been playing for few months now) When I launch the game, the anti-cheat software loads, but then an error pops up and stops the process — I can't get past it. A quick search shows that other users are experiencing the same issue. I reached out to the dev team via email but haven't received any response or update. Honestly, it feels like they don't even care at this point.

Great game, fun rounds. Good for both intro and long term play.

I wish I could give this game a positive review, but I can't the time I have spent playing this game has truly been fun I enjoy every aspect of this game except one thing, bugs myself and many other continue to face the game crashing whenever it feels like, many times after a update releases my game will crash after launching only to randomly be fixed some other update, this isn't as simple as validating game files or reinstalling, it saddens me to have such a loved game left to a coin flip if I can play it or not, I fear this bug may forever be woven into HD2

Man, I love Helldivers 2. It's honestly one of my fav games however the performance is terrible after these last few patches. I used to run the game at 60fps but now it drops down to 4...

It's actually unplayable which is a shame. I hope you fix this arrowhead..

Went from my favourite game to my least favourite because of Arrowheads inability to make a functioning working game. You had a gem here, and you've ******* it up so badly its a waste of time now. Congrats.

This has been an awesome game to 100% with my friends; the community is great and super supportive during all my interactions.

9/10 game, For Super-Earth

The game is great, but unfortunately it crashes so much it has become unplayable now, haven't been able to play in two weeks and nothing would fix it. It was good while it lasted.

Its fun to play, but for me its bit repetitive after some time.

I feel like the end is nigh for Helldivers 2.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time over the last year playing this game which, as a casual gamer has scratched THAT itch.
Over the past year the bag has been fumbled a few times with certain updates or the furore over forced Playstation membership which actually alienated a lot of people in countries that Playstation didn't even support!
Corporate greed has unfortunately dug its claws into this game slowly but surely as the Warbonds seem to get thinner and lighter and the storyline just meander's back and forth with no real defining arc.

I don't like talking down about a game that I have quite happily sunk over 300 hour's into but with the last update physically stopping me from playing with the black screen of death on startup, I have to draw the line somewhere.

The ingredients are all there to make an amazing game but that would be too simple it seems. Lets wheel out this heap of buggy (no pun intended) mess that wants to choke-hold you into membership's and Kernel level anti-cheat software and then we'll kick you while you're writhing around on the floor.

I will dive no more.

this game used to run good on my 3060. then the cowboy warbond came out and it runs 20fps. unplayable.

The game can be a lot of fun, but with the last few updates the game has become very unstable.

On several occasions I've been in the middle of missions when one by one team mates start disconnecting, then when im all alone if I die I will not revive, i will just sit there hovering over my corpse.
Another glitch I came across was while trying to use my Quasar Cannon, i went to aim and suddenly I was just hovering in the sky, my teammates said I was just laying on the floor but i took a video and sent it my friend in the game so he could verify what i was seeing while he was looking at my character just lay on the floor.
Many times we will just clip through the map after an explosion or impact, you either get stuck or the game kills you by "environment".
Misisons came take 20-30 minutes sometimes and gaming time becomes more limited and more precious the older you get, after so much time wasted on missiosn you cant complete because of bugs, and when the game is set up for you to get bigger rewards from completing 3 consecutive missions, its just utterly discouraging and makes you not want to bother even starting up the game.

This game would be perfect, absolutely perfect, if not for one thing. The optimisation. The optimisation in this game is so fucking garbage that it drops it from a 9.5 to a 3/10.
Out of all the games to release, why doesnt this one have DLSS? or FSR? Or fucking anything to balance the horrendous performance this game has? Good fucking luck playing any difficulty above 5 if you have a lower-end PC, you'll get freezes at critical moments that kill you, aiming will feel like crap because of how low your fps is. I have played this game for 70-ish hours, tried every fix in the book because I want to like this game, everything about this game, minus the optimisation is amazing, but what good is an amazing game if you cant fucking play it?

Devs, please do something, anything at all. Its been a year since release, there is no excuse for your game to run like this.

