DLCDarkest Dungeon®: The Crimson CourtLoading store offers
Darkest Dungeon®
Darkest Dungeon® draws its tension from grim expeditions and tactical, turn-based fights: you lead one party while stress and permanent death remain real risks. At 
GOG, it costs ≈ $1.65; its confirmed tracked low makes this a fitting time to buy if that solo challenge is what you want. At $3.74 from GOG, Darkest Dungeon® suits a solo-RPG plan built around stress management and the risk of permanent hero loss.
All-time low ~ $1.99across Steam & third-party storesat the recorded all-time low
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $1.992024-11Current Low Across Stores~ $19.51Steamvs. Historical Low+880%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Darkest Dungeon®
Darkest Dungeon® is a challenging gothic roguelike, turn-based RPG about the psychological strain of adventuring. Recruit and train flawed heroes, lead them through procedural dungeons, and fight monsters while stress, famine, and disease weigh on the expedition. Steam player reviews: 91% positive from 141,545 reviews. The Steam PC version supports twelve interface languages, including English.
Credits
Composer
Stuart Chatwood
Developer
Red Hook Studios
Publisher
Red Hook Studios
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$1.992024-11-27 · SteamBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 9 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Czech | Yes | Yes | — |
| Polish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Korean | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Language
The Steam PC version has twelve interface languages. English has full audio; the other listed languages have subtitles.
Play mode
This single-player RPG centers on turn-based combat, stress, and permanent character death.
03Frequently asked questions
What do you do in the game?
Recruit and train flawed heroes, then lead them through procedurally generated dungeons.
What threatens the party?
Alongside monsters, the party contends with stress, famine, and disease; stress can affect heroes' quirks.
Can heroes die or recover?
Heroes can die permanently. In town, the Tavern or Abbey lets them rest and manage stress.
8.5
Overall Score
Graphics9
Audio8.5
Gameplay9.5
Story9
Content6.5
“The hardcore strategy roguelike that built party psychology into a system that turns on you, wringing real dread out of permadeath and negative feedback”
Our Verdict
A 2016 expedition that still has no understudy in 2026
Wind the clock back to January 2016, when Darkest Dungeon launched in full, and nobody on the market had dared to make a party's mental health into a core system that turns on the player. On an indie budget it did what the blockbusters would not touch — it put the psychological cost of adventuring on the table and made you answer for it. A decade on, imitators keep arriving (Iratus: Lord of the Dead is all but a direct homage to its rank-based combat), yet not one has truly reproduced that grooming-loss-guilt emotional loop. An 84 on Metacritic, a 93% recommend rate on OpenCritic across 80 reviews in the Mighty tier, a 91% Steam positive — those numbers are shorthand for a reputation that has outlasted the cycle.
Its commercial run is just as hardcore. A project that started from roughly ten thousand backers and 313,000 dollars on Kickstarter went on to sell over six million copies of the base game — sixteen million counting DLC — and pick up a NAVGTR award for role-playing along the way. It is a textbook case of indie long-game thinking, proof that a small team with a distinctive enough style and a coherent enough system can build a benchmark that stays green for ten years.
Who should buy in, and who should walk past
This is not a game for everyone, and its audience boundary is unusually crisp. If you relish a high-risk gamble, if you are willing to pour real feeling into a single squad, if a clutch Virtue flip on the edge of a wipe gives you a satisfaction nothing else can, then it will be the most unforgettable thing in your library — you will remember every hero who died on your watch. An 8.7 on Douban and a standing reputation in Chinese circles as the benchmark of the roguelike turn-based RPG are exactly that crowd's chorus.
But if what you want is a brisk push forward and steady positive feedback, if you cannot stomach the frustration of one random chain of crits wiping out hours of grooming, it will very likely send you ragequitting. Its negative-feedback design is a sharp double edge; some take to it gladly, some feel insulted, and even among the top Douban blurbs you find the wry line that you "go in a normal person and come out mentally ill." So before you buy, ask yourself honestly: are you here to enjoy control, or to experience losing it? Knowing which side you fall on matters far more than fussing over the exact score.
Which version, and where it sits in the series
If you commit, the version advice is simple: start with the base game, and once you have confirmed this loop is for you, add the two core DLCs, Crimson Court and Color of Madness, which expand difficulty and content substantially; the Shieldbreaker is optional, and the Butcher's Circus PvP is free, so just take the update. That combination gives you the fullest, longest-haul experience on offer.
