It finally is everything that was imagined in 2013. And that is part of the problem. The game retains old mechanics that would get a free pass in 2013 but it's totally unacceptable today. There are plenty related to quality of life improvements. I will just talk about one, so you get the idea: the quests that ask you to wait without providing a quick way to do so besides "busy work " of walking a long distance to find a seat to doze off, repeat the whole process of "standing up, sitting again, dozing off" while watching slow animations in each action to finally pass enough time. The game is riddled with little annoyances like that, which again would be ok in a 2013 game with that scope but it's just infuriating in 2024. The traversal is also a huge issue. I get, the idea is to explore the world but it gets pretty repetitive and boring when you have to do the same "get to point B and back to A" pretty much all the time. By the time you approach 50% of the game, you already know even where enemies will spawn, like Saurians in caves. Halfway through I wasn't having fun anymore killing the same enemy for the 30th time. It's a 6/10 game that could've been easily a 7.5 or 8 if they fixed those "quality of life" issues.

Coming from someone who usually don't like online shooter, let alone GaaS, I can honestly say that Helldivers 2 got me hooked up. Sure, it's messy, chaotic, has some nasty bugs (and I don't mean the ones we shoot at) but that all contribute to an extremely fun gameplay. Quick missions, you go in and out, perfect when we don't have much time or are just doing a palate cleanser from bigger, denser single player games (it was perfect for it while I wait for Dragon's Dogma 2). You get the feeeling of being in a real all out war, specially against the (hard) automatons. Overall, I'm enjoying it way more than I thought I would. Recommend even if you are not fan of GaaS: The game is very generous with leveling and getting equipment for free by just playing.