That was very informative so thank you for sharing it. I have been following the game ever since the Early Access release when it was heaped with praise and didn't know they had spiked the difficulty significantly due to over zealous feedback until I read this blog post by Jeff Vogel.

Following on to the Steam forum discussions it seems to me that the primary pitfall of buying into Early Access in quite a few cases is that by the time said game is released most people have already invested many hours in it and there is almost nothing left for them to explore anymore. The constant demand for making it more difficult just shows that most have mastered it by playing it over and over again, thus finding very little challenge left for them to look forward to in the final release.

thing is, it was supposed to be a difficult game from the start (seems dev has been making it easier over time --- im starting to get impression not only from this game but others, that the intention had been while on KS was for a hard game -- which had been toned down after whinging from Early Access buyers)

From reading Jeff Vogel’s post, it appears that it must have been the other way around. That the game was already a hard game when it hit early access. People played it, mastered it, and some of them asked for more difficulty, because they had exhausted everything the game had to offer and wanted more. So more layers of difficulty were added by the developer, unfortunately eliminating previously viable ways to play the game, frustating the people who did not ask for more difficutly because they enjoyed the difficulty as was. So the developer included options to disable these new layers of difficulty. At least, that is how I understood it. But I have not played the game, so I cannot judge for myself.

Indeed, that was my interpretation as well. The game was already hard and challenging but now it has become absolutely brutal for most players because the devs catered too much towards the masochists in the Early Access program as that is what Jeff Vogel's blog post was about.

From the recent helpful reviews of the game it can be observed how much the game has actually changed to become excruciatingly difficult and an exercise in frustration, even for players that were there from the beginning. I haven't played the game either though so can't say for certain but if it has now reached a point where its difficult just for the sake of being really hard on players then it is definitely not for me.

It's not really improved, per se. It's...refined. Distilled, perhaps.

I can't recommend it, though I have a few dozen hours into it, unless you truly get your rocks off playing games that aren't designed to be played so much as endured. The biggest problem I have is the RNG; there's no reliable improvement in your survival as your skill and understanding of the game grows. It's all about playing insurance angles and accepting that you've got no "get out of jail" cards.

I would recommend against buying it. It's not a good game. It's not fun. But if that's what you want, buy it and...enjoy, I suppose.


EDIT: You know, the perfect analogy hit me a moment after I posted. You ever drink a really peaty whisky? Not a Talisker, which is sort of like sucking seawater out of a fish asshole, but something like a really heavy Laphroag? That's like drinking swamp water strained through a dirty diaper. But still, some whisky fans love it. If you're the video game equivalent of that whisky snob - someone who finds enjoyment in truly hostile territory - then Darkest Dungeons is the game for you. Otherwise, no.

Actually I played this the other day for the first time on a mate's PC, and once I'd figured out that most of the "options" in the game are crap, it's actually ridiculously easy - but at the same time grindy.

This post hits the nail on the head big-time: http://www.darkestdungeon.com/topic/my-impressions-after-20-hours/

IMO if this game is supposed to be so "hard-core" then the easiest change they could make is remove ALL healing abilities during combat - allow only removing debuffs and bleeding/blight, but require that you camp and use camping abilities to heal. Also remove the ability to just use objects to heal (which BTW doesn't even skip your turn, so you can heal AND take a shot!). Then balance that with more camping opportunities and/or the ability to keep a second group of 4 heroes "in reserve" to replace fallen comrades at camping events (maybe?).

The stupid thing is, a lot of the latest flak is because of lame mechanics that they put in place to counter people abusing existing lame mechanics - such as the fact you can heal during combat, but not AFTER combat (!!?!). So of course some people were drawing combats out to heal their guys, so they added a lame "stall" mechanic to stop it. Since I prefer to kill rather than heal - and I realise losses happen and accept them - this mechanic barely registered when I played it (and then only when all my losers missed the last enemy in one turn).

Which is all massively disappointing. I was so looking forward to this game, and not only were the mechanics never really "hard-core", they were quite often nonsensical - and they've layered even more lame stuff on top to fix it, instead of taking a long hard look at the game and reevaluating it.

I do honestly hope that sometime between now and the game is due to be released (January), they fix all of this. It's possible - though I'm not sure how they'll manage it.

Because I admit that though I didn't have many hours with it, and it was easier than I expected, it wasn't completely boring nor ridiculously unfair. At least not in the limited time I had with it so far.

exactly i googled and found videos, this game is a very very good game, but there too much motions (the way the fighters animate and move thats too much for me)
and effects so i have to avoid this game, nevertheless it looks like a very good game, if i did not had any motionsickness/photosensitivity i'd buy this game.

if you like this kind of games you should buy it.

i check the upcoming games list every day, so far these are coming:

Nuclear Throne
Master of Orion
Shadow Warrior 2
Darkest Dungeon
Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity
Ashes of the Singularity
Offworld Trading Company
Servo
Sorcerer King
StarCrawlers
Nekro
Crawl

i googled for all these games and videos aswell, unfortunately there isn't a single game on this list i will be able to play
so i keep hoping for more old stuff that i can play, like the games i have mentioned dozens of times before in various posts when people were talking about older games.
If these games could come (8 or more) then i buy them all, but if they would arrive at all, it will be a long time waiting
but i keep hoping, and check the page at least once a day.

I was lucky to buy some newly released retail casual HOG games (HiddenObjectGames)
The funny part is that even if steam would be also totally drm free they would also have no games i can play that i dont already own, so i guess its because of all these modern games that are beiing released nowadays.
As for gamersgate they only get new steam games already have all the drm free games that i dont have on retail so i am waiting and waiting... cause if you want to buy but there is simply nothing that fits the bill to buy.
Ahwell, mayb 2016 will bring more really old games without 3d, heavvymotiont/ lighteffects and the likes.
My motto is : less is more in my case :D