The game is fantastic! It looks amazing and is a blast with friends. That being said, a few things seem off to me, to the point where I'm wondering if everything is working as intended. I know games on release can have bugs that disrupt core parts of the gameplay (like how armor didn't work in helldivers 2 on release) and I wanted to reach out to the devs since I see these complaints echoed elsewhere but not specifically addressed here.

I am a little confused about the balance around health restoration systems. It seems like it's designed around the idea of getting into a violence flow state, like the Space Marine 1, Doom Eternal, or Bloodborne, which is great but the balance seems a little off making it pretty frustrating. I can see how restoring health outright from executions could make the game too forgiving and I really enjoy the bloodborne-esque contested health system in concept, but in execution it doesn't actually feel like a feature in the game at all, unless you use melta weapons. In fact, bloodborne gave you double the time to restore your health, and the health restoration could be performed on dying enemies, and the number of enemies in bloodborne was much lower and thus much more manageable. Having 2.5 seconds to frantically attack enemies that can take chunks off your health with attacks that have no warning indicators from crowds hiding their animations is simply not a system to get health back, especially considering their ability to shoot around cover, get behind you, and hide their attacks animations by being in a crowd. Of course, melta weapons with their massive single-shot damage potential can heal beyond the contested health bar, which further indicates to me that the system isn't working as intended. The pathetic damage from bolters on difficulty higher than average means ranged damage simply doesn't restore health. Melee combat is very reactive and thus needs enemies to engage in certain attack patterns so you can react appropriately, and waiting for those attacks means that you will generally miss your window to restore contested health. Again, I want to emphasize that contested health doesn't feel like an actual mechanic in the game because your health goes away too fast, most weapons don't restore enough health, and the window for restoration is too small. This means there are 2 other ways to restore health.

Because contested health is so unreliable, medicae stims are the primary way people restore health, and their rarity plus their meager restoration makes them also feel like garbage. This doesn't seem to line up with the lack of ways in combat to restore health. If medicae worked like stims in helldivers or estus in dark souls, then it would make sense. Both of those restore most, if not all your health and you have a reliable bank of them. Instead medicae restore health that doesn't even restore a single hit from many enemies and their rarity means you can go without healing for multiple arenas. It seems like they should either restore more health or be much more common, or the operation drop pods should restore health, or something to this effect as it feels like every game I play or join, everyone is on low health the entire time and the best way to heal is to die and come back with full health.

The only other way to restore health is Titus's fury mode, which is somewhat forgiving and allows for some freedom, but that doesn't feel like it's intended use. It seems like its designed to assist in that flow state of violence that makes action games so entertaining, but it is better used to restore health between fights where you can wring as much health as you can from it as opposed to obscuring your vision with particle effects, making it more difficult to spot the delicate animations of enemies attack or shooting so you can get in cover or parry them appropriately.

Overall, the balance of PvE feels off and I think this is the root cause. It seems like simple fixes would address it very effectively, with stims healing the player fully or the window of contested health being much wider, but as it is, the only way to feel like a proper space marine is to play on lower difficulties. Higher difficulties reward cheesing enemy targeting by spamming the dodge roll and or cowering behind walls. This is so frustrating to me because all the elements of this flow-state are there, and on occasion I'm able to get into a groove, but then one volley of a boltgun hits me and 3 quarters of my health is gone and by the time I've turned the camera towards the enemy, my contested health is completely gone.