This game is brutal! But somehow makes that brutality as part of the game. This game is not for everyone to be honest, but if you are willing to take the plunge to learn the game, it is excellent. If you like dark, unique horror, this game also has some excellent settings. It also uses turn based mechanics, which will appease many fans of turn based RPGs. Just a heads up, this game has permanent death mechanics for your party members! But this is part of the gameplay, so do not let it discourage you. It is about managing your party members, and letting go of disasters and moving on. Definitely not a "relaxing" game for sure lol. But I do recommend if you want something challenging and difference.

I love this game. I hate this game. I've uninstalled it multiple times in a rage, but I keep coming back. It is pretty heavy on the rng, so it's possible to lose characters even without taking big risks. But if you manage risk carefully and are serene enough to view your characters as a resource that can be expended, it is incredibly satisfying when you succeed. I bought it from Best Buy because switch doesn't have a gifting option, kinda dumb. Still, it wasn't any more expensive here, and it's easy to redeem the code.

Inspired by the dark cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, Darkest Dungeon is a difficult and stressful turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler. You manage a hamlet and its inhabitants as you take them into several different randomly generated dungeons with various goals. You may be asked to defeat all the enemies on a map, defeat a boss, collect certain items, or visit 90% of the rooms on the map. Each character has a specific class (Occultist, Crusader, Vestal, Man-at-Arms, etc) and can be leveled up and equipped with new weapons and armor, skills, and items. The game does feature permadeath, so if your favorite Occultist dies, you've got to recruit a new one and level them up again. Darkest Dungeon is a stressful game about stress (your characters will take stress damage and may develop negative personality traits that affect combat and many other things). It's not easy but it is very rewarding when you find a successful strategy or the right combination of characters.

I have this game a 5 because I absolutely love it! It's a sidescrolling turn based rpg but it's pretty difficult. You have a party of 4 which consists of many different classes as you brave randomly generated dungeons for gold and treasure. It has a beautiful hand drawn art style and kind of dark and grotesque vibe to it. Your characters can get inflicted with various status effects and even suffer from certain conditions, both good and bad. You can also get stressed out and even have a heart attack from too much stress so you have to manage it. Your characters can even die and won't come back so you have to be careful. The way it is layed out is you go into a dungeon and go through a series of rooms and hallways, which is like a big square grid. You encounter enemies and find treasure as you walk from room to room. When you clear the dungeon you back to town which is a hub and you can upgrade armor, weapons and skills. You can even heal stress, disease and afflictions. You can also upgrade the town. After that it's back into the dungeon again. Some dungeons have bosses at the end and some are longer or shorter then others but you can review it before you go in. The difficulty is petty brutal so I would only recommend for the most hardcore people but it's quite enjoyable to got git gud and become a force to be reckoned with. Would highly recommend but it's not for the faint of heart.

I'm obsessed with this game. I love Darkest Dungeon. Yes, it's hard and has permadeath for characters who die in the dungeons, but the game give you plenty of tools to help avoid that happening, and fresh, level one characters can be recruited without limit, so there is no risk of being permanently hindered by a party member getting killed. The art style is incredible and the music perfectly sets the dark tone of the game. If this game even remotely peaks your interest, give it a chance.