Nyra Veyrath slides through a crowd with her sword extended, jumps, and hangs in slowed time while the fight continues around her. The sequence makes aggression feel wonderfully light. You are steering a Sister of Battle through a massacre, yet the pleasure comes from the space between attacks: slipping past danger, finding an angle, deciding where to land. Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 gives its new protagonist a movement vocabulary that encourages a little showing off. Surviving stylishly becomes a temptation even when simply surviving would do.
Returning Ultramarine Malum Caedo offers a heavier kind of reassurance. His larger health pool gives mistakes some breathing room, while his chainsword lunge makes closing distance feel decisive. His charge is riskier, exposing that considerable body to incoming fire, particularly on higher difficulties.
Nyra’s agility is immediately seductive, but Caedo has his own appeal when a shotgun blast follows a forceful approach. Choosing between them means committing to a physical temperament for an entire campaign. You cannot swap characters halfway through because a particular encounter makes the other one look attractive.
The narrative gives either temperament a suitable excuse. Vashtorr destroys your ship, and the response is an extended campaign of revenge against the forces of Chaos. Names and declarations arrive with the expected Warhammer solemnity, but the practical objective remains accessible: reach the terrible thing responsible and destroy everything obstructing you. The story leaves room for the player’s enthusiasm to supply the momentum. Little explanation is necessary when the weapons make each confrontation feel so forceful, with reports and impacts that give even routine firing a satisfying physical weight.
Removing the first game’s weapon-and-enemy strength values helps that enthusiasm travel across the arsenal. There is less pressure to consult a numerical relationship before choosing how to attack. Caedo’s shotgun offers an immediate, close-range pleasure; Nyra’s Flamer encourages the happy recklessness of sweeping through weaker crowds. Their usefulness still differs.
The Flamer loses appeal against tougher opposition, and the Condemnor Stakethrower’s slow firing makes it awkward when enemies are arriving in numbers. Those limitations matter because the game encourages quick changes of weapon and mood. A gun that interrupts that rhythm needs a convincing reason to occupy your hand.
The environments frequently provide one. An offshore rig appears in the distance before you climb it, establishing a destination large enough to make the approach feel intimidating. During the ascent, explosions can damage sections of the structure and punch holes through the floor. The pleasure changes as you progress: anticipation gives way to the immediate business of moving through a place that is coming apart. Verticality has an emotional function here. The height you admired from safety becomes something you have to contend with while under attack.
Elsewhere, a mineshaft filling with Chaos-infused liquid lends combat an impatient edge. Killing enemies competes with the need to keep climbing, so the environment refuses to wait for your preferred pace. A chamber with breakable ice offers a different delight, letting you drop enemies toward spinning fan blades below.
These situations give familiar shooting fresh intentions. Escape makes movement urgent; an environmental kill invites mischief. Shorter stages and changes of setting help sustain curiosity, although their value comes from these local demands rather than scenery alone. A new backdrop cannot do all the work of refreshing repeated battles.
There is considerable affection in the scenery’s inhabitants, too. Pixelated enemies retain wonderfully unnecessary gestures: a Tormentor flicking a knife around, a Nurgling mooning you during an attack. Such details encourage a second of amused attention toward creatures you otherwise intend to erase. Bright bodies against gloomy machinery give the fighting a lurid, toy-box exuberance. The retro presentation suits Warhammer’s exaggerated designs particularly well, preserving their theatrical silhouettes and allowing a tiny obscene gesture to register amid the larger spectacle.
That sense of play extends to your companions and your own voice. Rahul Kohli gives Caedo’s declarations commanding force, while Alanah Pearce supplies Nyra with fitting viciousness. Triggering their taunts lets you participate in their certainty without needing to take it seriously. The Servo-skull’s dry commentary provides another point of contact, treating blood obstructing its ocular module as a technical inconvenience.
I like how these touches puncture the military and religious bluster. They establish company and personality through brief interruptions, without asking the campaign to stop for character development it has little interest in pursuing.
Still, the spectacle can become tiring. Purges lock you into an area until the required enemies are eliminated, concentrating the game’s pleasures into sustained waves of violence. Explosions, gore, flashing effects, weapon reports, and metal music can produce an absorbing rhythm, then continue beyond the point when attention feels refreshed.
New locations do not always change that intensity. Four difficulty levels and options to disable head bobbing or screen shake offer useful control over the experience, though adjusting presentation cannot supply the quieter intervals that prolonged sessions sometimes need.
Other interruptions are less welcome. Slippery platforming undermines the confidence that makes arena movement enjoyable, especially when Nyra’s slide meets a dangerous drop. Occasional enemies standing idle make the battlefield feel briefly unconvincing.
More seriously, Purges can fail to unlock their exits after the apparent fighting has ended. A progression stoppage carries a different cost from an awkward jump: the game has spent the encounter encouraging total absorption, then leaves the player waiting for permission to proceed. These problems deserve attention even alongside the considerable pleasure of the shooting.
The branching campaign gives that pleasure somewhere else to go after a roughly eight-to-twelve-hour run. Choosing a blighted rainforest can mean leaving a fortified beachhead and its trenches unseen until another playthrough. A different protagonist then offers a reason to return that extends beyond clearing untouched locations: the spaces will be approached with another body and another arsenal.
The branches could communicate their exclusions more clearly, since choosing a mission does not always make the lost alternative sufficiently obvious. With that knowledge, the decision acquires a pleasing hesitation. The beachhead remains an unvisited place to wonder about while you head into the trees.
The Review
Warhammer 40,000 Boltgun 2
Boltgun 2 makes being dangerously overconfident feel wonderful. Nyra’s airborne flourishes, Caedo’s weighty aggression, and environments that invite destructive improvisation keep its carnage playful. Small enemy gestures and the Servo-skull’s dry interruptions give the violence welcome personality. Sustained Purges can exhaust that enthusiasm, while slippery platforming and occasional progression failures break the spell. Even so, a second protagonist and unseen campaign branches offer persuasive reasons to return once your eyes and ears have recovered.
PROS
- Distinct protagonists offer different kinds of physical confidence.
- Satisfying weapons encourage experimentation.
- Environmental hazards turn familiar fights into fresh situations.
- Enemy animations and dry humor give the carnage personality.
- Branching missions make another campaign inviting.
CONS
- Prolonged Purges can become visually and aurally exhausting.
- Slippery platforming undermines movement confidence.
- Occasional AI lapses and locked Purge exits disrupt play.
- Mission choices do not always communicate excluded routes clearly.
