The good:

- Definitely fun when you play for the first time, when the locations are fresh, every new attachment or a weapon worth a try, and you want to test all utilities. There is a lot to discover and to try out, the game will eat your time easily.

- Each character goes with their own bonus / skill. A great idea which stimulates teamwork and role-assigning, making it fun to discuss different tactics before you start a new playthrough with your team, and even more fun to see it work.

- Generally, feels smooth, sometimes the specials make their ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ attacks hitting you from behind the wall or throwing you behind the walkable borders of the map but overall I wouldn't say there is something critical about the feel of the game, it also looks good, not blurry and overall sharp, I like it when games are not flooded with fancy effects and still look decent.

- If you played L4D, you will definitely have knowledge advantage on some strategies, utility types, healing items, enemy types and and their attack and behaviour patterns. The "game director" is also there and you can either learn or feel the same build-up/peak/relax/drama/post-drama timings and events. You also will notice maps' similarities (Hard Rain, Blood Harvest, Death Toll, Dark Carnival), even in terms of hordes' timings, triggers and the way you have to deal with them. At the same time, you will get annoyed, if you expected L4D3 because there are also differences to the old classic, some for the best, some - not, it's just a matter of taste and your personal expectations, so won't write much on that.

The bad:

- The game feels overpriced and here is why:

a) your success on higher difficulties will depend on RNG and usage of meta builds, the latter narrows the deck building opportunities to only 1-2 builds which will make your playstyle viable on highest difficulty, also making it possible to workaround a bad RNG. This, of course, as a classic outcome of an unbalanced, meta-dependant gameplay, conditions 2 types of players: "white knights" who know how the game "is supposed to be played", not even being a part of the development team, and "glitchers" who "can't play the game it's supposed to be played". Have fun reading steam forums, lol. Having meta is a red flag for game designers who work on balancing the game. Unfortunately, B4B has it as one of the current biggest problems.

b) it's really, really short even for the price of a basic edition, you can have the whole story through in 15 hours if you go super slow and careful. What else is worth mentionning is that not the whole game but a huge part of the game will take place nearly in one particular area of a city, which makes it less exciting with progression, you will come back to the same place 3-4 times and do stuff there, then go somewhere far far away (for a change of environment) and come back again, to the place you've already been to.

c) my personal biggest disappointemnt is that the Steam workshop is not implemented and it seems like it won't be.
I understand that being concerned about the game's lifetime by delivering new content is more of a developer's job rather than players, the latter don't make profit from the game, they just want to have fun, and sometimes the devs can't keep it up with players who already want something new. So.. why not letting the players create content for the game?

You may say, DLCs are also an option. Yes, it's fine when you want money for your job and effort and you want to be the only one who makes the additions to the game. As a player, I get excited when my favourite game keeps getting updates and gets new DLCs, I will always buy them as long as: a) they have a reasonable price; b) provide quality content; say it could be nicely-made unique cosmetics (not boring desert camo or unicorn-pink) which fit and add something up to the feel and the look of the game. Or, a better and more preferable variant, when the game gets new campaign, new story, a character to unlock upon the completion of this new story, new weapon attachments, new cards, multiple viable decks.
Looking at this game's current DLCs, unfortunately, makes me doubt that they are worth buying, as they are neither reasonably priced nor they look promising. If you don't implement steam workshop, then either rethink your quality standards or readjust your price policy before releasing new paid content, that's how it feels for me at least.

d) could be more rewarding. The game will reward you only upon a successful completion of a mission. Not for actions profitable for your team, such as covering fire, killing specials, marking dangers and alarms, reviving and healing teammates etc. Spent half an hour doing your best but failed at the very end? Well, let me calculate what you get for that: +0 reward and -30minutes of time. In short: you are rewarded from getting from safezone A to safezone B. Keep in mind, that getting to safezone doesn't mean that you just reached a checkpoint you can load from anytime: sometimes you are forced to replay some previous missions. A lot.

e) low replayability: I know the devs claim their game to have "Extreme Replayability" but .. I just can't agree on that, the reasons they name are not enough (build your own decks!) or are getting destroyed by an extremely unlucky RNG which you can roll any moment and suffer till you fck up your playthrough and have to start from the last available checkpoint with little money and not upgraded weapons. Rinse and repeat if you are feeling lucky not to roll a bad RNG again. To put it short: bad RNG will win over your deck.

