Do you like clicking things and increasing difficulty? Buy this. Great fun, especially at the price point. Mechanics increase in complexity as you unlock new things but never get in the way of the core gameplay loop

The Factory Must Grow.
The Factory Must Grow.
The Factory Must Grow.

CA messed up the Total War Series, and I'm sad it took me technical problems on my own system to realise. I was one of the unfortunate souls that was simply not able to play this game for longer than 15 minutes without crashing. Was still excited at that point, but getting to the full experience of this game would require a new player to spend around 300,- euros. That is a frankly, insane amount of money for what this and other Total War games are.

Don't support CA for products like this. Vote with your wallet. A few games I can recommend that are under the price of a single TW:WH3 DLC:
Terraria
Project Zomboid
Plants versus Zombies (the original)
Mini Motorways
Binding of Isaac

And so much more. Even if you think there'll be no other game in this niche that'll scratch the itch, just hold off on buying any of this stuff. CA will only learn to respect their customers and shipped finished products unlike CDPR, Bethesda, and seemingly every other game dev out there with some legacy to their name.
♥♥♥♥ the corporate money race. Pirate it for all I care

This review is slightly premature - I have not yet beat the game (which I intend to do) but I'm quite sure my opinion is already quite formed. If not, I'll edit this later. For brevity I'll assume you know how the game works a little bit.

I like Darkest Dungeon 2 a lot. I love Darkest Dungeon 1.

And a large part of the problems I have with this game stem from those two sentences. In isolation, this game is an amazing take on the Hades style rogue lite - there's a story you follow, characters interact to a certain extent, and death is not the end as you power up for the next run to get you even further. But this progression feels off compared to DD1.

Runs in DD2 are too long compared to DD1 - failure is part of the gameplay experience, but it is hard to trace back why you failed in DD2. Was it your party comp against the final boss? Sometimes you simply get a DPS check - nothing wrong with this, you get these all the time in games. But with rare exception can you actually do anything to change the outcome. Compared to DD1, you could cut your losses and save the characters. The characters were the invested time and gold - flee, preserve them and live to fight with your gained knowledge.

Sometimes in Darkest Dungeon I feel powerless. You're not in charge of what will happen and you never will truly be. And that's what I love about these games. They challenge you to make the best of a bad situation.

But I feel like I'm just waiting for the game to allow me to unlock the correct character paths and incremental upgrades, combat items, trinkets - and that's not knowledge I'm getting. I'm not making the most of a bad situation. The situation is getting better.

The game is good, potentially great even - but it's more of a testament to how good DD1 was than how good DD2 is.

not the good type of RNG, game feels more grindy than tactical or fun

Crashed and froze on me - I didn't get very deep in the game but combat wise there didn't seem to be much to set it apart from just another game in the genre

Let this be the mark I leave - Fatshark is more interested in making money than listening to their playerbase. Essential features such as crafting will not be in the game at launch, and other systems will not be improved upon in timely fashion. The game is good but I can't refund as I've played too long - don't let developers who don't make good on their word get away with it. Vote with your wallet.

Will change this review when they patch in their promises

EDIT - I didn't end up doing so. Big update dropped recently, but it's just too late to be frank. Games like this shouldn't be lauded for the fixes they make later - I personally like Cyberpunk and the new update in that game is great! But it does not absolve CDPRs previous sins.

What do you want me to say? Chill game to play with friends, gameplay is easy to pick up but has some interesting nuances that keep it fresh for a long time. Actively being updated (with modding support now!) and a fantastic community to boot.

Not a game for leaf lovers though, be warned pointy ears.
ROCK AND STONE!

I'd love to like this game, but there's just too many issues that make me not want to play it ever again. As some of the other negative reviews of this game mention, the save system is really bad: if you make an early mistake on a campiagn level like building towards the wrong direction (where the final wave will be coming from), you can basically be stuck in a nigh unwinnable position. You're simply done, but the feedback of your mistake only comes after investing a frankly crazy amount of time.

The campaign in general is just.. disappointing? If you expect good progression with fun missions, this is not the place. The maps do not feel that unique, and having played some of the standard mode before the campaign came out, you can again almost softlock yourself by not getting the right buildings or upgrades unlocked. For a first time player, you don't know what is good or bad. Or, of course, you turn down the difficulty after realising your mistake an hour or two in.

Again, I'd really like to love this game. The concept is great, art style is nice, but it's just not accommodating for anyone except the people who have 8+ hours in a day to spend perfecting a level. For someone like me, that's just not worth the investment.

Atmosphere is executed EXTREMELY well and they don't kid when you're told this game is hard: it is hard, you will die and that's part of the experience. Great game, hope it comes out of early access with all promised features soon.