As for placement in the series, one fact is worth weighing: the 2023 sequel, Darkest Dungeon II, swapped the estate-management premise for a road-trip expedition roguelike and landed an 81 on OpenCritic with a 75% Steam positive — both short of the original, with players visibly split. That is not to say the sequel is bad; it is to say the original's particular recipe — minding an estate, raising a band of people you cannot bear to lose, then watching them march off to die — has yet to be bettered.
So even in 2026, getting into this series through the first Darkest Dungeon is still the best way to taste its core appeal. The thing no one has copied — building a hero's breakdown into a system that turns on you and laces every retreat with guilt — is exactly why it still stands. And its most direct rival, Slay the Spire, for all its excellence, can never carry that weight, because a run there is discarded the moment it ends and leaves no emotional debt behind.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
"oh no, RNG screws you over! Bad game is bad" It also saved my ass. People tend not to notice when they get 4 crits in a row, but will when they get hit for 4 crits in a row. They won't care when they dodge 6 times, but will when the enemy dodges 6 times. The game is about minimalizing the RNG, Just note that the RNG will still be there. It is also about minimalizing the affect of a bad situation if things start going south. You can retreat from combat. You do not need to fight it out. Overconfidence is a slow killer that WILL get you killed in this game.Show moreShow less
131.2 hours at review9,600 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Games like this are the reason why I really wish Steam's "do you recommend" question had more than just two options. Here's why: because I would very, very highly recommend this game... to a certain breed of gamer. Let me explain. First, the good. Darkest Dungeon is a masterfully crafted game. The artwork is beautifully grotesque and animation is smooth. The game is balanced fairly well, even if it is balanced towards the "hard" end of the spectrum. Even in early access there is nothing about this game that feels sloppy or poorly considered. The stress mechanic, in which your characters accumulate stress which can affect them in various negative (and sometimes even positive) ways, is a really interesting idea and something that you don't really see a whole lot in video games. The only place I've seen anything like this before would be the Cthulhu games, and I honestly feel like it's handled a lot better here. Oh, and the fact that it's constantly auto-saving, while intended to prevent save-scumming, also has the effect of allowing you to quit and pick back up whenever you want without losing progress, great for people who don't have a lot of time to sit down and play a game. The game wasn't my cup of tea (I'll get to why in a minute) but I can't honestly call it bad just because of that. It's not bad. In fact... KR Rating: [5] GREAT But wait, don't stop reading yet, because now it's time for the bad. As I said before, Darkest Dungeon is a hard game. Well, no, that's not really accurate. Etrian Odyssey is hard. That's why I like that series, and it's why I thought I would like this game too. Darkest Dungeon is not hard, it's unfair. See, you can be riding high one minute, dominating every encounter and getting a ton of good items from the various chests and cupboards (called "curios" in the game) that litter the dungeons. Then you get into that one battle. You know the one I mean. It's the one that doesn't even seem like it should be all that hard. It's the same enemies you've been wasting with ease this whole time. Except this time you do nothing but miss your attacks over and over, while they stack critical hit upon critical hit. Before you can even click the "retreat" button half your force is at Death's Door... or through it. It's a little like Dark Souls in a way. And the thing is, that's not an accident. I said this game was masterfully crafted and it honestly is. This isn't poor game balance, it's the entire point. It's the underlying design philosophy of the game. The developers never intended this to be a game where you train up max level badasses and retake the estate. There are no badasses in the Darkest Dungeon. There are no heroes. No, this is a game where you recruit expendable idiots by the wagon-load (literally) and send them to die for the greater good. (This is also why there are so few levels of upgrades for your characters: so that restarting when your top character dies is easier.) That's why I say, I really wish that Steam allowed more options than just "recommend" or "not recommend." Because, on the one hand, the game is very well made. It has become exactly what I feel the developers wanted it to be. It is a GREAT GAME. But "great" and "universally enjoyable" are not the same thing. A lot of people don't like hard games. I do like hard games and even I was turned off by the unfairness and the inability to properly take care of my people. If I really had to choose (and for the purposes of the Steam version of this review I kind of do) I would say that I don't recommend the game, if only because I think the number of people who would enjoy it are in the minority. That said, if you're the type who thinks you might enjoy that then by all means buy the game right now. It's only $19.99 USD on Steam right now, and for that you get one Hell of a solid classic-style RPG with an interesting twist. If you're more like me and you get attached to your characters and don't want to see them die (or if you just don't like hard games) then skip this one. (Read the review on Knight's Reviews by clicking here.)Show moreShow less