To sum up the "Overpriced" point: it just doesn't feel like a thought-through game, the price is far away from being justified, and it feels rather as a cash-grab as the game at its' current state takes more from you than it gives.

- Sometimes you see the infected appear from literally nowhere, like if you would be in-game editor and click on "Spawn Model" or sth, the most annoying part about this is that even special tanky infected can appear that way, 3 meters behind you, and reck your whole team because the game director just decided that you lack some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ right now. I sometimes felt like this game was supposed to be hardcore and skill-based but at its' current state it looks like a total balancing disaster. Spawning 6 specials at a time together with a horde is not hard, it's just.. dumb and not fun? Feels more pretentious and poorly designed than hard, it's more of a bs than of a challenge.

- Poor AI. the bots suck at engaging in a fight with the infected. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the AI to do all the job for me but why would they step into your line of fire and lose health / get downed as a result? Or, say, they are being attacked by a group of trash infected who surrounded them, and, instead of dealing with them first by pushing them away / using melee, they focus on something else or, even better, just stay there and have hit taking animation till they are down? Like, seriously, wtf? Absolutely unreliable.

Sum up:

Although it looks like I had much more to say about the negative aspects of the game, I would still recommend to try it out, because it's fun, because I liked L4D, because I want to give it a chance.

Let's be honest, if you want pure fun, you can just go and play training mode on lowest difficulty, with all the cards unlocked, experiment with everything you want, and you will have it. If you want a fair challenge, B4B still need some work, have to admit that.

I promise, the game doesn't feel like a low-effort trash, it definitely has potential and can be even more fun, it needs some adjustments, balance rework and more content, and maybe a cheaper price? Whether this faith will be justified or the game will turn out to be a total fail, the time will show. It's all now in the developers' hands, and I have faith in them, even after they spawned those 5 tallboys behind me.

Give it time.

