I write this review with a heavy heart.
First full disclosure, I am a kickstarter backer for this game from one of the higher tiers and have been playing since the first build was released.
This game on a techniqual side runs very well, I seldom encounter bugs, crashes or general wonk. It's very well optimized running smoothly on even old laptops witout much configuration.
But from a design perspective its beyond infuriating and time wasting. The expansion that was recently released became the straw that broke the camels back and made me write this review.
This game is a grindfest, which would be okey if it was not a randomized RNG driven grindfest, which wouln't be the worst if it wasnt a UNBALANCED AND UNFAIR RNG driven grindfest.
I have in this moment spent close to or more than 100 hundred hours in this game and I havent even gotten close to killing a end game boss.
The combat is turn based, focused around DMG, Tick dmg (Blight, Bleed), Buffs, Debuffs, Healing and most importantly Stress.
Where this combat works well is in showcasting a wide variety of playstyles for the different characters you can recruit and in making you feel like you can prepare well for different kinds of encounters.
Where it fails is in the fact that it is 100% based on luck. This is not so noticable in the earlier stages of the game when most enemies can be felled by just having adequete equipment and consumables at hand.
In the later stages you can lose HOURS of progress spent on leveling up a specific hero before you even have a chance to have a turn yourself. For an example I will showcase my last encounter.
Party enters dungeon.
Party gets suprised despite full torches. (Suprised means that you get an debuff that forces you to wait until the enemies all have made an move each, regardless of speed)
Enemy party gets a critical hit 2 times in a row on a single party member. Increasing my stress to several party members to 50% (Death due to stress happens at 200% and a mission generaly lasts you 5-9 encounters) which brings my party member to a death state in spite of having plus 36 dodge and full hp at lvl 6. The third enemy casts a stress spell increasing most of my party to 70% stress before the 4th member kills my bounty hunter who was in a death state.
In one way, this is the charm of the game, no battle plays out quite like the last one you had. You're under constant pressure and the tension in each fight is very apperent since the game is unpredicatble in nature.
But at some level you also gotta look at the bigger picture. Is the gorgeous presentation and the fun combat system really rewarding enough to balance out the needless frustration?
When I buy gear and level up my characters I want to see improvement. Never in Darkest dungeon do you get to feel powerful or get to see the fruit of your hours of labour because the game values being difficult much higher than it values fun or being well designed.
And it is absolutely not a poor game, just not one worthy of the time it asks you to invest on a whim. If you feel like having to study a wiki before interacting with a game should be mandatory then maybe you should consider that its not like that for everyone.
Because having a character that takes hours to level up taken from you without you being able to interact with the process in a GAME is unexcusable.
And there's no way to prepare your party against criticals or numbers failing you.
In the same way thats there's no way to fully explain how dissapointed this game has made me.
But at least HP Lovecraft finaly got a faithul adaption.
