Darkest Dungeon gameplay is hard yet rewarding

Darkest Dungeon is not a game where every hero wins the day with shiny armor and a smile. It is a game about hard trade-offs, nearly certain demise, and heroic acts. The combat in Darkest Dungeon is actually really deep and complex. It combines both the nostalgia and prettiness of the modern design. 

It will be an entirely new challenge for you. Party order is crucial for setting up attacks, but it can also expose your Heroes to danger. Train your heroes, upgrade your enemies and adjust to growing threats coming from enemies, diseases which can damage the health of your heroes, constant stress and most importantly events which might destroy their mental health. All the time you have to make decisions if it is better to damage the enemy or protect your teammates.

This fight will be your last

The Darkest Dungeon is a rougelike RPG. In practice, it means that each character has only one life. If he or she is going to die during an adventure, then it is permanent. Furthermore, it is an important element of the gameplay. Your characters are going to die sooner or later but new ones are going to come in their place. Try to protect the best characters (with a most profitable set of stats, skills, and abilities) and sacrifice the ones which are not offering anything for your team.

Characters are described with many different statistics

Each character in the game is described by a number of different stats. First of all, there are six basic ones e.g. speed, damage, and protection determined by character level and equipment. Then there are "persistent elements". Here you can find "quirks" - a set of positive and negative traits possessed by each hero and chosen randomly (at least at the very beginning of their creation). 

Example of such quirks might be "Natural Swing" which gives +5 boost to ACC or "The Yips" which takes -5 from ACC. There are also diseases which your characters might catch during adventures. While they cannot kill you, still they give many debuffs to accuracy, damage etc. Last but not least, there is a stress factor. 

As a result of roaming dark dungeons, heroes will gradually accumulate stress. If a hero is too stressed, he will develop an affliction, causing him to acquire heavy penalties, occasionally disobey orders and regularly inflict stress damage on his companions. The extreme amount of stress might result with a heart attack. You have to monitor each and every statistic and thanks to this you will be able to face even the fiercest of your enemies.

Key features

• Classic CRPG and roguelike features, including meaningful permadeath, procedural dungeons etc.
• Battle not only monsters, but also diseases and even stress. Your worst enemy which might cause paranoia, fear or even death due to a heart attack.
• A killed character is going to remain dead. Protect crucial team members and sacrifice others if you must.
• Enjoy more than 80 hours of gameplay.