Space Marine 2 Gets Review Bombed After First Major Update Goes Live

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The first major update for should have been an exciting moment for the game, but controversial changes have generated swift and heavy backlash instead. At launch, met with a positive reception overall, delivering an experience that largely honored what fans loved. The release of Update 4.0, the first major content addition to the game, followed the announcement of a roadmap for the game's future that promised Update 4.0's most exciting features and plans for future content in 2024 and 2025.

The negative community reaction to 's Update 4.0 is exemplified in a Reddit post from Old_Competition8765, who complains about heavy nerfs that make it much harder to effectively combat the game's enemies. In addition to its distinct new Lethal difficulty mode, Update 4.0 raises the challenge across the board, reducing armor on certain settings, lowering the bonus damage that can be dealt to bosses, and more.

's changes were made in response to developer Saber Interactive's sense that Patch 2 had made co-op Operations too easy, but the company acknowledged the need to monitor how much the difficulty shifted with the new changes in the Steam patch notes. Publisher Focus Entertainment has now responded to the backlash in an official statement on Twitter and promised an update reworking balance in the next week.

Nerfs are never as exciting as buffs, but they don't always incite the same kind of negativity that the changes in 's Update 4.0 have. The influx of over a thousand negative Steam reviews since the update, reported by , managed to drop the game from the low end of the " rating bracket to a " consensus, a change that could easily cause potential buyers to pause.

Space Marine 2 has proven to be everything fans wanted by evolving a number of key features from its predecessor, and this is seen in one notable way.

The situation echoes similar responses to nerfs in the popular PvE title earlier this year. Although nerfs often target currently overpowered options to hopefully raise