9.7 hours at review1,954 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
RecommendedSteam player
To anyone reading these reviews who is confused by the massive swings between positive and negative, you need to know one thing: Darkest Dungeon is an emotional game. To people just starting out, it can seem baffling, unfair, and deliberately obscure. To people who have been playing since Early Access, and who have seen favourite party compositions and strategies rendered obsolete, the Steam reviews page is more of an extension of Reddit than anything else - a place to air grievances (legitimate or otherwise) over a game that they have dedicated a lot of time to. What a lot of these reviews miss out is... y'know... the actual review part. On that front, I would say the following: the core gameplay is rock solid. At its heart, Darkest Dungeon has taken a minimalist, turn-based, four-man combat system and imbued it with massive potential for tactical thought and personal flair. Figuring out the best role for each of your heroes (chosen from a fairly generous pool of classes) and suddenly realising a unique way of getting them to synergise is immensely gratifying. Unlike a lot of games, it doesn't feel like there is a a ring-fenced area of "correct", vanilla play that only the very high-level players can get past; instead, you are encouraged and rewarded for coming up with your own strategies from the get go. The central combat system is smart, it pushes you to experiment, and there is a lot of room to come up with a playstyle that feels like your own, unique creation. HOWEVER! If that's all Darkest Dungeon was, it would be a neat tablet-based distraction, but ultimately sterile. It is the stuff that comes layered on top of it that is the source of its intrigue - and also the source of a lot of the frustration you'll see directed at it. As a typical RPG player, you naturally do everything you can to guarantee the safety and efficacy of your character(s), and it feels inherently uncomfortable to work in a game environment that leaves you perpetually on your toes and at risk of failure. DD refuses to let you settle into a comfortable routine, and a massive enemy critical attack, an ambush in pitch-dark while camping, or a series of misses on your part can topple you from a seemingly-unassailable position to a very desperate one. The potential for a fail-cascade is what turns off many new players, and even drives experienced ones to the occasional rage-review, but it is also vital to the fundamental risk-reward balance of the game, which is designed to punish complacency and encourage the utmost thought on your part. As you progress through a dungeon, you constantly need to balance a dwindling supply of light, food, sanity and health (although they can be restored in some ways), while also trying to complete objectives and collect much-needed loot with limited backpack space. Usually, this is the sort of gameplay I dislike; feeling that there is a time-limit, that I can't plough through something at my own speed in relative safety, is an uncomfortable experience after most games. However, the actual result is some very effective tension. In a normal RPG (say... Diablo), the steady drip of ever-increasing numbers is satisfying in a functional sort of way, but in DD the stakes are so high that getting a critical hit or dodging a huge attack always feels like a moment rather than just a nice bonus. It can initially feel punishing and unfair, since most gamers are hard-wired to see a hero death (which is permanent), a catastrophic turn-around, or a "tactical retreat" as a failure. Likewise, the element of randomness can make it feel like your hard work and smart play has not been rewarded, like you're just a random collection of atoms buzzing around in a meaningless void where there is no God or higher authority to dispense justice or distinguish right or wrong.... It takes time to realise that you were never meant to have it easy, that it's always been a gamble, and you can't expect a perfect S ranking - all you can do is make the best play you can with the information you have. It takes time to realise that the game is pushing you to accept loss and difficulty as part of the game, rather than a failure. Even I rage quit every now and then - but I always come back, because, as I said, Darkest Dungeon is an emotional game. You invest (real) time and (fake) money in your group of heroes, the odds are massively stacked in the House's favour, none of your guys is going to come out unscarred, you are going to face some serious setbacks, but you return because actually making it, actually landing that last hit at the last possible moment, realising you've scraped through again, is always a surprise, and an amazing one at that.Show moreShow less
189.3 hours at review1,860 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