I used to recommend this game. But not anymore

The game is in desperate need of balance and bug fixes. A lot of issues were raised by the community on Reddit. And the devs don't seem to be interested in tackling them. All we get is major orders. plot that is inconsequential & war-bonds pushing you to buy premium currency

The only thing kept me playing is the solid core gameplay. A core gameplay that is constantly undermined by frustrating bugs, badly tuned units, and other erratic game dynamics, And the devs will release another major order related to the bullsh*t plot and call it a day

Really sad & unfortunate... It's time to move on

The idea is good but arrowhead refuses to address performance issues on pc and every update degrades performance. overly monetised too for a game im paying for, how come if i want content thats useful i need to spend 15 dollars to buy the latest pass? the idea and core gameplay is really good but lazy business practices make this game a disappointment

Devs need to either offer refunds or make the game playable. The performance is HORRIBLE. 20-28 FPS on average with a 3080Ti and Intel i7-11800H CPU. The horridly low FPS and amount of stutters make the game genuinely unplayable, even on the lowest graphical settings. Every update has only made it worse. Devs continue to push more microtransactions without addressing the unacceptable performance issues. Don't buy this game unless you've got a PC from NASA or unless the devs actually make the game run properly. Game was great fun when it was playable, but it hasn't been for months. Game went from being one of my favorites of all time to just making me angry that the developers conned me out of my money and then made the game unplayable.

Game is full with bugs.. i mean BUGS as in the none 6 legged kind, Currently impossible to play smoothly as thy have not fix these visual bugs and game performance hit thy had the last month. Stalling story line and lack of progression if you play it for long time.

Great fun have been had but going to play it much less until this is fixed.

Don't complain about the difficulty, it is easy to play on any level you want to so the top levels should be quite hard. The only possible criticism I could imagine is that some things can get a little repetitive, but all said and done I have enjoyed this game immensely, and still play it semi-regularly. Absolute beautiful chaos with a funny starship troopers like humor surrounding it.

Fantastic. I don't love shooters normally, but this one I can enjoy when I'm in the mood. I guess it's just that good.

Hold my Liber-Tea and check this game out! Awesome co op shooter! Tons of fun with your friends! You'll be screaming "For Democracy!" within hours of getting started.

Three different factions to throw down with across many varying landscapes. Tons of stuff to unlock and upgrade along the way. Ten levels of difficulty offering a great variety of challenge. A tear may come to your eye when you here the mission launch tune kick in.

Definitely give this game a chance and will someone please fix this liberty forsaken arm?!

You can’t not like launching nuclear bombs on every fortress you see, then jumping straight into the chaos in a giant mech like you're auditioning for a Michael Bay movie. Helldivers is pure co-op madness in the best way possible. One second you're heroically saving Super Earth, the next you're accidentally nuking your whole squad because someone may or may not have tripped the stratagem too close.

The gameplay is no joke—tight controls, satisfying gunplay, and a stratagem system that turns every mission into a tactical puzzle and a potential comedy show. Enemies don’t wait around for you to get comfy, either. Bugs swarm, bots snipe, and the Illuminate? Straight-up war crimes. It demands coordination, but even when everything goes wrong (and it will), it’s the kind of chaos that makes you laugh through the panic. You’ll be shouting callouts one second, then begging for a revive while on fire the next.

But somehow, that’s the magic. It’s dumb, it’s intense, it’s hilarious, and it's absolutely addictive. Whether you’re calling in airstrikes, piloting a mech, or screaming as your teammate crushes you with a dropship, Helldivers turns every mission into a story worth yelling about.

Final Verdict: 10/10 would get blown up by my own team again. For democracy, of course.

Killer game that is definitely worth playing. However, I just wish the devs would start focusing on fixing the game's issues.

The recent update that came with the new warbond, Borderline Justice, was executed quite poorly and introduced a number of unfavourable issues to the game, noticeably messing up the TAA graphic setting and introducing some other small but noticeable bugs that were not present pre-update.

Hell, the most recent patch somehow messed up the reload mechanic for a widely-used weapon. The issue was that significant that they quickly released a patch for that patch which solely fixed said issue.

This type of behaviour from the devs has become a repeating issue for a while and a lot of people are becoming frustrated with it when you notice that other issues that share the same significance, such as mission softlocks which are surprisingly common, have been in the game for a while and are still yet to be fixed or even addressed by the devs.

All in all, this game is really good but if you are on the fence with buying it then I would wait until said issues have at least been addressed. The devs need not forget that this game lost a lot of it's playerbase in just a few days.

