izigame.me

Overall, this class is great. Weapons are awesome, character feels unique enough compared to the other classes and the talent tree allows for a ton of customization. Easy recommendation. However this review is mostly going to be talking about the elephant in the room which is a lot of negative sentiment from the community I've noticed towards Darktide over the past year, particularly about the promises they made in the past. So real quick lets get some things straight here...
Darktide is an amazing game and definitely one of the best in its genre. However obviously its not without its flaws, the cash shop is terrible, and the updates are infrequent, etc. so there's definitely room for improvement. But there's one common complaint that I've been seeing a lot and that is the promise of free classes being added to Darktide. Lots of people stated that Free classes would be added quarterly for the first year of Darktide's release, but this was never true to begin with. There was no roadmap, there was no official conformation, the only thing there is to suggest this was a forum post from Fatshark 1 month before Darktide's release that says "it is safe to say that we aim to release one new class every quarter". Many people interpreted this as a conformation, which although definitely fair, doesn't really explain why people got the idea classes would be completely free. In the same forum Fatshark also stated "We haven’t fully decided if we will charge for new and upcoming classes". This quote debunks a lot of the notions about the classes being free. I'll put the full forum here so you can read it for yourself. https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/classes-in-darktide/60591
So the classes were never confirmed to be free in the first place (which is mostly what this is about, the Abrites class being paid), but despite that we still got all the other free content and more over the years. We got free weapons for all of the classes, all the maps in the game are free (Unlike Vermintide which had some paid maps/weapons), and the best part, the reworked talent tree system, which essentially added 8 additional classes in the game through the customizable skill tree. We got new abilities, grenades, perks, voice lines, and the ability to customize them all however we like, which is waaay better than the simple 1 perk point every 5 levels at launch and in Vermintide.
We basically got our free classes already and then some, so that just leaves the new Arbites class. Is it a fair price for $12 USD? I'd say so. You basically get 3 classes in 1, and since Vermintide 2 DLC careers were $4 I think that's a fair price personally for what you get, especially since this is the first paid DLC that adds something to the gameplay since launch.
Now does that mean most negative reviews of Darktide or the Arbites class are wrong? Obviously no, the monitization of cosmetics is egregious, some bugs/crashes happen, and the solo mode should definitely be added to the game (Vermintide had it), so Fatshark 100% still has some improvements to make. But way too many reviews I see are just people getting hung up on misinterpreted details nearly 3 years old now and disliking the game, despite buying the DLC and probably really enjoying Darktide as a game.
Either way I hope we do get some more unique classes like this down the road as well as more weapons/maps. Been loving what I have been playing so far.