Helldivers 2

Balance comes up in 22% of negative reviews, almost all from players past 50 hours. The pattern they describe: a weapon becomes popular, it gets nerfed, and meanwhile enemies get buffed. One accuses Arrowhead of "acting like the NPC factions will rage quit" if players get quality-of-life changes in a PvE game. "Grunt fantasy," the developers' stated goal of making players feel like expendable soldiers, is named in 75 reviews, often as the reason the game has drifted toward realism; one critic answers that "it is a horde shooter not military simulation". Players name specific changes they hated, such as the De-Escalator's self-damage and nerfs to paid Warbond weapons soon after release. A minority push back that with so many weapons, dialing some back is fair.

Performance problems come up in 22% of negative reviews, at every playtime level. That includes 17% of negatives from players under 10 hours, about as many as say the loop gets repetitive. Players describe crashes on launch, mid-mission, at extraction (taking the mission's samples with them), or when loading into the ship. Many say each big update brings a new round of crashes, and that frame rates have gotten worse over the years even on high-end hardware. Some report whole-PC hard locks, black screens or forced restarts that no other game causes, and some blame the GameGuard anti-cheat. On the other side, a few positive reviews say later updates fixed their crashes, and a few welcome the install shrinking from over 100GB to around 20GB.

About 15% of negative reviews say the developers don't listen or aren't honest about what they change. The concrete version is "stealth nerfs": weapon, enemy and aim changes that never show up in the patch notes, even after promises to document everything. Players also mention promises they say were broken, like regular blog updates, free content and progression overhauls, and a sense that feedback only lands after review bombing.

Separate from crashes, players are worn down by gameplay bugs that have been around for years. Hellpod steering that doesn't work and stratagem beacons bouncing away have sat in the developers' own known-issues list for hundreds of days, and players count them ("It's been ALMOST 1000 days since the bouncing stratagem bug was reported"). Others: enemies clipping through walls and terrain, invisible corpses blocking shots, getting stuck in geometry, soft-locked objectives, and extraction points out of reach. Several note that modders fixed some of these quickly ("Modders are doing fixes in a weekend that developers refuse to do"). Long-time players raise this far more: 16% of negatives from 200+ hour players versus 5% from those under 50.

Veterans say that once the ship modules and main unlocks are done (around level 25 to 50 for many), the only goal left is the next Warbond. Samples, requisition and medals hit caps with nothing to spend them on. The same requests keep coming up: saved loadouts, armor color and transmog options, more weapon attachments and vehicle customization, and a use for surplus resources. Some newcomers hit the same wall from the other side: after 20 to 40 hours, the free unlocks end abruptly.

These problems sit outside the game, but players hit them while playing: random disconnects late in missions, "establishing uplink" errors when joining friends, broken matchmaking, and crossplay lobbies that kick people. GameGuard draws complaints for crashes, false flags and kernel-level access. The PlayStation Network account requirement drove a large wave of reviews in 2024, and some of those were flipped once Sony reversed it and restored access in blocked countries. A few complaints about the linking requirement and regional access linger. Players moving from PS5 or Xbox to PC also ask for cross-progression so they don't have to start over.

Some veterans say big title updates deliver too little. The "Devoid of Liberty" update is mocked as "Devoid of Content" for adding a handful of enemies and a biome that disappeared after its event. They also say new areas and events vanish within days, before players who work full time can see them. Gear tied to Major Orders or limited events, like vehicles or armor passives, is gone for good for players who were away at the time, which they call FOMO.

Ragdoll irritates long-time players, especially on the Automaton front. Explosions from off-screen send players flying, often into terrain where they get stuck. Some tie this to the "sell the solution" suspicion, since ragdoll-resistant armor arrived in paid Warbonds.

A small but loud group is angry that the tank and IFV vehicles have fixed casemate guns instead of rotating turrets. One points out that the developers "make straight laser guns and FTL travel, but they draw the line at a rotating tank turret". Some also say vehicles and mechs are fragile and were locked behind Warbonds.