Darkest Dungeon

1. Summary

Darkest Dungeon's reviews are strongly positive and full of love-hate language. Players praise its gothic presentation: the art, the music and especially the Ancestor's narration. They also love the stress and affliction system and the tension of deciding whether to push deeper or retreat. Difficulty comes up in 33% of the reviews, from fans and detractors alike. Fans say every hard-won run feels earned, while others say the game punishes you for the sake of it. Mods come up often as the way players tune the game to their taste.

Streaks of misses and enemy crits that wipe a party come up in 39% of negative reviews, and a grind that turns repetitive in the mid and late game in 33%. Recommending reviews raise both too, usually as caveats. Slow animations and walking, a steep learning curve, the punishing endgame and some post-update technical trouble are smaller threads.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

The narrator, art and music build a gothic moodHigh

24% of the reviews praise the presentation. The art style is mentioned in 13%, the narration in 12% and the music in 7%. Wayne June's voice as the Ancestor gets some of the most detailed praise. One player wrote "I can't help but shout out Wayne June's extraordinary voice work as the ancestor". Players also quote his lines back: "Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" appears word for word in 1.5% of all reviews. A small group of reviews (1%) are tributes from players mourning June's death. Negative reviews praise the presentation too: 12% of them compliment the art, voice or music before explaining why they still can't recommend the game. One wrote "On a technical level this game is a masterpiece" and then said it simply wasn't fun for them.

Stress, afflictions and the push-on-or-retreat gambleHigh

17% of the reviews discuss the stress system: heroes who crack at 100 stress, turn on their allies or suffer heart attacks, and the occasional heroic virtue that turns a fight around. Some single it out as what sets the game apart: "I love that your heroes can go insane along with you." It feeds a risk-and-reward loop (9%) of dwindling torchlight, limited supplies and the choice between pressing on for loot and retreating with what you have. When a run goes well, the tension pays off: "every victory you rip out of the game's clutches feels earned". The same mechanics also show up in complaints. Some players find a hero who refuses healing or skips a turn while afflicted maddening, because "I like my controls to do what I input."

Party building and positioning make the combat feel tacticalHigh

Strategy, team composition and the four-rank formation come up in 14% of the reviews. Fans describe simple turn-based combat with a lot of depth underneath: matching heroes to ranks, building around stuns, blight or marks, and choosing trinkets for each region's enemies. The criticism here is about disruption. A few players say pushes, pulls and surprise attacks that scramble the formation leave whole turns wasted.

Mods keep the game fresh and fix what players dislikeMedium

13% of the reviews mention mods, usually as a plus: new classes, enemies and skins, and quality-of-life tweaks. "Modding community keeps this game alive and well." Some players treat mods as the answer to the game's flaws. They name faster combat, faster walking, curio hints and level-restriction removal as fixes for the grind and pace ("just don't be too afraid to get some QoL mods"). Mods come up far more among players with many hours in the game. A few report mod-related bugs, and one complains that an update reset their mod list.

Heroes you name, love and loseMedium

Getting attached to heroes and losing them to permadeath fills 7% of the reviews, and as many describe the game as addictive or call it a love-hate or "toxic" relationship. Players name recruits after friends or after their worst moments in a dungeon, then mourn them: "I've resorted to naming them by their role and numbers, but even then, I mourn the loss of my tiny pixel recruits." The stories are told fondly even when the review is a rant.

Strong value, especially on saleMedium

5% of the reviews bring up price or sales. A common point is that the game is discounted often and deeply and is an easy buy at that price: "the game is dirt cheap when it's on sale". Some suggest picking it up with the DLC in a sale bundle. A few lukewarm reviews say it is worth it only on sale, and a few complain about the DLC prices on top of the base game.

It holds up against Darkest Dungeon IIMedium

The sequel comes up in 4% of the reviews. Several that compare the two prefer the original for its Hamlet loop, long-term roster and tension. One player wrote "it took me 40 hours on dd2 to realise the prequel is just better". A few rate the sequel higher, others say they enjoyed both, and one wished the original had the sequel's hero relationships. Several hope a future game returns to this one's formula.

Where players are split

Difficulty: earned challenge or punishment for its own sakeHigh

33% of the reviews talk about difficulty, and the subject comes up about as often in negative reviews as in positive ones. Fans call the game brutal and say that is the point. They advise playing carefully, retreating early and accepting losses, and they compare it to Dark Souls. Detractors call it "punishing for the sake of being punishing" and say the game piles on penalties (quirks, diseases, stress, costly town upkeep) that turn into chores. Even Radiant, the easier mode, splits people: some recommend it for a first run, and others say it was still too punishing or too grindy. A smaller group warns that the game is "not for everyone", a line that mostly comes from players who recommend it anyway.

Learning the game: go in blind or read the wikiMedium

6% of the reviews talk about the learning curve, the tutorial or outside guides. Some players love discovering the systems by losing, and several recommend going in blind. Others found the onboarding poor: "Just a horrible new-player experience, with no explanation as to what's going on or how anything is working." These players say that learning curios, trinket traps and town upgrades meant reading a wiki, which they felt spoiled the experience. Defenders call the game a "knowledge check" that rewards study, and critics reply that a game shouldn't require homework.

The DLC: worth it, but not on a first campaignMedium

7% of the reviews discuss the DLC. Several call it worth buying, and The Color of Madness and the class packs get good words. The Crimson Court divides players. Some love its blood mechanic and bosses. Others call its curse and mosquito town event miserable, and several reviews advise leaving it off on a first save: "Dont pop crimson court too early or it will ruin your game." The Butcher's Circus PvP mode (2%) gets a few fans, while others resent its town events and multiplayer achievements in a single-player game. Reviewers also describe a new DLC released in August 2026, and DLC comes up in 12% of the reviews written from mid-August on. Some players returned happily ("they added a new DLC a full decade after the game's release"), and others dismissed its heroes: "The new characters are lame reskins."