When I bought this game quite a few years ago, someone wrote: "This is a great game, but ultimately the RNG and the difficulty is what makes it unplayable". Naturally, I dismissed it, thinking that I'm going to do better. 150 hours later, I'll say this instead: This is a great game, with some design choices which accentuate the futility of the fight against the unspeakable. In other words, your carefully trained and equipped heroes will die - inglorious, meaningless deaths. That's what it means to stand against the eldritch. "Big deal", you probably think. "The game clearly states in its trailer: all that awaits you is madness and death. What did you expect? Also, how is it any different from any other hard game where you die a lot?" Fair point. Let me explain, but let's take a look at something else first. Venerable opulence The first thing you see when you look at this game is the general feel. And let me tell you: it gets much, much better than that. The symphony of the look, the music and the narration is mesmerising. The way it compliments and reacts to the gameplay is nothing short of fantastic. The battle music changes depending on your torch level, which is a self-imposed risk-reward mechanic (the darker it gets, the more violent and dangerous the fight is, but you get better loot). The narrator reacts to almost everything that happens, either foretelling your upcoming doom, congratulating your character on a crit, reminding you to not get too cocky. Wayne June is doing Elder God's work - his voice acting is easily 30-40% of the game's appeal. On an unrelated note, check out his readings of Lovecraft. What I'm saying here is: the game excels at luring you in. You want to explore, you want to cleanse, you want to find more riches to expand your town, strengthen your heroes and to go fight nastier and nastier abominations. And so you continue. Triumphant pride After a while, you get good at it. You start understanding how positioning works, how stats interact, which classes work well together. You begin to understand which classes compliment each other and what team compositions work against which areas and enemies. You will probably lose a few dear heroes. But that's alright, every death is a lesson learned. You know which situations call for pressing on, and which situations are unsalvageable and demand retreat. Risk management is a constant companion here. You use your newfound skills to cleanse the areas of the game. To defeat bosses, which are interesting and unique, if challenging, encounters. You'll probably hit roadblocks, will be forced to rethink your strategy. Sometimes you will lose just because fate (RNG) said so. But this is all acceptable. Eventually, you push through, and emerge victorious. Dizzying fall At this point I should mention that in order to level your characters you need two things: gold and experience. Gold buys you better gear - which is mandatory later on, as it also affects things like dodge or accuracy - and experience, well, levels your guys up. Characters at certain levels can only go on expeditions suited to their level. If it's too easy for them, they will flat out refuse to go. If it's too hard, they will gain additional stress and probably get massacred anyway. As such, you have to constantly keep teams of people available and have high-level reserves, because if someone needs to recover from an expedition or, worst case, dies, you must plug the hole somehow. Point is: levelling people is hard. It's a very grindy process. High level champion with gear is worth their weight in gold. Which is why the final dungeon is such a stab in the heart. Darkest Dungeon There are three things to note about the final expedition. First, it contains completely new, original, and very difficult enemies. You need to learn to fight them. You will lose just by virtue of trial and error, and even fully powered heroes feel underlevelled. Second, once a hero has entered the dungeon once, they will never again be able to enter due to sheer terror. As such, you have to make every expedition count. Third, there is no escape. Up until now retreat was always an option, but here if you try to escape one of your heroes will randomly die to cover for the rest. Combine this with the fact that every single hero that is even allowed to enter must have maxed out level and stats and maybe you can begin to see the sheer magnitude of grind required to even "git gud", much less succeed - as stated before, sometimes you just can't win because of circumstances. And that's okay, or at least it would've been if the price of failure wasn't so exorbitant. The end, such as it is It's such a shame. I really loved this game. Even while writing this my heart races as I think of the great expeditions I had. But in the end I decided I simply do not have the patience, time, or will to grind out yet another batch of fodder for the final expedition. I like to think that this is the point the game set out to make - you can't fight the eldritch. I am sure there are people who have succeeded. In the end, with patience and luck you probably can beat the game. But I can't. I have descended into madness instead.Show moreShow less
147.8 hours at review1,369 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Reviewers blaming this game's RNG for their failures is frankly embarrassing... especially when they say "the game is not hard, but the RNG is unfair." RNG management is the game. It's like saying "golf isn't a hard game, but it's unfair that I'm expected to get the ball in the cup." Darkest Dungeon is a great game; don't let people who are bad at adapting and/or assessing their skill level deter you from getting it. I'm no slouch at these kinds of games, but I've had zero full party wipes in 150+ hours, and one-shotted the final two dungeons going in blind on my first playthrough. In short: "These nightmarish creatures can be felled! They can be beaten!"Show moreShow less
