Ready or Not Review Summary

Enjoyable co-op with diverse weapons and mod support, but suffers from incompetent AI, wall-hacking enemies, and numerous bugs.

Excellent with friends: The game is highlighted as exceptionally fun when played with friends, especially in co-op or multiplayer modes. Many reviewers note that the experience is enhanced with a group, offering coordination, humor, and immersive gameplay.

Game is highly praised: Reviewers consistently describe the game as very good, enjoyable, and fun, with solid gameplay and beautiful graphics. The game runs well and is considered a great overall experience.

Extensive weapon variety: The game offers a large arsenal of weapons, including shotguns, rifles, pistols, and more, along with various equipment and gadgets. Reviewers appreciate the extensive weapon and loadout customization options.

Satisfying and realistic gunplay: The gunplay is described as extremely satisfying, dynamic, and realistic, with proper recoil, sound, reloading, and ballistics. Weapon handling and mechanics are well-executed and add to the immersive tactical feel.

Strong mod support: The game has excellent official mod support that significantly extends replayability by adding new missions, mechanics, and content. The modding community is active and enhances the overall experience.

AI teammates are incompetent: Players report that AI teammates frequently get stuck, block paths, ignore orders, and fail in combat, requiring the player to handle everything themselves. This significantly hurts mission performance and is a top frustration.

Enemies see through walls: A recurring complaint is that enemy AI can detect and shoot the player through walls, floors, and other obstacles without line of sight. This makes engagements feel unfair and breaks immersion.

Enemy AI has aimbot: Enemies on harder difficulties exhibit superhuman accuracy, including no-scope headshots and long-range kills in darkness. This is perceived as cheating rather than challenging.

Game buggy and janky: Players encounter numerous bugs and glitches that degrade the overall experience, from minor annoyances to severe issues that break gameplay.

Hard difficulty is unfair: Higher difficulty levels are seen as brutally unfair due to enemy AI's instant reactions and pinpoint accuracy, making them feel like cheats rather than smart opponents.

Co-op multiplayer support: The game supports cooperative multiplayer with friends, allowing up to six players to play together. This is a major component of the experience, alongside solo play with AI teammates.

Commandable AI teammates: Players can command AI squadmates individually or as a team, directing their actions during missions. This tactical AI command system is central to the cooperative and solo experience.

Multiple difficulty modes: The game offers various difficulty settings, including a hard or hardcore mode, and in some versions multiple levels like casual, normal, and hard. This caters to players seeking different challenge levels.

Non-lethal weapon options: The game features a variety of non-lethal weapons and tools, such as flashbangs, pepper spray, tasers, and beanbag rounds. This allows for a non-lethal playstyle, often with a scoring system.

SWAT team simulation: The game is consistently described as a SWAT simulation and spiritual successor to SWAT 4. Players lead SWAT teams in building clearing operations and tactical raids.

Rampant bugs and performance issues: Multiple clusters report widespread bugs affecting gameplay, immersion, and stability. These range from minor annoyances to game-breaking glitches that significantly hurt the experience.

Poor optimization on systems: Many reviewers state the game is poorly optimized, struggling on powerful hardware and requiring high-end specs. This leads to subpar performance despite capable systems.

Frequent crashes and server issues: The game crashes often, especially with server connection losses, across different configurations and even different DX versions. This severely disrupts play sessions.

Frame rate drops and stutters: Severe FPS drops occur on certain maps, including DLC, with stutters and freezes. Frame rate instability is a recurring complaint, especially in missions and on new content.

Good performance on some hardware: Despite widespread complaints, some reviewers report the game runs well, achieving high FPS on max or ultra settings. This suggests performance is hardware-dependent.

Recommended for tactical shooter fans: Multiple clusters indicate strong positive recommendations from fans of tactical shooters, especially those who appreciate slow, methodical, and weighty gameplay. The game is praised for its planning, realism, and high tension, making it a good fit for SWAT-like and military simulation enthusiasts.

Overall positive recommendation: A significant portion of feedback strongly recommends the game to everyone, highlighting its great gameplay and enjoyable experience. Reviewers urge others to try the game, indicating high satisfaction among players who enjoy the genre.

Better with friends in co-op: Players emphasize that the game is significantly more enjoyable when played with friends, requiring teamwork and coordination. Solo play is not recommended, as the experience is designed for co-op sessions with at least a few players.