What frustrates players

Streaks of misses and crits that wipe a partyHigh

RNG, dodge and critical hits come up in 21% of the reviews and in 39% of negative ones. Negative reviews describe high-accuracy attacks missing several times in a row, enemies critting over and over, and a whole party lost to one unlucky fight or a surprise miniboss on an easy quest: "even after 8 hours I feel like succeeding on any quest is just a coinflip." Some feel the dice are rigged against the player. Recommending reviews raise the same problem, usually as a caveat. Others defend it: "People will say this game is an RNG roll but its quite in fact a knowledge check." This group says preparation, retreating early and stacking the right trinkets keep the swings manageable. Several reviews describe a streak killing high-level heroes along with their best trinkets, which means hours of grind to rebuild.

Grind and repetition in the mid and late gameHigh

14% of the reviews call the game grindy, repetitive or tedious, and that rises to 33% of negative reviews. Players describe running the same dungeon layouts and enemies to level replacement heroes and pay for stress relief, quirk treatment and building upgrades: "It's fun for a while, but the charm wears off quickly as you grind and grind and grind and it becomes a chore." Rules that stop experienced heroes from taking low-level quests, and wipes that send players back to leveling recruits from scratch, make it worse. "I feel like the game simply doesn't respect your time enough." The grind comes up in recommending reviews too, and some of them suggest mods that trim it.

Slow animations and walkingLow

3% of the reviews complain about the pace, a little more often in negative ones: slow walking through corridors, long attack animations and scouting delays. "more than half of this game is waiting on animations and walking through halls." Players are surprised there is no built-in speed setting and point to mods or a config-file edit instead.

A punishing endgameLow

2% of the reviews single out the final Darkest Dungeon missions. These players say the late game demands several full parties of maxed heroes and limits how often a hero can enter, and they say a wipe there means regrinding. One player who finished it wrote: "early to mid game is one of the best experiences in gaming, meanwhile endgame is the bane of my existence". A negative review says "it slogs hard in the end game." A few found the looping ending a poor payoff for the effort.

Crashes, launch failures and post-update troubleLow

2% of the reviews report technical problems: crashes, lost or corrupted saves, a mouse-cursor bug and a game that won't launch. Several reviews from late summer 2026 tie their problems to recent updates. They describe frame-rate drops, an update that "reset mod list, overwrote save, and now crashes save instantly on load", and the legacy build running smoothly but lacking the new DLC.

Controller and Steam Deck controlsLow

A small group (1%) found the gamepad layout awkward. One Steam Deck player called it "a nightmare, far more challenging than the game itself". Another said a start button on Steam Deck opened the DLC store page instead of a new campaign.

In-game DLC promotion and the EULALow

0.5% of the reviews (19) object to in-game DLC promotion or the license terms. Players describe a banner on the Hamlet screen that partly covers the stagecoach, plus store prompts and update-feed posts. "Stop shoving DLC advertisements into the core gameplay." A few also object to a EULA that calls the game an online game and lets the publisher revoke access.

3. The player conversation

Love-hate jokes, party-wipe stories and the Ancestor's lines quoted back are common, and some short positive reviews are nothing but a narrator quote or "peak". The negative side rests on a few points (RNG streaks, grind, pace and the feeling that the game wastes your time), and it often concedes that the presentation is excellent.

Players under 10 hours mention controller problems a little more often than others, and some describe early wipes they didn't understand. Players past 50 hours bring up mods, the narrator, the DLC, the sequel and the endgame more often. RNG also comes up more in their reviews, usually in stories about losing high-level heroes and their trinkets.

Sentiment stayed steady from 2024 to 2026, with weekly positive shares mostly between the mid-80s and mid-90s. Reviews written after the August 2026 DLC talk more about the DLC and its in-game promotion, while RNG and grind stay the main complaints.

4. What the developers could do

1. Add built-in speed settings for combat animations and walking. Players who complain about the pace point to mods or config edits as the fix, and some name the same mods as a way to cut the grind.
2. Expand the custom difficulty toggles to cover what popular mods do. Grind is raised in 33% of negative reviews, and players lean on mods that remove level restrictions or supply higher-level recruits to skip the regrind after a wipe.
3. Make the odds behind misses and crits easier to read. RNG comes up in 39% of negative reviews, and some of them believe the dice are rigged after high-accuracy attacks miss in a row. Reviewers don't ask for this directly, but clearer hit, dodge and crit information could answer that suspicion.
4. Explain curios, trinket traps and town upgrades inside the game. Newer players say they needed a wiki to learn systems that cost them heroes, and one recommending review still wished the tutorial taught "the town upgrades/mechanics which are essential".
5. Fix the post-update crashes, frame drops and mod-list resets. Several late-2026 reviews report the game failing to launch or losing saves after updates, with only the legacy build, which can't run the new DLC, working for them.
6. Let players hide the DLC banner and opt out of Butcher's Circus town events. Reviews from 2026 describe a Hamlet banner that covers the stagecoach and PvP events that players can't avoid in a single-player campaign.
7. Warn players before they enable The Crimson Court on a first campaign. Several reviews advise newcomers to leave it off, because its curse and town event can overwhelm a fresh save.
8. Rework the gamepad layout for Steam Deck and controller play. A few players found the gamepad layout awkward, one Steam Deck player called it harder than the game, and another hit a start-button bug that opened the DLC store.