Darkest dungeon was a game I avoided forever because it came out back when fuckin' everything was a rogue-like procedurally generated dungeon crawler permadeath shitshow. On paper, the only thing about it that I liked was the aesthetic but I heard a podcast talking about their experience with it. Copped it on sale for like 8 bucks and holy shit it was worth it lmao.

I'd say the gameplay loop resembles xcom where you enter the combat layer, level your chars and gain loot to manage your base. The biggest difference id say is that personell mgmt is more important but also more rewarding. Low level characters are a lot more expendable than in xcom, but high level characters have a bigger impact. Base mgmt is mostly choosing from new recruits, managing the sanity and diseases of your troupe, upgrading their equipment and special abilities, and upgrading buildings with various resources. I would say it takes up about the same amount of time as base mgmt in xcom but it doesn't feel as rewarding as xcom because there aren't big upgrades that give you a major advantage (e.g. first round of armor upgrades in OG xcom). Upgrades are more just plain necessary to take on harder dungeon levels and I found that out the hard way.

The dungeon crawling is the meat of the game, and I was surprised at how fun and fucking stressful it can be. Levels are randomly generated across a few different themes, and each of the dungeons have different enemies with weaknesses that can shape the team you choose to tackle each. The layouts of the dungeons are all on the same sort of grid system but have enough variety that they each feel distinct. Dungeons have hazards that can harm your party, damage their sanity, inflict disease, or even induce personality quirks. Loot and supplies share the same inventory space, incentivizing riskier provisioning that could invite bad things happening to your characters to take home better stuff. In fact, I think this game manages risk-reward better than most strategy and rogue-like games. The challenge does occasionally come from RNG (it is a turn-based game after all) but most of it is baked in and you're constantly making decisions before starting and while going through the dungeon that feel impactful.

Do I take fewer torches to open extra loot slots later? I know this level has less corridors and i might not need as many. Do I go straight to the boss or risk an injured party while scooping some extra loot? Do I snuff my torch to maximize drops but risk getting ambushed? Do I take an extra combat round to heal and risk drawing reinforcements? Instead of incentivizing the minimization of risk, it pushes you toward taking them; the boons are immediate and the punishments, disastrous.

Combat is simpler than xcom to an extent, but the characters have so much variety and situational synergy, the enemies are unique, and each encounter offers slightly different flavors of challenge. The bosses are spectacular and terrifying. It's especially challenging early on where you don't have the resources to respec characters or upgrade them, and the learning curve is hatefully steep. That said, you fuck with xcom so the threat of permadeath is nothing new lmao. I found the combat really stressful, every encounter feels like it can break bad and the game saves all the time. There's no restarting an encounter, no save scumming, you're beholden to your choices. Combat moves fast enough, and there are mods to speed it up further on PC. I had a lot of fun building little teams, experimenting with synergies, creating flexible free agents to round out other crews. Combat can see harm to your characters health and also to their sanity. Health is usually scarce but easily restored; sanity caps a bit higher but is expensive to restore at the base. Managing these two resources are integral to the combat and it's something you learn to do as you go.

The only major criticisms I have are the progression and presentation. The progression feels more incremental than dynamic, because characters will only go into dungeons at a few specific level intervals. Since you're only using low-level characters in low-level dungeons, the dungeons take the same amount of time and the characters level up at the same rate. Conversely, the higher level dungeons are gnarly and wiping means you have four characters that have to be replaced. It's challenging in a way that's incongruous with the other challenges in the game, in a way that's frustrating and tedious.

This game is also super ugly, mostly as a design decision. However, I think the UI and some of the character animations are a bit lacking. The gross, dingy aesthetic can be oppressive at times but I think it complements the theming pretty well. Your mileage may vary tbh.

Well, that was longer than I meant it to be, sorry about that.