Ever since they did the patch to their AI I've been crashing out of games my PC can't last no more than 5 minutes before it starts to lag and crash me out of games. after playing over 900 hours of this amazing game to then have it unplayable is an insult to the amount of time i have put into this game and i have been playing this game from day zero. Once this is fixed i will change this review but until then stay away from this game till they figured out this unplayable bug.

cant even play the game after the new update, crashes on startup everytime

This game is awesome. It's more of a friend kind of game if you want to really have fun on it. I only played it solo in the beginning to unlock starting weapons. Playing with randos seems like a bad time according to other reviews and I never liked or tried randos myself from any game in general, let alone pc players that cheat. So if you have friends you can Michael Bay everything together as family. I don't really have any problems with this game. There's things I avoid like the highest difficulties but I am having more fun on here just playing it for fun on the diff I'm comfortable with.

I've really enjoyed Helldivers 2 for the year I've been playing. However, I absolutely despise ArrowHead at this point. Their entire approach to development of this game is atrocious, including the most recent update that makes it so people who bought the game a year ago can no longer play because they stealthily changed the system requirements. Despite generally enjoying this game, I cannot in good faith recommend it to new players just because of the trash way the studio has approached updates, balancing, bugs, and their overall interactions with the community as a whole.

The Games was pretty great but something they change mean it is now unplayable any combat tanks the framerate. I want to play the game but the game doesn't play.

This is a great game but after recent patch I am unable to play the game at all. It throws me out during the capsule decent on every map. Every time without any reason at all. The developer should fire and hire new development team managers. Or at least retrain them as they do not know what they do. Until that this will be a negative review.

The latest update ruined the already poor optimization even more.
The game is also still a repetitive, buggy mess that lacks an endgame.
The fact that over 180 countries still cannot play this game is absolutely outrageous.

F#ck you Sony, f#ck you Arrowhead

After the latest update, game crashes every single time right on startup. Been having issues like this almost since day one. Very fun game when it runs, too bad the garbage support and updates fuck you over every time.

The gameplay loop is boring. Customization is generic and unimpactful.
I heard great things about the game and I am disappointed. The game seems massively overhyped. I do not understand the appeal.

i'd vote it up but ever since the last few patches came out the performance has been getting worse and worse so i cannot in good faith recommend the game in its current state

I used to be able to run this game without any problem, but with the new update it just closes completely without any error message and steam says it is still running. I suspect it's something to do with AVX2, my CPU does not support this, and neither does a lot of people's. This is extremely bad on your end Arrowhead, douche move

After 464 hours spent on this game it no longer works.
I patiently waited when this game had problems launching in the summer time, I endured the massive weapon nerfs, and I have done my best to forgive playstation for their blocking half the planet from playing this game. But I think I'm done defending this trash now. From launch, this game has always had some problem with one thing or another. either the game wont start, anti cheat blocks players who don't cheat, or it would just crash at random.
i have tried to fix this issue, verifying game files, and even a complete reinstall. they have updated the game several times since this issue started and it makes no difference.
Currently i can spend time on my ship... but that's it. Arrowhead has got to make sure you can access the cash shop even if you cant play the game i gess.
It was fun, but I'm so tired of being disappointed whenever i try to play this game. i'll change my review if the game ever works again, but fair warning to all, don't get too attached to your stuff, the friends you make playing, or even the joy of this well made master piece, because corporate greed and shady devs are coming for it all.

The gameplay itself is quite fun especially on harder missions and the multiplayer co-op especially with friends can make the endless hours of play very worth the purchase. What I can't stand is the fact I get framelocked between 20-30 fps despite having a modern PC with a 3060 inside of my PC and I have had to spend hours trying to fix a problem the devs have known about for a while. (WITH NO FIX STILL) This doesn't always happen but my god is it frustrating to go through the back end to .ini files for a consumer to ensure the game is loading as sufficiently as possible and for someone whos paid nearly £400 for the graphics cards, drivers and the game itsel, getting framelocked kills my mood the moment it does load.

I love this game, but.....

Increasingly resource intensive game. I love this game, but over the past several months, it has become impossible to play due to the increased resource demand. CPU utilization is maxed out as soon as the game launches. I could be on a ship, in the menu, on a low level dive, or in the literal "boo-boo" and I will average around 25-50 frames. I run this game on several PC's, ranging from entry level to the highest end gaming hardware you can buy at the moment, and it is pretty much universal across the board. It wasn't like this originally, but each update seems to be making it worse. I recently checked Windows event log on several of my PC's and I have noticed that this application in particular experiences a fatal error every time I play it. Ironically, this game often crashes. I'm not some computer wiz, but I am currently in my senior year in software development and this seems to be a coding issue. Funny thing is, this runs better on my steam deck than my 4090 and 9800 x3D.

