♥♥♥♥ this game and its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stress mechanic!

This game got gorgeous graphics, storyline, visual effects, combat system (except for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stress), world design and a lot of other good things that make it great.

This game could even be awesome, if only they cut out all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that just happens that you can do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about.

I HAD to fight Brigand VVulf or else I would lose upgrades to my Hamlet. So I meticulously crafted a party after referring to the wiki and thinking out a strategy to counter anything that the boss could throw at me, chose my very best trinkets that I spend hours grinding out and spend the majority of my cash to upgrade my lvl 5 heroes in armor and skills to the maximum.

The fight went smoothly until I met the boss. Through stressing out my heroes that all were at 0 stress at the beginning of the dungeon, he managed to give them several heart attacks. This completely drained their humongous health pools and even with the best possible healer I couldn´t mitigate the damage. The normal physical damage that I got by every other attack was fine.

Why these battle-hardened veterans of countless skrimishes can´t keep their ♥♥♥♥ together in the face of an unshaven, most likely foul-smelling bandit leader is beyond me. They literally killed dozens like him before.

Via several heart attacks, he wiped out my entire party of the best heroes that I got with the best trinkets that I got and even though I did everything that I could have possible done to prevent this, I still failed because of of something that I had no control over. If the stress mechanic weren´t such complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I would have easily won.

Honestly, I just feel cheated of all the time that I spend grinding up all these heroes that just got killed off like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ scared chickens. I have no further inclination to spend any other second playing this visually very appealing, but mechanically very flawed game.

Additional criticism so the review isn´t focused entirely on one incident:

You have to beat every boss three (!) times until you are really finished with him. This makes boss battles very boring and repetitive.

Every boss and miniboss can be beaten by ignoring his special gimmick and just attacking the last two positions, additionally stacking as much blight/bleed onto it as possible. This makes boss battles very repetitive and boring.

Heroes can only enter The Darkest Dungeon once in their lives unless you specifically disable that in the settings.

Enemies by default leave corpses when they die that block spots for attacking. Who thought this would be a great idea?

The ending is complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ since you have to sacrifice two heroes to kil the final boss and also isn´t really an ending, just the "neverending cycle, game starts anew from the beginning" uncreative nonsense that sadly many games nowadays go for instead of writing a proper ending.

To grind out gear and hamlet upgrades and proper heroes you could technically just upgrade the stage coach and burn through all the trash heroes that arrive every week and use them to farm resources by attempting dungeons without resources and throwing them away afterwards. But this would be just a mindnumbindly boring grindfest.

Sometimes you enter the first combat in a dungeon with a perfectly healthy group of heroes only to instantly lose because the whole group of enemies crits on your healer and annihilates her without you being able to do anything about it. This happened to me twice.

There is a miniboss that can steal your trinkets without you being able to anything about it. Wow.

Every action is by the roll of a dice: If you are unlucky, your healer/damage dealer/etc. will heal/attack/etc. for ♥♥♥♥.

Even if you keep your torch consistently at above 75, enemies in later dungeon are rarely ever suprised.

The game doesn´t show which enemy or hero is the next in line as is custom in similar games.

Like the ouroboros snake that bites its own tail, this game never stops sucking itself off in a neverending gameplay loop of you scoring small victories only to have these small victories ultimately amount to nothing because of bad game design and unnecessarily high difficulty. This way, the game is a perfect representation of Lovecraftian themes of cosmic insignificance and all your actions ultimately amounting to nothing even though you tried your hardest.

Also, the theme of falling to madness is done spot-on in how the game continously drives me mad with rage and disappointment.

Fuck this game and its bullshit stress mechanic! This game got gorgeous graphics, storyline, visual effects, combat system (except for fucking stress), world design and a lot of other good things that make it great. This game could even be awesome, if only they cut out all the bullshit that just happens that you can do jack shit about. I HAD to fight Brigand VVulf or else I would lose upgrades to my Hamlet. So I meticulously crafted a party after referring to the wiki and thinking out a strategy to counter anything that the boss could throw at me, chose my very best trinkets that I spend hours grinding out and spend the majority of my cash to upgrade my lvl 5 heroes in armor and skills to the maximum. The fight went smoothly until I met the boss. Through stressing out my heroes that all were at 0 stress at the beginning of the dungeon, he managed to give them several heart attacks. This completely drained their humongous health pools and even with the best possible healer I couldn´t mitigate the damage. The normal physical damage that I got by every other attack was fine. Why these battle-hardened veterans of countless skrimishes can´t keep their shit together in the face of an unshaven, most likely foul-smelling bandit leader is beyond me. They literally killed dozens like him before. Via several heart attacks, he wiped out my entire party of the best heroes that I got with the best trinkets that I got and even though I did everything that I could have possible done to prevent this, I still failed because of of something that I had no control over. If the stress mechanic weren´t such complete dogshit, I would have easily won. Honestly, I just feel cheated of all the time that I spend grinding up all these heroes that just got killed off like fucking scared chickens. I have no further inclination to spend any other second playing this visually very appealing, but mechanically very flawed game. Additional criticism so the review isn´t focused entirely on one incident: You have to beat every boss three (!) times until you are really finished with him. This makes boss battles very boring and repetitive. Every boss and miniboss can be beaten by ignoring his special gimmick and just attacking the last two positions, additionally stacking as much blight/bleed onto it as possible. This makes boss battles very repetitive and boring. Heroes can only enter The Darkest Dungeon once in their lives unless you specifically disable that in the settings. Enemies by default leave corpses when they die that block spots for attacking. Who thought this would be a great idea? The ending is complete bullshit since you have to sacrifice two heroes to kil the final boss and also isn´t really an ending, just the "neverending cycle, game starts anew from the beginning" uncreative nonsense that sadly many games nowadays go for instead of writing a proper ending. To grind out gear and hamlet upgrades and proper heroes you could technically just upgrade the stage coach and burn through all the trash heroes that arrive every week and use them to farm resources by attempting dungeons without resources and throwing them away afterwards. But this would be just a mindnumbindly boring grindfest. Sometimes you enter the first combat in a dungeon with a perfectly healthy group of heroes only to instantly lose because the whole group of enemies crits on your healer and annihilates her without you being able to do anything about it. This happened to me twice. There is a miniboss that can steal your trinkets without you being able to anything about it. Wow. Every action is by the roll of a dice: If you are unlucky, your healer/damage dealer/etc. will heal/attack/etc. for shit. Even if you keep your torch consistently at above 75, enemies in later dungeon are rarely ever suprised. The game doesn´t show which enemy or hero is the next in line as is custom in similar games. Like the ouroboros snake that bites its own tail, this game never stops sucking itself off in a neverending gameplay loop of you scoring small victories only to have these small victories ultimately amount to nothing because of bad game design and unnecessarily high difficulty. This way, the game is a perfect representation of Lovecraftian themes of cosmic insignificance and all your actions ultimately amounting to nothing even though you tried your hardest. Also, the theme of falling to madness is done spot-on in how the game continously drives me mad with rage and disappointment.