I bought this game to play with a friend after hearing it was a spiritual successor to SWAT 4, however:
I find this game to be inferior to SWAT 4 in almost every way, which is dissapointing given that it is almost 20 years more advanced.
A rapid fire list of the egregious examples would be:
All AI scripting is inferior to SWAT 4, for suspects and your team. Your team is simply inferior in reaction time and pathing to your team in SWAT 4, and suspects are more cheaty, they see you through walls, track you through walls, have a sixth sense for when you equip grenades, etc. They are also less dynamic and usually more like turrets. And the AI isn't really fast or hard except in the very final mission if you play on hard.
The game runs absolutely terrible on my system, and my friend's systems which are even more powerful than mine. I can't imagine being on even a middle spec PC and having enjoyable performance. You need to download a community fix to make the game run better, and DX12 is implemented so poorly it runs even worse than DX11 on a lot of systems. But that's something you have to test out yourself.
The weapon recoil is absolutely ridiculous on some weapons, having completely exaggerated horizontal or vertical recoil that is sometimes so high you literally can't control it. It's too high to even be able to physically pull down hard enough. Now SWAT 4 has this issue aswell but it's a bit better there because it doesn't shake the screen violently and doesn't have as much horizontal sway.
When you get shot at your screen flashes red and shakes violently, and it's highly annoying. It's one of the worst supression mechanics i've ever seen in a tac-shooter. It also just happens even if the bullet hits a solid wall you are on the other side of. Meaning you can be supressed by a suspect that is in hard cover.
There is full pieces of cosmetic content completely locked behind S ranking, which just like getting 100/100 in SWAT 4, requires you go less than lethal only. I did not like that in SWAT 4 or Ready or Not, and I S-ranked all main missions while the achievements were bugged in multiplayer.
It gets incredibly boring, incredibly quickly. In SWAT 4 none of the games content was actually locked behind playing that way, but here in RoN it is. This means you will miss out on full pieces of rather interesting cosmetic gear unless you want to play in that poorly conceived way.
Now, the big controversy: When the game was realised on consoles, they censored the game. Not just the consoles versions but also the PC version. They removed and edited up some of the main shocking elements of the missions to be able to release the game on console. I understand them needing to make money but, it was nothing but betrayal for supporters and early followers that for some reason got forgotten.
To wrap it up with the fully subjective part of the review: I feel SWAT 4 and it's expansion nails the atmosphere more, it's missions are more grounded in reality, it's more gritty, atmospheric, and psychological. The horror is hidden under the surface, in it's ambience, it's music, in it's dark corners etc. It is much closer to nailing the modern Neo-Noir style.
To keep it spoiler free, Ready or Not still has a dark and gritty theme, but it's horror does use a lot more dramatic stingers and shock value compared to SWAT 4.
Also the good ending of "A New America" is whack. And it is tonal dissonence to the rest of the Neo-Noir style.
If you want a game that is dark, disturbing and gritty whie being engaging, fun and great tac-shooter that is respectful to real tactical police work. Play SWAT 4. The time I spend in Ready or Not now is deeply modded to turn it into what I want, but SWAT 4 has even more years of mods behind it that have kept it alive and PVP.