168.7 hours at review1,366 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I've had Darkest Dungeon for a while now and I'm pretty upset with the direction the developers have taken with it. DD has always been a somewhat difficult game that can be really cruel with RNG, especially as you frist start out. Many people say that there is no "fail state", but you feel like a failure when you lose about 10-20 hours of progress per character you lose. There have been ways to be careful, risky, and successful while mitigating the risk of horrible RNG; however, the developers have taken it upon themselves to not only patch out the clever ways you can make your characters not die, but also introduce new facets that screw you over more. The reason I don't recommend this game is because I feel like the developers are heavy-handed with their patch fixes based on how players are deciding to play their game, rather than actually fixing the bugs and features that aren't working properly. Several trinkets simply don't work, several skills don't work as intended (looking at you, Man at Arms with Guard, thanks for getting my Arbalest one shot), several of the buffs and debuffs don't work as intended, and now the enemies and dungeons are for the most part broken. Since the patch, I've had to retreat from all 5 dungeons because of the new enemies, the limitations on items you can bring (for instance, there were 2 wall curios in the first 3 hallways in the Cove, and since I was on a scouting mission I ran out of shovels and couldn't complete the dungeon without clawing through the other 5 wall curious I saw). In short, the game has always been hard. The game has always been out to get you, and set you back on time you've spent playing it (by getting your hard-earned heroes killed with crits). Just like the intro says, DD is about making the best out of difficult situations. The game in its current state, and with the way the developers have been taking it, is pure masochism. I'm not sure if the developers playtest their game, because if I were them I sure as hell wouldn't want to. If you've made it through this wall of text to this far, please excuse me if I seem like I'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I actually like rogue-likes, and I'm familiar with the concept of being set back in time and losing things permanently. Nobody likes being treated unfairly, and it feels like the game is a chore. If the idea was to make it stressful, it's just annoying. On the plus side, the developers ARE active and DO create new content frequently, but on the negative side a lot of the ideas they take from the community are pretty stupid. All in all, if you're thinking of purchasing this game, it might be a good idea to wait until it's finished. Edit for clarity: After seeing the positive reviews that mostly knock players for not understanding the mechanics, I figured I'd approach those mechanics from a different angle than the positive reviews, since I do understand the mechanics. The trinkets: I feel like they simply aren't balanced. Most of the "Ancestral" (legendary trinkets) hurt more than they help. For instance, one gives 5% increased crit to melee, but adds 5% stress damage to your characters. That character will be targeted by stress attacks by the AI if he has the lowest stress resist and is in a position to be targeted, and you will be dished out more stress damage by the two to three enemies that deal stress damage than you will ever be able to recoup with your one turn and 5% increased crit. On the plus side, at least this trinket works as intended. The increased prices: Most people aren't complaining about the increased prices because it makes the game "harder", it just makes the grind longer and makes it more of a pain in the ass. Also, the sting of defeat hits a lot harder and your start is a lot rougher. Has this specific issue bugged me? No, not really. Curios: Honestly, they're not that big of a deal except for the item limitation imposed now. When you have a bank, you want to overprepare - now you can't. You can always just ignore curios and get rid of quirks that force you to interact with curios. Healing: The devs don't want you to faceroll everything with damage stacking, but they also don't want you to be able to heal your heroes against lone targets. So they add stun resistance to monsters for multiple stuns, then they add stress damage, then they add increased stress damage for stalling, then they add monster reinforcements. Has this ever affected me personally? No, because for the most part I manage my heals pretty well and bring balanced parties that are tailored to specific dungeons. Do I find it stupid that the developers are punishing people who ALREADY take a tedious and careful approach, gut it, and make the game even MORE tedious and punishing? Yeah, but for for the most part this facet also hasn't really affected me. Facerolling: Do you have Legendary heroes with max equipment and skills? Did they ever completely faceroll everything? Or do you still get your Occultist eldritch pulled into a treebrance smackdown from a giant? Yeah, same here. The game has never been "too easy" or "too hard", but as your heroes leveled and upgraded your start to reduce the variance which leads to a catastrophic collapse of your party. One bad move, one bad stress hit crit, one bad bleed stack, one bad smackdown crit could all lead to damage you cannot recoup in A SINGLE BATTLE. The recent patches have made even non-room battles more deadly. Class choices: Let's face it, some classes are just underpowered. I use the Grave Robber just because she's one of my favorites, and she's a great support unit. Depending on where you are, you can remove blight and bleed, make her a dodge tank, or turn her into a crit monster. The Jester and the Man at Arms are both great units to use in conjunction with her, but her low health has always made her vulnerable. Guarantee she's going to hit death's door at least once, maybe three or four times if you're taking her to a boss battle. I use her not always because she's the optimal choice, but I like the concept. With the new patch, I pretty much only want to use Bounty Hunter for my