Videogame Unforgiving but so enjoyable!
First I always loved dark fantasy and dungeon crawling, DD was thus a perfect combination in terms or setting.
As the narrator says, death waits only a lapse of concentration, and overconfidence is a slow, insidious killer. The game is unforgiving, but in a good way because it makes you feel tense and every good blow, every victory, every quest achieved feels like you earned it. The simplicity of the sprites make the gameplay so enjoyable because every action has an immediate and clear response. It also gives you all the information you need. You only have to weight risks/rewards and that's a challenging thing to do constantly. When you lose you know it was your fault. There's also the world building the dev team has created. The narrator adds so much spice to an already great artistic direction, the monsters are varied and horribly beautiful, as are the heroes. For a game with no plot whatsoever, it's impressive that the universe is still very fleshed out.
I just lose four of my best heroes to a Shambler. I'm practically crying as I write this, but goddamn I'l return to this meatgrinder that is DD and enjoy it fully!!!
Videogame Fun, if unforgiving
Darkest Dungeon is one of those brutally hard games that is well-made and fun, if you can stomach frustration.
In the game, you play as a member of a disgraced noble house, whose ancestor unearthed an ancient evil beneath your manor, and you are tasked with hiring adventurers to destroy this evil. While the game isn't story-driven, it has a surprising amount of lore that is revealed in bits and pieces as you progress through the game.
Most of the game involves dungeon crawling. You move your party of heroes from left to right down various hallways, encountering monsters, traps or treasure, until you reach the next room, where you can decide which direction to go next on the map. There are a few different goals- exploring the dungeon, killing bosses or finding certain things- but most of the dungeons are largely similar except for the types of enemies, so it can get repetitive.
Between dungeon excursions, you can visit the hamlet, which serves as your base of operations and features upgradable facilities, such as the chance to recruit new heroes, purchase equipment and train your heroes' skills.
Combat is turn-based, with your party members being able to choose from four active abilities to use on allies or enemies, depending on their or their target's position. Each class has abilities that interact well with each other- for example, marking a target might increase damage of subsequent attacks- and this allows for a good amount of strategy in terms of character builds and party composition.
Your party consists of four heroes with randomly generated names, plus a backup roster, and you'll need all of them, since the game has Permadeath. Luckily, being reduced to 0 HP isn't fatal- it only puts you in a state at which any damage might kill the hero- but you'll find yourself getting there easily, since healing is fairly weak in this game. Additionally, if a hero's Stress meter, which is increased by enemy abilities and various other factors(including heroes who went insane from stress), maxes out, they will suffer a heart attack and drop to 0 HP, possibly dying. You'll inevitably lose heroes, often at inopportune moments.
The good news is that you will have no shortage of heroes to replace the fallen, but the bad news is that it is significantly harder to replace a hero at the maximum level of 6, in whom you have invested time and money, than it is to replace a fresh Level 0 hero. Worse, if you are playing the hardest setting, the game will end if you take too much time or lose too many Heroes.
Darkest Dungeon is very difficult, as a team of max-level heroes with optimal equipment merely gives you a fighting chance at the endgame, and even then, it's easy to lose your best heroes to bad luck or carelessness. Upgrading the hamlet can help you progress, but only so much, and it doesn't help that most trinkets balance their stat boosts with significant drawbacks. As such, the game is undeniably well-made, but it's only for those who enjoy a challenge.