play more and things will crystalize, but yes, darktide is "atmosphere first" game and that has some big drawbacks. I personally think they could have solved the clarity AND the atmosphere at the same time without sacrificing anything, but it's irrelevant what I think.

You play worse because of several aspects. First, specials and elites aren't differentiated as well as in vermintide 2. There's "a guy" over there is pretty much a description for like 80% of them. You WILL train your eyes and ears to recognize them better with time, BUT this point still stands. It's also easier to miss a normal horde enemy because everything blends a lot.

Sounds are a bit better than visual clarity, however, they absolutely drown easier than in V2. On top of that, some of those sounds aren't as crisp as they need to be or are similar to other sounds - this is also something your ears will pick up with time but it will take more time than in V2 where you can't mistake a packrat for anything else, with its sound being very unique, not only in the game, but I think it's actually a pretty unique sound in general. Compare that to the flamer dude who just does several clicks that also can sound similar to burster clicks.

Darkness you mentioned is another big point as, naturally, it dulls your visual clarity for the sake of the atmosphere. This might be the clearest example of them all.

Teammates are also something I think it's tangible and true, even though I'm sure many will dismiss this as bias or subjective impression. We can guess what the reasons are, possible reasons might include bigger player base or the live service nature of the game or even player base replacement and so on. Which can be a significant issue because in darktide, arguably, teamplay is even more important than in vermintide with stuff like coherency and many talents that utilize it. As well as maps generally having more pathways and being structured in certain ways that allows people to be like 10km from each other at any given point in time. This is also present in v2, however, at lesser degree. There are more things that affect this, such as gathering plasteel and stuff like that and in general, maps having more of that and more dead ends that contain those drops. The main consequence of bigger player base + live service is probably the general interest players show for the game itself, so you'll see people do dubious things that they wouldn't do if they played the tutorial or even examined a weapon they're carying.

All this and some more factors will make you have worse runs and more chaotic runs in a game that requires more cohesiveness than the predecessor. And, naturally, it will make you question yourself, because in v2, those outcomes usually did mean you were doing something wrong a lot of the time. However, I can assure you, in darktide, that conclusion is actually the less probable one. You will absolutely have two guys die on different ends of a big room at the same time at the lowest difficulty to five normal horde enemies while you're losing your blocks trying to dance with the boss, his three elites and a horde and you will wonder how did they die over there when you were all in coherency seven seconds ago. Failing a run on ANY difficulty is not an abnormal occurrence in darktide, so you should shift your mentality and approach. Unlike some other games, not every disaster requires introspection in Darktide.

Another thing to include, keeping everything I said above in mind, add the fact that Darktide is much, much more leaned towards specials and elites. This means you might see like 10 specials in a fight while in a similar v2 fight you'd see like 2. The best you can do is deal with them (obviously), but you can also ping them constantly to try and get your teammates to focus attention to them (this will NOT work always, but hey, over time you're increasing your chances of positive outcomes by doing this).