Grind, grind, grind, oops you die, better grind some more!
Game is extremely unfair, CAN AND WILL straight up kill your best guys with absolutely NOTHING you can do about it. The only way to win is not to become attached to any of the heroes you spend HOURS UPON HOURS gearing, levelling and skilling up with just to have the game ♥♥♥♥ing decide 'lol Imma kill him now' with nothing you can do about it.

Has a lot of potential but the grind is ♥♥♥♥ and there is a lot of unfairness. It is hard, which is fun, but unfair mechanics ♥♥♥♥ it all up for me.

Positives:
-Mechanics, aesthetic, and theme harmonize tremendously well
-The art and sound design manage to create atosphere and punch out of minimal animation
-The stress mechanic does entirely what it is meant to do
-Very well balanced
-Wayne June's voice
-Earns every bit of the anxiety and tension it demands
-Weird note, but the "timing" of all the sound cues and animations is absolutely perfect (actions hit suddenly, give you just enough time to process the possible consequences before revealing the result to relief/despair; it's never boring or confusing)

Negatives:
-Some wonky UI elements (taking torches from the first, not the smallest, stack; Not being upfront with duration of buff skills; Very poor information about enemy attacks)
-Wiki-dependent (why not collect curio and enemy information, and Darkest Dungeon maps, in an in-game encyclopedia that exapands as you encounter the subjects?)
-Some character classes have intriguing abilities and build possibilities that lack complements from the other heroes (I'd love a reliable front-line healer, or for the houndmaster to be able to use stress-relief from position 2, or for the arbalest to be able to heal every position; you're probably going to end up taking a vestal/occultist and jester/crusader on near every run for reliable support, which feels like a lot of wasted opportunities)
-The Darkest Dungeon levels could be rebalanced.
-There is sometimes too much temptation to cheese out an encounter for heals in a way that breaks the atmospehre
-Each hero class has only one sprite with different pallette swaps. It's a more developer-intensive thing to address (if you add more characterization, you have to animate for all of them), and may even have been an intentional design choice, but still is noticeable at times for it's repetitiveness.

***

Darkest Dungeon is my favorite game of the past year. It's a quirky but elegant game that uses a near-perfect collaboration of several disparate elements to create exactly the sort of emotional response it's going for. You'll notice that the negatives above are more specific than the positives. Well, that's because when the overall package is so well put-together, the small blemishes are easier to articulate.

Darkest Dungeon succeeded in punishing me for cherishing my characters, and encouraged me to play in a more cold-blooded way than I normally would without literally forcing me to. But the incentive isn't so overwhelming that I don't still get attached to characters. And no matter how much I try to protect certain heroes, a few cruel rolls of the dice mean that no one is ever truly safe.

I got to a point where I simply did not want to continue. Not because it wasn't fun, but because I was just too anxious about the possibility of things going wrong. I researched ways to save-scum, and made back-up files in case the worst happened. But I never used them. It never felt justified. The game is harsh, even cruel, but refrains from pitching into the absurd or unfair (usually).

There are so many great things going on that it feels weird to acknowledge that none of them could make the game on their own. The narrator's voice (the incomparable Wayne June) is always enjoyable even after it gets repetitive, but in a lesser game it would just be a detail. The graphics aren't AAA, and aren't trying to be. The sound is good. The mechanics are sound. But the reason they make for such a good game is that they all drive toward the same purpose and theme. From the quirk mechanics to stress afflictions, to the degree of rng, they all reinforce the Lovecraftian themes of madness and furitility in the face of incomprehensible horrors. It just works. It's a delicious experience that really shows how much the design team cared about and understood what was special about their own project.

Very fun and entertaining game, eventhough you can get really frustrated with it. A lot more polished and balanced now than earlier patches.

I decided to write a review after seeing the influx of negative reviews. The game is demanding no doubt, but thats kinda the whole point. There are plenty of easy games you can beat in 5-10 hours so this is refreshing! Thank you developers for creating a game for adults lol joking.

Here are a few tips:
1. Never use the abomination, aquarian or jesture heroes!!! Why? The abomination can't group with religous heroes. And in this game its crucial to get as many heroes leveled and rolling as fast as possible. You do not have time to sit around waiting for the right party combination to group with the abomination. thats a waste of a valuable slot!!! Oh, and the other 2 classes i mentioned (jesture/aquarian) they just sux.
2. The sanitarium is your best friend. Upgrade the treatmeant center ASAP to the point where you have 2 treatment slots to remove negative quirks. And prioritize removing negative quirks over everything else expect the stage coach roster upgrades!!!!!
3. The Occultist, plague doc, bounty hunter all have enemy shuffle or "pull" abilities. Abuse them to drag squishies to the front for your tanks to smash. I cannot emphasize this enough!!!!
4. Always bring enough torches!!! It increases your scouting chance, which in tern, makes the whole dungeon crawling experience so much freaking better.
5. This is VERY important Never do lvl 3 or 5 meduim or long dungeons unless you have proper blacksmith & guild upgrades on your heroes. Otherwise Never!!!! You will have to quit halfway through. That extra level of armor makes the world of a difference, trust me!!!!
6. Blight on Bosses is your friend!!! And also when u first start the game absoluetly abuse the Ruins, it is by far the easiest of the dungeons!!!!!
7. The best classes are: Grave Robber, Crusader, Hellion, Vestal, Occultist & Leaper.

Need Chinese , thx

I didn't receive this for free i'm just braindead and can't read

Im having so much fun with this game right now. its something I can hop into, play a couple quests, make some progress and then go do something else, or I can play for five hours getting increasingly angry until I rage quit with a party wipe. When a quest is going well and everybody is wrecking it feels great. When things go wrong I get angry but never to the extent that I don't want to go back for another shot after a day. I probably haven't played enough to judge how the gameplay works but so far it feels like when everything goes wrong its my fault for being poorly prepared and if I had been better prepared I could have countered the bad luck. The art style is great and the narrator fits perfectly, his lines do get repetitive but it dosen't bother me. I usually hate rpg's but this one is really good.

Also hello 9 people downvoting every positive review and upvoting every negative one. doing gods work there, keep it up.

Week 104 passed and went, Bring on week 208

This game is patently unfair, even when you win, don't be fooled, the game is just trying to lull you into a false sense of security.

Also, be sure to check the game wiki before playing to get the right equipment for the curios, among other things.

So, what can be said about this game? Lets do it like ♥♥♥♥♥!
>Get two characters. A Highwayman and a Crusader.
>Go through hard as balls tutorial that almost kills the only two guys I have.
>Get to town and have to spend all the money i earned on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s for them to keep them sane.
>Get two more people and go on first mission.
>Vestial goes insane and becomes verbally abusive.
>Plague Doctor becomes ultimate hero and tries to cheer everyone on.
>Highwayman becomes suicidal and steps into a killing blow on purpose.
>Crusader becomes obsessed with torture as we find an Iron Maiden.
>Crusader becomes a klepto after looting some corpses and finding good stuff on 'em.
>Vestial keeps insulting everyone the entire time. Developes a huge ego.
>Plague Doctor killed by pig monster.
>9/10:I have an amoral crusader and and abusive warrior nun.

amazingly built game but very frustrating at times to say the least. I would highly recommend this game though even with that being said its alot of fun.