Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 is now in full release and as the immortal Emperor of Mankind himself might say (if he was able to speak, or share a coherent thought of any kind), it's a banger.

Space Marine 2 has been playable since September 5 via the “early unlock” for players who preordered the Gold or Ultra editions of the game, but now it's fully live and we can get a proper idea of how it's going. The short version is, pretty damn good: Within a few hours of launch it sailed well past 200,000 concurrent players on Steam (the current peak sits at 225,254) and a “very positive” rating across more than 27,000 user reviews.

The acclaim isn't universal. Common complaints in Steam reviews include a short campaign and not-great AI companions, lack of ultrawide support, the game's use of Epic Online Services (required for crossplay between Steam and Epic), and—of course—troubles with online servers. But as redditor Ixziga pointed out, racking up more than 200,000 concurrents in the middle of a North American work day—a Monday, no less—is no mean feat.

It also represents something of a bounceback for Space Marine 2, which as recorded by SteamDB (via the Wayback Machine) was saddled with a “mixed” user rating when the advanced access period first went live on September 5. 

According to Eurogamer, those early negative reviews were prompted primarily by the Epic Online Services installation, which sparked something of a small review-bombing campaign: Not enough to have any lasting impact, but sufficient to prompt a statement from publisher Focus Entertainment that the EOS client “was implemented to support optional cross-play between Steam and Epic players and to synchronize friend lists between the two stores,” and that linking accounts is entirely optional.

Space Marine 2 is also doing well on Metacritic, where it holds an 83% aggregate review score. We weren't quite so enthusiastic about it in our own review, finding the impressive spectacle wears thin a bit quickly, although developer Saber Interactive's “deep love” for the Warhammer 40,000 setting is “clearly genuine.” 

Players are noticing that commitment as well, and I'm not talking about just the WH40K veterans.

It's a strong start for Space Marine 2, and there's quite a bit more to come: Focus and Saber have four seasons of paid cosmetics and free gameplay updates planned, including new maps, weapons, enemies, and a horde mode. That last one is a little baffling: By its very nature—a small band of bipedal tanks squaring off against literal hordes of xenos—you'd think a horde mode would be in there right from the outset. Instead, it's planned to go live in the fourth season, which puts it somewhere in mid-2025. A ploy to bring players back after they've grown bored and moved on to other things, perhaps? Maybe, and full credit to Saber and Focus if so (and if it works), but it still seems weird to me.

Space Marine 2's first update is set to roll out later this week with multiple crash fixes and improvements aimed at addressing CPU overheating, server issues, and render bugs.