Darktide’s Skitarii: Great mechanics!

We’ve been playing Fatshark games since the Lead and Gold days. We loved that game to death, and we loved Krater even more. But there was something extremely special about Vermintide, especially how they nailed the heavy, satisfying feeling of swinging a mace into a rat. As huge fans of the Warhammer universe, we got ourselves completely lost in Darktide and, thanks to the steady stream of updates and DLCs, we’ve had reasons to constantly come back to the game. The new Skitarii class seemed like just another perfect reason. What we found is a really fun and totally different way to play, even if it still brings along some of those familiar technical hiccups.

Wires, weapons, and framerate drops

The first thing we noticed is how swinging the Transonic Blade feels. It has a heavy and even more aggressive rhythm. It’s easy to see how it completely changes the flow of a firefight, since it’s nothing like previous weapons. It gives the combat more oomph and makes melee encounters more satisfying. Playing as the Skitarii, however, is all about managing your power. Instead of waiting for a standard cooldown timer, you manage a bank of charges. You might have three or five, depending on your build, and you spend these charges to use your abilities. Strategizing is imperative since you can’t always risk spending all your charges at once.

Though we have to admit, clearing out a horde of Poxwalkers this way is incredibly satisfying. On the other hand, spending them slowly on defensive pulses takes a little more practice. Taking some time to get used to the class is highly recommended. Otherwise, you’d be running around like a headless chicken, leaning more on luck than skill. It can be a lot to juggle when a Mutant is charging at you, but once you familiarize yourself with all the positives and negatives—and once you learn how to use everything to your advantage—then the Skitarii truly shines. We have to admit, it was a tad difficult coming back to the previous classes afterward.

As you well know, the usual skill tree pushes you down a fairly straight path, but the Skitarii tree drops you right in the middle, spreading out in a circle. We love this change and really enjoyed tinkering with it. To give you some idea of how it works, you can rush toward a late-game passive before unlocking a blitz ability, or you can skip active skills altogether to focus entirely on ranged damage. It sure breaks the usual class rules, but if we love one thing, it’s breaking skulls and breaking patterns. The skill tree offers a sense of freedom we really enjoyed having, especially when you explore this newfound style with guns that pack a serious punch.

The Chordclaw tears right through heavy Carapace armor. The Galvanic Rifle is slower, but boy is it great for picking off snipers from a distance. We can’t wait for you to fire an Arc weapon, too. We sure appreciated the lightning chaining everywhere and how the screen lights up bright white. What we didn’t appreciate, however, is how the framerate completely tanked in those situations.

Gadgets

You can have up to three skulls floating around you. Those bad boys are masters at shooting las-pistols and running data interrogations so you don’t have to simply stand there. Aiming them gets tricky at the beginning. If you don’t know what we mean, just try pointing a skull at a terminal in a dark room and you will eventually end up fighting your own crosshair. On occasion, our little skullies liked to hover around doing nothing while a Trapper netted us. It can be overwhelming trying to manage the skulls and your power charges at the same time. We feel it could have been done differently, but we’re guessing the devs really wanted to include that little bit of micromanagement to give extra uniqueness to the whole experience.

Playing well with others

Beyond the solo experience, the Skitarii feels like a genuine team player. The defensive pulse can act as reliable mobile cover for the squad during chaotic moments, especially when you’re pinned down in an open hallway. We’ve heard teammates complaining that the Arc weapons can be a bit blinding, but not a single soul denied that the crowd control they provide is a lifesaver. When the team is getting swarmed by a horde of Poxwalkers, the ability to lock down an entire lane while the Ogryn or Zealot does the heavy lifting feels incredibly rewarding. It’s a climactic moment that never wore on us. You really feel like the tactical backbone of the group.

Mechanically, the Skitarii is clever. The center-out skill tree and the charge-based combat are exactly the kind of weird shakeups the game needed. It fixes some of the repetitive combat. The base class is $11.99, and the Deluxe Edition is $18.99. We’d go with the base class only, but we do recommend checking out the skins first, just in case you find them too good to pass up.