HELLDIVERS 2 - Two Years of the Second Galactic War

Another year has passed for HELLDIVERS 2 and yet the game is still going on strong with just a few more bumps in the road. So, let’s celebrate another year of the Second Galactic War and look back on what it means to be a Helldiver… when the game isn’t crashing or disconnecting. If you want a refresher on what happened during the first year, you should check it out here.

Sweet Liberty...

Let’s start this retrospective on the Illuminates, who used hit-and-run tactics when they were first revealed. They would attack a planet, then leave, whether it was successfully defended or not. It was weird, but not that much of an issue (despite the many votes lost). Eventually, the Helldivers… wiped the Illuminate off the map. No, seriously, they all retreated or died, and it seemed that Super Earth won against the alien menace. There was a dance party and everything! It seems like we finally ended one of the many threats to humanity.

…Wait, where have I heard this before? Oh right, when we thought we wiped out the Automatons and they came back a day later and retook a third of the map. You know, in hindsight, we probably should’ve seen it coming, but not to the extent the Illuminates had done.

Oh yeah, we got the Downvote cape this year!

Suddenly, the Meridia Singularity started moving towards Super Earth, using its gravitational pull to destroy three planets along the way (including Angel’s Venture, where the first Major Order took place). Although it was stopped, that wasn’t the end, as then the Great Host fleet came through and started making their way towards the Jewel of the Galaxy, glassing planets like Mars along the way.

There was no stopping them, they were giving it everything they’ve got; the Illuminates were going to invade Super Earth… which coincided with the new major update that was released on the 20th of May 2025: Heart of Democracy. The main feature introduced was megacities to the game, where SEAF soldiers can be found and recruited, and the tall skyscrapers would get in the way of stratagems. The defence of Super Earth was fierce as Helldivers desperately tried to defend their (soon-to-be, because they don’t have the citizenship) home.

How did I survive without weapon customisation?

Prior to the update, though, Helldivers’ arsenals were given quite the boost with the introduction of weapon customisation. Now, all primary guns can have a whole host of attachments to make their boomsticks better. From scopes and barrels to heat sinks and magazine types, it made some overlooked weapons become meta or personal favourites. The Liberator Concussive is still bad, though.

Despite the efforts (and many sacrifices), as city after city fell, to the point where Super Earth had to cut down the last rainforests for airstrips. Supplies and morale were dwindling (because megacities kind of sucked to fight in)… until the Chinese playerbase stepped in and forced the Illuminate out of Equality-On-Sea (or Shanghai in real life). Meanwhile, the Democracy Space Station — which was knocked out of commission thanks to Helldivers who couldn’t read — came back online thanks to a few thousand players slaughtering a few million bots, and turned the tide by activating its emergency Eagle Blockade ability on Super Earth. By the skin of everyone’s teeth, Super Earth was saved, and Illuminates were sent packing. It was an amazing effort by the community, and I couldn’t be any prouder. You can watch a better summary of the events of this battle here.

Never forget (the votes lost)

But this was just one of the many problems that Helldivers had to contend with, as we still had to deal with the Gloom on the Terminid front, which wasn’t going away any time soon. Though, with enough time, effort, and aluminium foil, we began our expeditions into the Gloom… which unfortunately meant going back to Hellmire. (shudder) I still can’t believe we chose that planet to liberate first.

It was soon discovered that the Gloom created a new planet type (along with the Into the Unjust update on the 2nd of September 2025): Hive Worlds. These planets have been transformed to better suit the Terminids with underground hives (limiting both visibility and access to stratagems), a new strain of bugs called the Rupture strain (which had to be taken offline for a few weeks due to performance issues), and reintroducing Helldivers to the skyscraper-sized Hive Lords who will harass you throughout a mission of you don't take it out. These worlds (along with an influx of newbies) led to the highest Helldiver death count to date… and also defended Hellmire 10+ times because we decided that it was the perfect forward operating base. Again, why did we do that?

Despite how it looks, you can kill it... it just requires a lot of explosions.

The bots, though, weren’t going to sit there and let the bugs and squids have all the fun. The Automatons eventually got their own exclusive planet type on the 4th of December 2025: magma deserts. Hot as Hell itself, but extremely rich in platinum, Helldivers were authorised to extract as many resources as they could while liberating these lava worlds. What gave our heroes the most trouble, though, was Evacuate High Value Assets, where the bots would relentlessly assault your squad while you hauled platinum bars into a container. It finally made the wider playerbase use smoke stratagems and equipment for once, as breaking the line of sight means fewer lasers coming your way.

