[Game Review] Darkest Dungeon

Rating: 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎🍏🍏

Core Hook: Permadeath heroes + psychological stress + just the right amount of complexity in a roguelike setting.

New Player Experience:

• The opening CG is engaging — although 2D, the style is consistent and immersive. The voice acting draws players in immediately, sparking genuine excitement for this mysterious dungeon ahead.

• The basic tutorial is easy to follow, but more advanced systems (races, buffs/debuffs, stats, gear, skills, positioning, etc.) are left unexplained. This is actually a smart design choice — it avoids bloated tutorials and invites players to explore and experiment with their own hypotheses and builds.

  
  

Core Gameplay Loop: Delve into dungeon → earn money/loot / lose heroes / suffer sanity damage → swap in new heroes / recover stress / upgrade gear & buildings / tweak team composition → delve deeper again.

Design Highlights:

• Acquiring new heroes after each expedition emphasizes disposability and permadeath, reinforcing the game's bleak, non-repetitive tone.

• Compared to Baldur’s Gate 3, party composition and ability variety are well-constrained, balancing depth and simplicity. The 2D sidescrolling format also minimizes complexity in movement and positioning.

• You can name your characters! A small but powerful tool for player agency and emotional investment.

• Character designs, though archetypal, are enhanced by great visuals and the game’s stress-recovery systems, giving each hero a distinct feel.

• No time pressure in combat — players can take their time to think. Meanwhile, enemy turns are quick and snappy, reducing downtime.

  
  

Art & Aesthetic:

• Characters, backgrounds, icons — all distinct and consistent. The visual style is striking and memorable.

• UI (especially text formatting) can feel a bit rough.

• Many thematic and narrative elements seem inspired by Shakespearean tropes and figures (e.g. trickster types, Hamlet vibes), which adds a literary flavor.

  
  

Multiplayer & DLC:

• The base game is single-player roguelike PvE.→ Later DLCs introduce PvP arena systems.