Of course I don't mind to play as a bad guy, I do it for DEMOCRACY!
It's a game that you can open without any knowledge or preparation, have tons of fun solo or with friends, and feel as a fully equipped and overfinanced combat unit that main purpose to commit war crimes or die trying! (Or as a hero, if you brainwashed enough)

before Helldivers 2 = man.... life is boring after conquering Left 4 Dead 2 hardest campaign, obtained all Killing Floor 2 HoE official survival map achievements, and replaying Dark Souls series with same boss, same enemy placement, and same items

after Helldivers 2 = DEMOCRAZY HAS LANDED + Dance Dance Revolution simulator + accidental friendly fire simulator + use 500kg on everything even your friend! + average starting armor enjoyer + extreme difficulty is the sweet spot + tell the newbie to use your portable hellbomb and yell FOR SUPER EARTH!!

overall 11/10 if the public lobbies did not screw you up

Boy am I glad I can critically think, and tell when a game is a satire take on fascism. If you seriously can’t tell that you are playing the bad guy, then I honestly think you should take your ass back to 4chan or whatever other hole you waddled out of. I beg of you to take any literature class so you can learn to think before making a fool of yourself.
-With lots of love, Flurpy Jr

It's a great game but check if your friends can purchase the game in their country if you have an international circle of friends. Sony's being very anti-consumer by limiting purchases to only countries they offer PSN services to. Don't bother with people that tell you "just use a VPN." They obviously don't know how VPNs and steam purchases work. You need a steam account with a region set to a country that Sony approves of which requires an address and a payment method tied to that country. Plus, you can only change your store region every three months. Pretending to be in a different country with a VPN won't change a thing.

The gameplay loop is really solid and addicting. The constant updates give you reason to play the game even after unlocking everything.

I've played on both PC and Steam Deck. The game is optimized enough on PC to offer and enjoyable experience. The game is quite intensive. I'm running a RTX 3060 with a Ryzen 9 5900HS and still get sub 30fps dips on the high difficulties at 1080p. The image scaling has gotten better and optimization has gotten better but it still could be a lot better. My girlfriend is running a 6600XT and everything runs smoothly so your mileage may vary.

The devs have a specific Steam Deck option in the graphical settings which wasn't there when I first played. It is more optimized now but the main issue I face is battery life. I have the OG steam deck, not OLED and I can get about an hour and half of gaming in before the battery dies. Operations on higher level difficulties can last 2 hours so I don't recommend playing unplugged. I've tried optimizing the game to maximize battery life but I don't think I can get enough to last the gaming session length I'm seeking. So if your main machine is a Steam Deck, stay plugged in.

TLDR:
- check if game is available in the country you and your friends live, VPNs aren't a workaround
- Steam Deck needs to stay plugged to a wall
- it's fun

I recommend the game, its a solid 4 Player shooter.

I cannot recommend Arrowhead's development philosophy.

Its been a wild rollercoaster of community outbursts, poor balancing choices, lack of meaningful updates, slammed against sudden bursts of activity and community love. Like an abusive relationship, the latter only comes out when threats of abandonment begin.

While many Divers are chasing the high that was the Creek, its become extremely clear that Arrowhead as a company is more than happy to pump out slimmer and slimmer warbonds rather than finishing up the final faction that has been limping since December on barely 3 unique units. We are thrown into barely balanced MO's that are arbitrarily won or lost based on Arrowhead's needed canon, rather than true community engagement.

Its been a year, and still no late game systems have been added. Many dive for the sake of diving, long since maxed out on all upgrades and strategems. The game long term is suffering, and Arrowhead seems bizarrely keen on pushing Meridia as a storyline that nobody really want's to engage with anymore.
I do not care about Meridia, hell I can't really care about the Galactic War itself if Arrowhead continues to write whatever headcanon is needed for our collective efforts to always align to a non-pliable status quo.

In the end, make our actions matter, or make them simply dressing for the story that's being told. This halfway approach is exhausting, and I am well past over it.