scouter. The Houndmaster is pretty cool, but again he's pretty underpowered as well. Weak 1-2 damage AOE hits with bleed only serve well against maybe one fight, and that's the formless flesh. In other words, there's cases where heroes have a skill that is useful in only ONE portion of the game - also looking at you, Man at Arms skill Guard - which doesn't always work by the way, especially against the Prophet. In a game where the developers nerf heroes that are being used to "faceroll" things and do large amounts of damage, the other heroes which are underpowered and suboptimal in pretty much every dungeon are left untouched. If anything, it shows a lack of focus and forward thinking on the developers part - flaws that will be fatal to you as the player in a dungeon, but compeltely acceptable for the game's creators... For the most part, I tend to leave the game specific gripes out because people thinking about buying the game... haven't played it. But for those of you complainig about the negative reviews and saying "those who reveiew negatively just need to git gud and stop QQing", there are legimate reasons why people don't like DD. I've loved this game since the beginning, but l don't like the direction the developers are taking it. If you enjoy the game as it is, please direct your butthurt elsewhere. By the way, nice job posting my review at the top of /r/DarkestDungeon and vote brigading the thumbs downs, Reddit.Show moreShow less
69.8 hours at review1,311 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
"The sin is not in being outmatched, but in failing to recognize it." "Do not ruminate on this fleeting failure - the campaign is long, and victory will come." Game is fun for those who like numbers, strategy, and turn-based combat. It is being hotfixed and getting adjustments to certant things regularly by the developers to make it a better experience. Had I gone into it blind, I may have thought that the game was unfair too. However, after watching multiple other people play this game modless on all difficulties, it is clear that skill is involved and you can improve. So with that in mind, I will continue on to improve as well. Thanks to these Twitch Streamers: Dodger @ Dexbonus for being awesome and funny, getting me interested in this game, and jealous of all the gold you aquired. (Hey Red Hook, credit goes to her. Give her a button for buying your game when she is offline!) Billy @ Billy1Kirby for being funny and awesome, giving tips on how to play, and making Torchless look easy.Show moreShow less
75.4 hours at review1,360 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
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. [Edit 1] Anyone who considers reading wikis other people put together for you and listetning to other people telling you exactly what to do as having self gained skill shouldnt tell me to get good. I dont enjoy games like checkboxes to clear out, I like to experience things myself and figuring them out using my own skillset and mind. If I just want everything done for me by others and then just playing by proxy I wouldnt be having any fun. And most definitely it wouldnt be me beating the game.. I would just experience a simulation of beating it. This is for example the reason for why I dont watch walkthroughs of Dark Souls or other RPGs. This is a review of the game. Not an thesis regarding if it is completeable. [Sticked from comment section] Thanks again to all the uplifting and supporting messages. But I have to withdraw from the comment section. So far there's to much childish insults being thrown my way. From my perspective I can understand why it becomes personal for people, its about passion. And I admire people who are passionate about their hobbys. But this needless whining and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about my skill level and this review is consuming alot of my energy and frankly its getting tired. Can you guys really not get more creative then calling me a baby? If you put so much self value into what video games you play or how hardcore of a gamer are then I think you need to re-evaluate the problems in your life. And to the people who are not agreeing with me but are willing to actually put thought and effort into discussing with me. You are probably the people I appriciate the most. I got some new insight from talking to you all. I wish whoevers reading a great day.Show moreShow less
92.9 hours at review1,038 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
TL;DR: Community Outrage Simulator masquerading as brutal dungeon crawl. 10/10, would read a thousand angry, formerly-positive reviews about corrupt devs instead of playing a great game again. I picked up DD over the summer, drawn in by a sociological interest in certain members of the "community's" outrageously toxic backlash to the implementation of corpses and some other changes. Obviously, I was familiar with and intruiged by DD for its excellent art style already, but generally I am the type to wait for something to be complete before I give it a shot. However the sea change from unabashed praise to seemingly universal criticism was so comically severe you'd have thought the game had actually reached out and harmed them. So thank you, dear, angry, entitled, (imo) wrong-headed (but certainly allowed to have and express your opinion, which you most certainly do, oh yes, you do...) players, for without your concentrated, delerious ire I may not have discovered one of my favorite games of last (and now this) year! For me, everything about this game is a win. The art, animation, music, sound design, narration, and general presentation are all top-notch. The prose itself is a