Buy only on sale: Many reviewers advise purchasing the game only at a discount, with some noting that the full price is not justified. The game is considered worth the money during sales, but not at its current asking price.

Issues with current state: Some players cannot recommend the game in its current state due to bugs and gameplay issues. They advise waiting for fixes before buying, and some say it should not be purchased until these problems are resolved.

Community fair range: $15.00 - $30.00.

Game completion: 95.0h.

Story completion: 21.0h.

Session length: 0.4h.

The game is often boring or frustrating alone but becomes very fun when played cooperatively with friends, requiring overcoming early friction such as lack of tutorial and steep learning curve.

Friction: lack of tutorial; boring single-player; steep learning curve; unreliable AI teammates; online connectivity issues.

Unlock drivers: playing with friends; cooperative multiplayer; learning game mechanics; installing mods; immersing in lore.

Tactical Realism Veteran: Methodical, team-oriented, planned room clearing, use of non-lethal and tactical gadgets. Motivation: Realistic tactical challenge and immersion. Stance: buy.

Co-op Social Player: Casual or tactical depending on group, heavy communication, often humorous. Motivation: Shared social experience and chaotic fun with friends. Stance: sale.

Frustrated Solo Operative: Struggling with AI and bugs, often using mods to compensate. Motivation: Tactical gameplay despite technical issues. Stance: no buy.

Performance on lower-end Windows systems is problematic with frequent crashes and FPS drops, while high-end systems run smoothly, though crashes persist across some mid-range configurations.

Windows <8GB VRAM / <16GB RAM: negative. The game runs poorly on low-end hardware, with many players reporting severe FPS drops, freezes, and crashes even on low settings.

Windows <8GB VRAM / 16-31GB RAM: mixed. Performance is inconsistent; some players achieve playable framerates on budget PCs, but others suffer from frequent FPS drops and stuttering.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: mixed. While many users report good performance and high framerates, there are significant complaints about crashes and optimization issues, especially after updates.

Steam Deck: Ready or Not on Steam Deck suffers from frequent crashes, poor performance with severe frame drops, and UI/control limitations that hinder the handheld experience. Users must manually apply Proton and graphics workarounds to achieve stability, and even then, performance remains inconsistent. The game is borderline unplayable without extensive tinkering.

Linux and Proton: The game shows mixed Linux compatibility. Single-player works well with Proton GE and appropriate launch options (DX11, Safe Mode), but core features like multiplayer online and modding are significantly impaired or broken due to Epic Online Services incompatibility and update-induced crashes. Users must rely on community fixes and workarounds, making the experience rough for those seeking full functionality.

Monetization: User reviews show that Ready or Not has no microtransactions or casino-like monetization, but faces significant backlash for removing base game content and reselling it as DLC, locking gear and achievements behind paid expansions, and offering DLCs with minimal content at a high price. These practices are aggressive but remain within traditional DLC boundaries.

Mod reliance: The game has a widespread issue with broken AI that many players consider requiring mods to fix, along with some performance problems addressed by community patches. However, the majority of reviews do not report crashes on startup or a total inability to play without mods; mods are largely seen as enhancements rather than mandatory fixes. Mod support conflicts exist, but the game is generally playable vanilla.

External guides: The primary Wiki Tax complaint is that players must rely on external resources (wikis, Google Docs, YouTube) to understand core game mechanics, learn customization systems, and fix technical bugs. While many complaints involve bugs, the highest priority found is the need for external learning to understand game systems, leading to a score of 50 (The Student tier).

Console release added censorship: The console port introduced censorship, breaking an earlier promise and toning down drug use and nudity. This was criticized and led to backlash.

Spiritual successor to SWAT 4: The game is frequently compared to SWAT 4, with reviewers describing it as a spiritual successor and modern equivalent. This comparison highlights pacing, tension, and AI behavior.

Paid DLC expansions: The game monetizes through paid DLCs, including Dark Waters and Boiling Point, which add maps and missions. Some reviewers noted the extra cost.

DLC adds worthwhile missions: The DLCs add several missions that diversify gameplay after the main campaign, including specific expansions like Boiling Point and Dark Waters.

Undisclosed AI art usage: The game uses AI-generated images in textures and assets without disclosure on the shop page, which disappointed some buyers. This was a notable controversy.