...Hellmire isn't this hellish.

That’s not all, though, as the Automatons had new operations in January 2026: Commando missions. These missions force Helldivers to play a lot more stealthily as your Super Destroyer can’t remain in low orbit for long, so if you want to go all-out or resupply, you only have one chance to do so. Also, reinforcements start at zero and getting more requires Helldivers to find them on the map. Thank Liberty these missions also came out along with a stealth-based Warbond and a serious buff to stealth mechanics overall. I actually snuck through a base without everything exploding for once!

However, no matter how much Helldivers could do, there’s only so much before the only solution left is to eradicate entire planets. And thus, thanks to the discovery and development of E-711 from the Gloom, Super Earth created the Star of Peace: a new “defence” weapon added to the DSS that allows our most Democratic heroes to choose which planet deserves to be cleansed from the galaxy in the form of a black hole. Yes, we have a Death Star and it is awesome. We used it to wipe Penta from the map and turn it into a black hole that won’t cause another alien species to invade once again. Unfortunately, the blueprints for the DSS were stolen by the Automatons (at least, that's what Command is saying), and this transgression against Democracy cannot stand and leaves us with no other choice: we must destroy Cyberstan before they make their own Star of Peace.

Take that, Penta!

But what is Democracy without capitalism? Yes, throughout it all, Premium Warbonds have kept coming out, and although players without money didn’t get more than some capes and free Democracy Protects armour this year, we’ve gotten some incredibly awesome equipment to use (and team-kill with).

We finally got a sword and a flag to fly in “Masters of Ceremony” (just in time for the invasion of Super Earth, and completely underperformed prior to a buff), a fire-spewing AK-47 in “Dust Devils”, experimental equipment in “Control Group”, a chainsaw and minigun in “Python Commandos”, the long-awaited stealth-based “Redacted Regiment” Warbond, which was followed up by the not-so-stealthy “Siege Breakers” with an explosive hammer and the infamous Trident (the best gun in the first HELLDIVERS).

"You know the music, time to dance."

However, let’s not forget that not only did we get a Halo 3: ODST Legendary Warbond, but the game was also released on the Xbox Series X|S, finally uniting PlayStation, Xbox, and PC players together (with many claiming that HELLDIVERS 2 ended the console war). Also, the controversial release of Killzone gear was turned into a real permanent Warbond, and anyone who purchased any of the items before would get it for free! That’s some real consumer-friendly practices.

That being said, it isn’t HELLDIVERS if it was smooth sailing throughout the entire year. While it wasn’t as bad as last time, stability and nerfs were still a big issue in the community, especially since Arrowhead liked to do stealth changes that weren’t added to the patch notes (though many more were buffs). Suddenly, many of the Propaganda Commanders (influencers) started announcing that they were taking a break from the game, citing both issues with HELLDIVERS 2 and wanting to do other things. That caused other players to start moving onto other games, and I cannot blame them.

New camera in Commando operations. This better become a stratagem.

Once again, the rollercoaster was going down, to the point where new content and Warbonds were delayed to just deal with the technical debt that had been accruing since the game’s release. It seems to have worked though, as nowadays the game isn’t running too badly. While I am still personally suffering some framerate drops and unstable connections, it’s definitely better than it was the previous year, and it's only improved since.

Oh, right. The Service Technician came back! I hope the strike went well!

But by far the largest issue was… well, the file size. On consoles, the game was only around 20GB, but on PC it was over 150! That’s insane, and the reason was (in layman’s terms) that it was to make sure players who had hard drives, instead of the increasingly industry-standard solid-state drives, could load their game quickly. That’s what they assumed, anyways. As it turns out, they were wrong, as thanks to Nixxes Software, the developers discovered that it was completely unnecessary and that hard drives would only suffer a few more seconds of loading, meaning they can reduce the file size to 23GB! They even released a slim version of the game soon after for testing, which then became the standard version after the 22nd of January 2026.

It was yet another rollercoaster year for HELLDIVERS 2, and I don’t think the “we’re back” and “we’re cooked” thing is going away anytime soon. However, despite having over 1442 hours on this game now (about double the playtime I had last time, dear God…), I’m not getting off until this war ends. I am gladly looking forward to the third year of the Galactic War on Tyranny.

Just another day for... the HELLDIVERS.

And to any new players willing to jump into the fray, there’s no better time than now as a major update has added some balance changes and new goodies (like a tank). I released a bunch of guides to help you get started, such as on difficulty, what Warbonds to get, understanding the map, using the DSS, and acting like a true Helldiver.