particular highlight, as is the tongue-in-cheek brutality and general tone. To me, they really nail it. It's hard for me to address the criticisms leveled at the gameplay itself, because it seems to me the game is pretty straight forward about what it intends to be. DD is a procedurally-generated, turn-based dungeon crawler with an emphasis on difficulty (with reference to Dark Souls) and light RPG elements and squad-management (with reference to modern X-Com). I concede that this can be considered grindy. Dungeon crawlers are generally grindy, even great ones like Dungeon of the Endless or Legend of Grimrock. The distillation of the various aspects of the form, the massive selection of character classes, buffs, debuffs, monsters, the writing, the aesthetic, these come together to give it something more than the sum of its parts. However if you don't enjoy that core to some degree or other, I don't know why you'd be considering this anyway. Personally, I never had a problem with corpses, because I never played the game without them. Over 50+ hours, I managed to beat a number of the bosses, level characters up to the top tiers, etc, ect, and only stopped because I felt like I had gotten far enough where I was ready to play the game in a finished state, and didn't want to master too much. I also died a lot. Then I died some more. And it was fun the whole time! As the year went on and waves of negative Steam comments continued to roll in, I felt like I was inhabiting a completely different universe from those players. As they railed against it getting harder and harder, for example, I found myself reflecting that the game seemed to be being tweaked to make it easier. I certainly wasn't dying as much. Maybe I was just somehow very good at it? I don't know. I still die all the time in X-Com. I don't think of myself as a master gamer or tactician. The other critique I saw a lot, which is one that really prompted me to put my words out there in defense of this thing and those involved in crafting it, is that the devs somehow didn't care about the criticisms, that they don't listen, or that they were corrupt, or that they had abandoned the project like does actually occur in the Early Access community, that this game was somehow some kind of scam. That's just ridiculous. There were three major updates from the time of my purchace to the end of the year, which added all kinds of content in various ways. They were constantly tweaking the game to find the balance that worked. They were communicative, and they were clearly listening and being involved (and also making the game, for goodness sake, cmon). Getting back briefly to the Great Corpse Outrage 2k15, for example, corpses were made a voluntary opt-out in the options menu pretty much from Backlash Ground Zero. Not that a developer has any reason to do something like that, but to then deny that it happened, or to say that they don't listen, that they're somehow scamming you, that the game is ruined forever is just a hysterical, petulent, garbage argument. I can't understand what this aspect of the community actually wants, for the life of me. If the game isn't for you, you certainly don't have to play it. But a certain amount of the negativity (which borders on outright hostility) strikes me as being like that guy who orders and eats the burger and then complains to management it wasn't cooked to his liking. Still, you have to admire (if not boggle at) their conviction, and their sheer verbosity of it all. For me, this game actually sold me on the idea that Early Access could be an enjoyable, worthwile process of participating in the honing of a project that you enjoy and want to support and I couldn't be happier with my decision to do so, and I look forward to playing it for another 50 hours or longer. Hopefully this small review will serve as some kind of counterpoint and let those bored few who got this far know that there's a worthy, enjoyable, wonderfully-crafted experience at the center of everyone's opining.Show moreShow less
55 hours at review1,178 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
If you were my friend, on a budget, and asking for my Darkest Dungeon review I would say: Don't buy this game. It took me a while (30hrs) to decide how I really and truly felt about Darkest Dungeon. If you are looking to buy this game then you are probably like me, a fan of difficult games (Dark Souls comes to mind). Let me go ahead and give you the warning that I feel I didn't get from looking at reviews...this game is not difficult in a way that is remotely satsifying. When I play a difficult game I want to feel something after a tough battle. I want to feel like I really earned my sword, my armor, my loot, my gold. I want to feel like all the progress I've made is deserved, because I learned from my mistakes and overcame my ignorance of the world's mechanics. At some point I want to feel successful, and look down upon this horrific world that I've made my way in and say, "Heck yeah this place is scary, but I have at last become one of those scary things in it." Darkest Dungeon is not that game. (Spoilers) 1a) Stress Damage (Too High): Stress damage sounds cool right? Very Lovecraftian. But the problem here is that you are already walking such a razor thin margin of success that all you need is for your main damage dealer to go insane to wipe the party. Each character has about 100pts of stress they can take before giving in to madness...which really isn't much when enemies do anywhere from 15-20pts of stress damage per attack. 