Heroes of Hammerwatch II

Grind, repetition or "the same maps" come up in 19% of the longer reviews and in 33% of the longer negative ones, the most common complaint by a wide margin. Every run starts in the same forest and visits the same areas in the same order with the same enemies; layouts shuffle, but reviewers say runs still feel identical. Progress depends on meta-upgrades bought in town, so players repeat early areas many times before they can beat a boss. "Playing as single-player, the grind is real, entirely too real." Another warned: "If you dont enjoy the first hour of the game just refund it because the gameplay does not change." Even fans concede the point: "This game is extremely grindy. And this is both a good and bad thing." This complaint comes from players at every stage, from people who quit within a few hours to veterans with hundreds.

17% of the longer negative reviews say the game lacks content or depth, or feels unfinished. They describe one main campaign, a short list of bosses, trinkets that mostly add a few percent to a stat, skill upgrades in a fixed line, and gear that topped out at blue rarity until epic items arrived in October 2025. One reviewer said the skill trees are straight lines that deserve the name "skill bamboo", and that "you'll be aiming for the exact same skill orb setup every run." Another said "It feels like an Early Access game disguised as a finished product." A long-time player described the progression as one that "stops abruptly not that far into it and you're left hoping for the next update."

Dozens of the longer negative reviews are about lost progress, usually from players who had a lot of time invested in their characters. The reported causes vary: cloud saves that were not on by default (each profile has to be copied to the cloud by hand), a reinstall or new PC, clicking the Home button on the profile screen ("it will erase all characters across all saves"), joining an online lobby that overwrote the player's own town ("DON'T JOIN ONLINE GAMES"), and the October 2025 update, which brought a cluster of reports that month. "Lost all my data with no way to recover it. 84 hours of progress lost in a snap." One reviewer shared a recovery route through the local save_backups folder that support gave them, but most never got their progress back. These reports run from launch week to October 2026.

14% of the longer negative reviews cite bugs or crashes, and 5% describe multiplayer connection problems. Players report getting stuck inside walls, characters turning invisible or uncontrollable, games crashing on loading screens, lightning traps hitting through walls, and desync where enemies one player killed are still attacking another: "Multiplayer has a desync issue preventing you from playing with others." Some groups never got private co-op to connect at all. Some positive reviewers mention bugs too, as annoyances that patches eventually fixed.

12% of the longer negative reviews raise balance. The common thread is that spell builds outscale weapon builds in NG+, that armor stops mattering as NG+ penalties grow, and that melee characters take the most punishment, "melee being third class citizens" in one player's words. Specific classes draw specific complaints: the Rogue is often called the weakest ("Why play Rogue when you can play literally anything else?"), the Paladin is seen as the safe pick, and Warlock players resent repeated nerfs.

9% of the longer negative reviews complain that the game explains little and that its menus get in the way. Stats have no clear tooltips, town upgrades do not show what they unlock, and buffs and debuffs are hard to inspect: "this game is 50% play 50% googling things they could just add as information in menus". Other complaints include a delete key on the character screen that sits where the accept key is elsewhere, items that need a key press to compare, a chat box too small to read, and a town so spread out that shopping between runs takes a walk.

6% of the longer negative reviews say the art hurts readability: enemy projectiles that blend into the floor, screens full of effects in multiplayer, and eye strain or headaches from the moving foliage. "In the first game, you can clearly tell an enemy attack or AOE from the environment, but majority of the attacks in 2 are barely distinguishable from the environment." One launch review gave up because "The text is very painful to read for me", and Steam Deck players ask for larger text.

Losing 40% of collected gold and materials on death bothers a smaller group of negative reviewers, often players still in their first hours. Since the only ways back to town are dying, abandoning the run or beating the final boss, reviewers say nearly every early run ends with the tax: "every time you die it's like looking at a paystub and seeing all the taxes mandatorily deducted from your gross income." Defenders point out that the tax shrinks with chapel upgrades, that a lightning bird can carry half your haul home tax-free, and that donated resources feed permanent account bonuses.

Falling rocks, gargoyle trap rooms and fire traps come up in about 5% of the longer negative reviews, and in some joking positive ones. The serious complaint is about co-op: a player who dies inside a trap often cannot be revived, and sits out the rest of the floor.

A handful of reviewers ask for item trading between players ("Me and my friends would love to trade equipment"), local or couch co-op, crossplay with consoles, and a way to tell lobby hosts' ping. Several also warn that progress from the free demo does not carry over: "Saves do not carry over from the demo."