The demo of Vindictus: Defying Fate has launched on Steam. However, the initial feedback from players is rather negative.
What kind of game is this? Vindictus: Defying Fate is the successor to Vindictus, which was originally released in 2010. It is an MMORPG, though it is mostly played solo. For boss fights, you can team up with random companions. It is developed and published by the Korean studio Nexon.
A few days ago, the demo of the game launched on Steam. While it has already attracted more than 40,000 simultaneous players, the initial feedback has been quite mixed.
Different concept and poor performance
What rating does the game have? Currently, the game has a total of 2,271 ratings. While 1,222 of them are negative, there are only 1,049 positive ratings (as of June 10, 2025, 11:50 AM). This results in a “Mixed” rating on Steam with 46% positive votes.
Based on the numbers on steamdb.info, it can also be seen that shortly after the demo launched, more than 40,000 players were simultaneously exploring the demo to get an impression.
What do players criticize? Looking at the comments on Steam, there is primarily one major point of criticism about the demo of the game.
A large part of the players, who have already played the predecessor, are bothered by the change in gameplay. While the first part was more in the direction of hack & slash, the successor is oriented towards Souls games.
Some of the comments on Steam read:
- “It doesn’t play like Vindictus 1 at all. This game is too much like a ‘Soulslike’. [..] Vindictus 1 was more of a “hack ‘n’ slash“ than a Soulslike,” says Snack
- “If you liked Vindictus, you will hate this,” writes Help I’m Stranded
- “It’s great that the game gets a second life after one and a half decades, but personally I think Defying Fate misses the core of what made Vindictus so great,” comments Zeta1207
Furthermore, it is criticized that the game does not run very smoothly despite powerful hardware and has performance issues. Since it is currently only a demo of the game, this problem could potentially be resolved before the final release.
How long does the demo run? The demo of the game started on June 8, 2025, on Steam. If you want to test it, you have time until June 17, 2025, at 08:59 AM. After that, the demo will end.
When will the game be released? When the game will celebrate its release is still not finally known.
Some games have the potential to captivate players for many hours. This can also lead to playtime in the four-digit range. Such is the case with a player’s grandfather, whose grandson asked for recommendations for him on Reddit: A gamer’s grandfather has only two games on Steam, but in them, thousands of hours – The community knows exactly what he needs.
