Darkest Dungeon, as the name suggests, is a dungeon crawler. The gameplay loop is basically hiring heroes, sending them to dungeons, fighting turn-based battles and then selling the treasures to heal the heroes who got out alive, upgrade them, improve your hamlet and finance more expeditions. This is repeated until you have heroes strong enough to go to the titular Darkest Dungeon itself and beat the game.

Saying it like that makes it look like it's just hours upon hours of grinding, and in way... yeah, that's kinda it. Yet, the game does have several systems in place that create an emerging narrative for you not to feel that way – they won't click for everyone, but that's okay.

Another fair criticism is the game's RNG. You might be faced with situations such as missing four hits in a row, dying because of it. Fans of the game will say that you must plan around that possibility, but it can be very frustrating and make people hate the game.

In my case, I really enjoyed how it had me at the edge of my seat most of the time. I was always struggling – dealing with things like trying to keep my heroes sane and alive, or saving enough money to get through the day and buy enough resources for the next expedition.

The way Darkest Dungeon cleverly handles risk management is also engaging, using a logic of high risk / high reward. I.e., your characters are low on HP but there's just one room left to clear, what you do?

If you choose to flee, your characters will get stressed (which will cost time and money to heal), and you will lose the extra rewards from completion – rewards that you might need for some essential stuff.

If you choose to enter the room, your characters might all die permanently in battle, making you lose all the progress and investment made in them. On the other hand, your characters might get positive traits and XP from the battle, and find valuable treasures.