[b]The good:[/b] - Definitely fun when you play for the first time, when the locations are fresh, every new attachment or a weapon worth a try, and you want to test all utilities. There is a lot to discover and to try out, the game will eat your time easily. - Each character goes with their own bonus / skill. A great idea which stimulates teamwork and role-assigning, making it fun to discuss different tactics before you start a new playthrough with your team, and even more fun to see it work. - Generally, feels smooth, sometimes the specials make their bullshit attacks hitting you from behind the wall or throwing you behind the walkable borders of the map but overall I wouldn't say there is something critical about the feel of the game, it also looks good, not blurry and overall sharp, I like it when games are not flooded with fancy effects and still look decent. - If you played L4D, you will definitely have knowledge advantage on some strategies, utility types, healing items, enemy types and and their attack and behaviour patterns. The "game director" is also there and you can either learn or feel the same build-up/peak/relax/drama/post-drama timings and events. You also will notice maps' similarities (Hard Rain, Blood Harvest, Death Toll, Dark Carnival), even in terms of hordes' timings, triggers and the way you have to deal with them. At the same time, you will get annoyed, if you expected L4D3 because there are also differences to the old classic, some for the best, some - not, it's just a matter of taste and your personal expectations, so won't write much on that. [b]The bad:[/b] - The game feels overpriced and here is why: a) your success on higher difficulties will depend on RNG and usage of meta builds, the latter narrows the deck building opportunities to only 1-2 builds which will make your playstyle viable on highest difficulty, also making it possible to workaround a bad RNG. This, of course, as a classic outcome of an unbalanced, meta-dependant gameplay, conditions 2 types of players: "white knights" who know how the game "is supposed to be played", not even being a part of the development team, and "glitchers" who "can't play the game it's supposed to be played". Have fun reading steam forums, lol. Having meta is a red flag for game designers who work on balancing the game. Unfortunately, B4B has it as one of the current biggest problems. b) it's really, really short even for the price of a basic edition, you can have the whole story through in 15 hours if you go super slow and careful. What else is worth mentionning is that not the whole game but a huge part of the game will take place nearly in one particular area of a city, which makes it less exciting with progression, you will come back to the same place 3-4 times and do stuff there, then go somewhere far far away (for a change of environment) and come back again, to the place you've already been to. c) my personal biggest disappointemnt is that the Steam workshop is not implemented and it seems like it won't be. I understand that being concerned about the game's lifetime by delivering new content is more of a developer's job rather than players, the latter don't make profit from the game, they just want to have fun, and sometimes the devs can't keep it up with players who already want something new. So.. why not letting the players create content for the game? You may say, DLCs are also an option. Yes, it's fine when you want money for your job and effort and you want to be the only one who makes the additions to the game. As a player, I get excited when my favourite game keeps getting updates and gets new DLCs, I will always buy them as long as: a) they have a reasonable price; b) provide quality content; say it could be nicely-made unique cosmetics (not boring desert camo or unicorn-pink) which fit and add something up to the feel and the look of the game. Or, a better and more preferable variant, when the game gets new campaign, new story, a character to unlock upon the completion of this new story, new weapon attachments, new cards, multiple viable decks. Looking at this game's current DLCs, unfortunately, makes me doubt that they are worth buying, as they are neither reasonably priced nor they look promising. If you don't implement steam workshop, then either rethink your quality standards or readjust your price policy before releasing new paid content, that's how it feels for me at least. d) could be more rewarding. The game will reward you only upon a successful completion of a mission. Not for actions profitable for your team, such as covering fire, killing specials, marking dangers and alarms, reviving and healing teammates etc. Spent half an hour doing your best but failed at the very end? Well, let me calculate what you get for that: +0 reward and -30minutes of time. In short: you are rewarded from getting from safezone A to safezone B. Keep in mind, that getting to safezone doesn't mean that you just reached a checkpoint you can load from anytime: sometimes you are forced to replay some previous missions. A lot. e) low replayability: I know the devs claim their game to have "Extreme Replayability" but .. I just can't agree on that, the reasons they name are not enough (build your own decks!) or are getting destroyed by an extremely unlucky RNG which you can roll any moment and suffer till you fck up your playthrough and have to start from the last available checkpoint with little money and not upgraded weapons. Rinse and repeat if you are feeling lucky not to roll a bad RNG again. To put it short: bad RNG will win over your deck. To sum up the "Overpriced" point: it just doesn't feel like a thought-through game, the price is far away from being justified, and it feels rather as a cash-grab as the game at its' current state takes more from you than it gives. - Sometimes you see the infected appear from literally nowhere, like if you would be in-game editor and click on "Spawn Model" or sth, the most annoying part about this is that even special tanky infected can appear that way, 3 meters behind you, and reck your whole team because the game director just decided that you lack some bullshit right now. I sometimes felt like this game was supposed to be hardcore and skill-based but at its' current state it looks like a total balancing disaster. Spawning 6 specials at a time together with a horde is not hard, it's just.. dumb and not fun? Feels more pretentious and poorly designed than hard, it's more of a bs than of a challenge. - Poor AI. the bots suck at engaging in a fight with the infected. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect the AI to do all the job for me but why would they step into your line of fire and lose health / get downed as a result? Or, say, they are being attacked by a group of trash infected who surrounded them, and, instead of dealing with them first by pushing them away / using melee, they focus on something else or, even better, just stay there and have hit taking animation till they are down? Like, seriously, wtf? Absolutely unreliable. Sum up: Although it looks like I had much more to say about the negative aspects of the game, I would still recommend to try it out, because it's fun, because I liked L4D, because I want to give it a chance. Let's be honest, if you want pure fun, you can just go and play training mode on lowest difficulty, with all the cards unlocked, experiment with everything you want, and you will have it. If you want a fair challenge, B4B still need some work, have to admit that. I promise, the game doesn't feel like a low-effort trash, it definitely has potential and can be even more fun, it needs some adjustments, balance rework and more content, and maybe a cheaper price? Whether this faith will be justified or the game will turn out to be a total fail, the time will show. It's all now in the developers' hands, and I have faith in them, even after they spawned those 5 tallboys behind me. Give it time.