Game suddenly started crashing when playing bug or squid missions, only started happening last night and today. It was fine since I could play bot missions but now suddenly they crash on load too and every time it does it gets worse. I used to only have to close the game with task manager but now I have to restart my entire computer every single time. Just not worth it, especially since my issues arose immediately after I already spent $10 on supercredits

Anyone who says this game is bad because of fascism is not a serious person. They are NPCs. They exist to be ignored.

Want to fight and die for the glory of humanity? Want sick drip, great gameplay, and a compelling narrative within a setting reminiscent of 40K and starship troopers? This game is for you.

It can get repetitive, but that’s ok. Take a break and come back when you feel like it. It’s definitely a game you will keep coming back to for a fix for action and glory.

Ignore the haters, be a man, be a hell diver.

First of all, love this game, only putting a thumbs down because I hope this gets noticed. There are so many visual bugs with the latest patch. The anti-aliasing is making the armor and enemies look really blurry. I also see other players walking around with missing limbs and heads and looking like floating torsos. I hope there is a fix to the dirt mechanics because a lot of my helmets get blacked out by med just from walking over a puddle of mud and it is even worse on snow maps when you walk on snow your helmet turns completely white for no reason.

Helldivers is a fantastic game, it is one of the best games I have ever played and I sincerely reccomend playing it, I will however keep a negative review on it until Sony decides to stop being stuck-up assholes and they remove ALL the region locks, not just some, ALL OF THEM

Fantastic Gameplay, Great Sound Design, Amazing Worldbuilding and a story that evolves in real time due to the playerbase's actions, and the most dogshit company possible that could have published it, I hope the PS6 flops horribly

The devs keep making minuscule changes to the AI that are barely noticeable during gameplay at the expense of performance. Every update just makes the game worse and worse to run. I genuinely couldnt care less how good the AI is if the game runs at 20fps or less.

Don't get too attached to a particular weapon or strategy, because they'll come and nerf it into oblivion in order to get you to buy another Warbond Pass. They said they won't be reverting their stupid and unnecessary changes to enemy dropships that make the recoilless rifle useless, so I'll be supporting this game no longer.

This game is an absolute masterclass in creating a fun gameplay loop of PVE combat where the players feel tested but not useless. The devs don't always listen to the greatest degree and often make completely idiotic decisions, but regardless still care deeply for the community at large. However despite the fact that I love this game and will keep playing there are glaring issues.

The anti-cheat is useless bloatware and only serves to crash and ruin the performance of high-end machines. The game should honestly be called "Warbond divers 2". This game is blatantly pay to win as multiple warbonds such as Viper Commandos and Servants of Freedom give you absurdly powerful weapons compared to the normal weapons which are randomly nerfed into oblivion. Bugs and glitches are actually the most common and fatal enemy in the game.

If you enjoyed Helldivers, you will not enjoy this game. They have removed dozens of features and items from the original game for seemingly no reason. (Only 1 type of strat at a time, you cannot double up on mechs. Cooldowns feel like a joke for some strats and others are nearly entirely useless) These mainly arise because the devs feel the game should be hard. It should be hard, but the problem is they often balance the game as if the E in PVE aspect is another player. Often balancing it in a sense that weapons should be meak and disappointing instead of enemies being intelligent and clever.

With all that out of the way this game is great, but certainly not for everyone. The most depressing aspect is anytime player activity dips below 5K lost for a month another warbond magically comes out which makes the gameplay annoying and feel desperate for player retention. I love this game, but it just feels like the devs didn't read much into what made the first game so enjoyable and went for a DIY approach instead. Anyone who says this game is objectively bad probably just didn't enjoy the style of gameplay, or the loop to progress but they very rarely cite misinformed issues. This is a great game held back by a Playstation, a bad anti-cheat, nonsensical dev decisions and a constant need for the next warbond instead of the next fun way to play. Hopefully at some point things turn around for the better and a lot of missing features that contributed to the success of the first come back again, but seeing as this game struggles to hit 100K player peaks even during new content dropping I have my doubts.

TLDR:
An amazing standalone, an egregious sequel.

After a couple hundred hours of playing the game
It updated today and following the update, the game keeps crashing on startup
I've tried almost everything to find and fix the issue and it still crashes.
The game is fun but only when it's playable.