At first, I thought the negative reviews on this game were unfair. Complaining about the grind or RNG? It was like these people had never played a roguelike before. However, after sinking close to 100 hours on this game, I sadly have to agree with their sentiments.

This game's atmosphere is excellent. Its presentation is top-notch. The actual gameplay is intuitive yet complex (and so, of course, incredibly fun). It really does quite a bit right.

But the game demands an incredible amount of time. And considering the many, many different ways it can set you back, it feels like a waste rather than an investment. A single hero's death can set you back hours. Retreating from a quest--usually a necessary and reasonable precaution--becomes an infuriating experience after you've spent the last hour and a half trying to chase down an objective that spawned at the very end of a very long map. Random town events can hinder--or even undo--your progress. Shoot, even the mechanics behind completing the eponymous Darkest Dungeon--which I will keep relatively unspoiled--is geared to extending the already extremely long grind.

This game takes skill, without question. Many mishaps after embark that appear like the cruel hand of RNGesus can actually be traced to small--often ostensibly innocuous--errors of judgment earlier along the adventure. However, like any game involving chance, sometimes luck isn't on your side. And RNGesus help you when it's not.

Really, I feel this is a great game, but it is also a game that overstays its welcome (in addition to eating all your food, spilling chili on your carpet, and stealing your last $20.00 bill from the wallet you had left on the counter).

I really hate to give this game a thumbs down, because I've had a lot of fun with it and sunk 40+ hours into it. But damn, this game is punishing. So much of this game depends on sheer luck, and given the huge assortment of ways that things can go wrong, it's likely that it will.

When you die in difficult games like Dark Souls, it's almost always because of your own mistakes, but in this game, it is very often outside of your control. You can spend hours of time and tons of brain power planning and preparing, and you WILL get unlucky and lose terribly. There are so many luck components in this game that it really takes away from the strategy component. You will die. You will get frustrated. You will lose a high-level character and it will be completely unfair.

If that doesn't phase you, or you are willing to put up with it, or you are thinking "That's the whole point!" then by all means, PLAY! It's still fun.

Love this game but the RNG is way too punishing. A few bad dice rolls destroy hour or tens of hours of work. Losing a max level party due to the quest item placement RNG making the mission impossibly hard even for a maxed out party has made me uninstall this game and write this review. Fun, interesting and a great asethetic, but the RNG will crush everything you know and love in a very unfair and unfun fashion.

This game has enormous potential, all of which is ruined by the combination of its two biggest weaknesses: RNG and lvl 5 dungeons.

Starting off the game, it will most likely feel difficult for most people, however, after a few introductory dungeons, you're gonna get a feel for the general strategy the game forces upon you. All is going fine and dandy (except for a few bosses), until you get to the max level (lvl 5) dungeons, which provide the pre-endgame of Darkest Dungeon.

This is where the intro screen isntructions of the game come in at full force. You're not trying to beat a dungeon, you're trying to get through it by the skin of your teeth, almost always losing at least one hero. You are at the mercy of RNGsus, praying so that the enemy unit doesn't crit you twice in a row, instantly resulting in death if you fail your death's door check.

I've put over 80 hours into this game. I've read through most of the wiki, I watch youtubers on a daily basis who mostly play this game. I haven't even reached the final dungeon. You might say "well, git gud", but herein lies the other big issue with this game. The easiest comparison you could make is with Dark Souls: both games are extremely challenging, provide little to no information for the player, and at points seem completely unfair. The biggest difference is that in Dark Souls, most deaths that occur, can be attributed to misplays on the player's side. Here, most of my failed dungeons come from being chain-critted in the second fight of a long dungeon. At best, you're trying to minimalize the losses you're going to suffer at level 5. I've always liked challenging games, but this one is simply unfair.

The new town events somehow, after the community's outrage, emphasize these weaknesses even more (RNG playing a huge part in your success). I'm baffled by the fact that not only does the developer not give two ♥♥♥♥♥ about the biggest problems with an otherwise extremely promising game, they even boost those issues further in newer content.

Grind, grind and more grind with some RNG. Initial intrigue of the game quickly dies when the RNG and grind takes takes over. It's a RNG thats also stacked against the player, its one thing to build a challenege into the game but it grows tiring. Need more deeds? Grind. Need more crests? Grind. Need more paitings? Grind, oh wait, RNG, die then grind some more. Difficulty level from level 1-4 is fairly flat but then comes level 5 and I expeted the game to be free to play where I can't progress without spending real world money. The more complex dungeons also force a significant amount of backtracking to complete. No depth, all grind and RNG.

Even with the cheats this game is boring

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.

oops, i played it again.. it's still snoring..

The game is based around RNG which in my opinion is stupid. I'm either spending the gold to get rid of negitive effects or I'm spending it on trying to get rid of stress leaving me with little gold to but provisions. Oh and if you do make it through a dungeon with extra provisions to spare you get a fraction of gold back that you spent it on instead of keeping it. Having to get a new character and start back from zero after a character dies from too much stress in a dungeon is a pain, you sink time into characters having them die either quickly or slowly it's all RNG. I know the characters are meant to die but it's not fun watching something you build get destroyed by a series of randoms actions, the game is fun at first but it got old pretty quick.

The atmosphere, while nice, gets old after a few hours of play. Characters' "quips" and unnerved rants quickly shift from fun to being a pure annoyance - the single good change the devs made to the game since it was first shown was to allow one to turn them off.

You will like this game if you're fond of X-COM style RNG ♥♥♥♥ing you over and over again, sometimes making all and any attempts at strategy that you try pointless. That of course is a selling point of this game and generally would not have discouraged me from continuing to play it. The problem is how repetitive and uninteresting the actual gameplay is once you've familiarised yourself with the basics.