1b) Immersion Breaking: There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of logic to what causes stress or how much you take. Seeing a reanimated corpse shambling towards me would stress me out more than getting splashed with a cup full of blood...especially if I am a Crusader, Leper, or Highwayman who is...probably used to being splashed with blood. 2a) Trinkets: I want to say that the items you use to "boost" your characters stats are worthless. That isn't true; it's just that they are nearly worthless. Yes you can find the rares, and you can get the ancients but the drawbacks are so significant that I almost never wanted to equip them. A bracer that gives +25 damage? Yes please! But it also gives +20% stress damage...when I'm already taking 20 stress a hit? 2b) After playing Darkest Dungeon for 30hrs I have yet to find a single piece of loot that made me happy. Not a single one and for the life of me I can't understand why the developers went with such a harsh Catch-22 for all these items. If I don't care about finding gear to boost up my characters then why am I even delving into these dungeons? 3a) The story. 30hrs in and I am tired of hearing the narrator as he constantly sputter 12-letter words ripped directly from the pages of your favorite Lovecraftian horror story. Excusing that, my problem with the story is that the narrator explains everything in the intro scene. Quite literally. As you delve through the dungeon and find notebook pages you slowly come to the realization that they do not reveal anything new. 3b) Immersion Breaking: I start to ask myself...what in the world am I doing down here? Maggots can apparently appear from thin air so it's not like I'm going to live in this hellhole after I clear all the monsters and bandits out. My ancestor is hecka dead so...I'm not here to save anyone. ...Why am I sending all these people to die again? I mean...It's not for money. Only people making money in this game are my vassals (tavern owner, abbey, guild, blacksmith) who, setting aside the fact that they are charging me straight out the nose for things, apparently require I give them dozens of family portraits and land deeds in order to fulfill the orders that I just paid (and continue to pay) them for. 4a) The Bosses: Back to Dark Souls 2 for a second. One of the most frustrating fights for me was the gargoyles in the belltower. More than almost any other fight it felt unfair, as you get swamped from every direction, skewered, and suffer multiple deaths. But eventually you get it. You learn the pattern, match it to your fighting style, and succeed. There is none of that here. What seemed interesting and innovative to me in Darkest Dungeon was the number of classes and the combination of parties you could make. But gradually you realize that some of the classes are truly worthless (Antiquarian comes to mind) and even worse, that the game requires that you bring certain classes to certain dungeons. It curtails the way that you play and I am not at all a fan of paying money for a game only to have it pretty much micromanage my fun. 4b) Immersion Breaking: The Wizened Hag. After fighting six different room battles I finally come upon the hag only to discover...she sits in the back row behind an unbreakable cooking pot and cannot be moved. Literally...cannot be moved. So why in the world would you give me so many characters and abilites that change the enemies battle positions? Why give me a power and then say, "No, not here where it might be used best." After the Wizened Hag fight (which I narrowly won thanks to a Crusader with Spear of Light) I looked up tactics for every single boss on the wiki, something I would normally be ashamed to do on my first playthrough of any game. Why? Because I'm not about to lose 4 to 5 hours of gameplay and grinding because Darkest Dungeon in unfair. Not difficult, but actually just unfair. 5a) Darkest Dungeon is simply unfair. Not in a sense of "It's okay, I can still get through this limping through the dungeon" kind of unfair, but in a "Hey, your characters are going to die today, and that's all there is to it." Kind of unfair. I have had a geared up team stunlocked to death by spiders in a hallway. I sat for four turns (all the spiders go, all my team recovers from stun = 1 turn) while the spiders stunned, marked, and killed my team. I have had enemies focus down my team one by one, from the healer in postion 4 to the tank in postion 1. Not with damage, but with stress, so that my characters pass instead of taking their turns and get picked apart. I have walked into a hallway and gotten surprised at 90 light, then walked into a room and gotten surprised at 80 light, and then gotten surprised leaving that room into another hallway at 76 light. I have watched as characters on my team repeatedly miss hitting the enemy 3 times in a row despite having no debuffs at all, and then watched as enemies debuffed to detract from accuracy, speed, and damage, proceed to get a critical hit, every hit, that takes my characters to deaths door and then the grave. 6a) These situations are common, which brings me to my last point. The game is unfair, so there isn't a real reason to get attached to your characters. So... If you aren't here to take your home back, and you aren't here to save your ancestor, and you aren't here to become fabulously wealthy, and you aren't here to lead a team of chosen warriors through hell and back...what is the point of playing Darkest Dungeon? I ask this knowing that there isn't one. *****EDIT 5/21/2016 At this point in time only 0.9% of people who have purchased Darkest Dungeon have beaten the game on normal. (* 0.9% is from the Global achievement stats which lists by percentage of all players)Show moreShow less
31.5 hours at review948 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/14/2026.