A game which annoys me but I can't stop playing it - The Darkest Dungeon

I long avoided buying this game, as in the early versions people were complaining how the game was too difficult, random and caused insta-deaths you can't avoid. Later on I noticed people doing the same about just about any game, so I decided I'll buy it in a good discount and try to enjoy the experience.

I'm not a big fan of horror-themed games with all the grotesque characters and disfigured entities. This game contains pretty much all of that and even though I don't love the game, it's a fun game to play.

The basic idea of the game is that your ancestor has unleashed an ancient evil deep underneath your family manor and now it's your task to kill all of them. Not your ancestors, but the evil beings living in the... Darkest Dungeon!

Ok so this is the town. You can recruit more members to your team, upgrade them, heal their stress levels and other things. You can spend money and heirlooms found in the dungeons to upgrade buildings and characters. Recruiting more characters is important, as people die when they are killed.

Every death is permanent.

Stress is a nasty thing, as enemies (among other things) cause stress damage which will ultimately drive your heroes to madness and death, so between adventures it's important to manage the stress levels. You can spend money in different amusements to reduce stress levels, which might save your life at some point.

Spending over a thousand pieces of gold on a hooker is still quite much.

When you decide to go on an adventure, you can pick one of the adventures available. All areas are different with different enemies which might require different approaches. You can pick from missions, which can require exploring rooms, killing enemies, destroying altars or killing bosses.

The missions are of different lengths and difficulties. Heroes level 3 or over will not go on low level quests, so now I'm picking a party from heroes on level 1-2 to kill a low level boss - the 8 pounder.

Before embarking, it's important to get enough gear. Food and torches are important to keep you from dying in hunger and madness - however there are optional items for healing characters and taking advantage of everything found in the dungeons.

The dungeon is explored room by room, you can pick a room connected to the room you're in and your team will then start traveling to the target room. If you are lucky enough to get the area "scouted", you will see the enemies, traps and other things awaiting you in the pathways to the next room.

You can find plenty of things on the way to the next room, including but not limited to:

Loot!

Traps!

Battles!

The battle is turn based and the heroes get to pick their turn based on their speed. Every class has many skills to pick from, but you can have only 4 of them in use when you're exploring the dungeons. You will need to plan ahead how you're going to use the character.

Will you pick a healing move, a stunning attack or an attack which hits multiple enemies?

There are plenty of different monsters you will meet and fight. Generally more difficult battles seem to grant greater rewards, pushing you to fight forward even when you're about to lose the fight. Winning a difficult fight can bring you a great reward, even though you sometimes should just flee from the fight and abandon the quest.

Greed is our enemy.

The rewards are most usually trinkets for the team to wear, heirlooms, money, useful gear for the journey or precious items giving money after the adventure. The size of backpack is limited and as earlier, the greed is usually one of my worst enemies.

I'm dropping off useful gear like bandages and torches to get more and more treasure with me. I'm ready to risk the safety of my team only to bring more money home with me. You can't win if you don't gamble.

As seen on the (quite small) map, this is the last room before the final unexplored room. That's the room where the boss will be, so I will finally use my camping item (available on medium or long dungeons) which will heal my team and give an opportunity to use camping skills from my team members.

The camping skills can heal team members, remove stress, remove buffs or have different effects. Some can remove debuffs from the party members while causing stress to others.

The time for camping skills is limited and you'll always have to choose which ones to use.

This is it. The 8 pounder. Terrible enemy which... doesn't seem that bad. I'm guessing the guy with a torch is a serious threat, but with ranged attacks I could kill him quickly.

This is the easiest boss so far. The 8 pounder was having some armor, but with my team and high damage output I managed to kill the boss in a few rounds with zero issues.

Ta-da. The boss is dead.

As I mentioned in the start, some people had been complaining this game is too difficult. I'm not playing with the easy difficulty and with a calm and careful pace, this game is not difficult. Not easy though, I've been wiped by some more difficult bosses I had attacked in the wrong way.

Oh my poor team trying to kill the Swine Prince for the first time.

It would have made some really good screenshots, as Swine Prince was looking terrible.

The 8 pounder was a disappointment.

Quest complete! Yay.

You get the choice either to leave the dungeon or continue adventuring, which I'm usually doing unless my team is close to a wipe. In most cases, you can complete the dungeon without exploring every room.

You're getting rewards for the successful journey, the pre-determined reward and all the loot you're bringing with you.

Your characters also can level up. They might unlock some good (or bad) traits or even get diseases.

Your characters is limited to 5 good and 5 bad traits, including ones with reduced damage, more stress, lower resistances.. or higher damage in low light, reduced risk to bleed or less stress in specific dungeons.

I've managed to keep the game to "One dungeon per day". It's not as addictive as some games, pushing me to play one dungeon after another as I'm getting pissed off with my team going crazy with stress and getting diseases which are expensive to cure.

The game is not stress-free when I'm trying to use my superb team from one dungeon to another, as I'll have to leave my heroes to heal from stress between the adventures and then use "secondary characters" which are not my favorite.

However the game is fun. Something makes me get back to it. I just want to see how hard this can get.