izigame.me

Firstly, game is so slow. Not the gameplay or story progression but the animations are slow. If you want to really enjoy it you need faster darkest dungon mod, my fav is the one in nexus.
It saves hours in a campaign.
Then the tutorial is slow, it becomes a chore every game.
Then you need to complete 5-10 quests so you can unlock all the buildings and see heroes you want to use.
Even then it's grind mostly. Need busts to upgrade buildings so you grind busts. Heroes need exp but missions suck so you grind them on same missions.
Tip: Instead of choosing a party from ground up for every mission you can implement a corps like system with solid teams.
It's easier to manage who gets to rest and who goes out with dedicated teams. It would be cool addition to have two parties out at the same time so they train outside your control or a way to train heroes without grinding.
And game doesn't even respects when you do all that and raise a good hero.
Your crusader who is sole survivor of a boss fight, trained and equipped well. Gets random crit, blighted in one round and then dies next round without ever getting a chance to be healed.
It would be reasonable if enemies were faster and it makes sense a legend can die to a bastard arrow but game calculating who takes turns is stupid.
Instead of hero with 9+ speed the skeleton guy with 1 can take priority sometimes. There should be safeguards like if hero has more than double speed or 20 dodge and enemy's accuracy is debuffed, it should be certain they will miss or certain hero will get to strike first.
And crits make no sense, enemy does a critical attack but it only hurts a little,but your heroes still get stressed out.
You can lose heroes in stupid ways like they refuse to eat a meal then they starve+death's door+ stressed from death's door+heart attack. And you can't do anything while it's happening. It's dumb.
I think best feature is having quirks and trinkets to personalize your heroes, making them feel special.
But majority of quirks and trinkets are simply useless and clutter the game instead. Or have stupid debuffs that ruin them. Or simply too weak you don't even bother equipping one.
Heroes getting quirks in town events-activities is a nice touch.
Getting random quirks after quests however makes no sense. Virtous melee hero who survives deathly encounter earns a ranged trait for no reason.
Quirk earning is a wasted potential.
It would be more enjoyable and it would feel more personal if traits were given by specific actions. Ex:
-Guy who disarms traps more gets better at it.
-Heroes that get afflicted constantly breaksdown completely needing proper treatment or goes
full psychotic.-And make it double edged sword, instead of simply stress debuff add +%25
damage so he is unstable but stong making it a decision to treat that hero or not-
-Guy who goes to warrens a lot should be warrens explorer. -This enables you to make region specific teams.-
-Guy who lost a close friend to beast should be beast hater.
Heroes that proved their worth or sole survivors of bossfights got things like "Veteran's guilt" or "Local Legend" that also effects other teammates making them calmer since they are adventuring with a guy that 1v1 an alligator. Or the guy who got afflicted and killed his own teammate making his future teammates stressed and more likely to turn paranoid.
It would feel more personal when you lose those heroes.
Quirks and stress is what makes this game unique.
There should be a lot more quirks and diseases but important ones that make you care not -%5 melee damage. Imagine diseases spreading in barracks, or progressing worse and heroes getting more and more tired and needing treatment after you non stop used them for a month.
"Irrepressible" should not be simply +%5 virtue chance. That makes it useless clutter, give him a good buff so we can rely on that hero not letting us down.

You don't feel anything when guy with no reaction to his own actions and randomly gained quirks die to a random reason you couldn't avoid.
Most trinkets are mediocre while good ones have stupid debuffs that ruin them for no reason, earning that trinket is really challenging at first why not simply let player enjoy it?
Grinding could be fun too but all the missions are essentially same:
-Walk around the dungeon until you see enough rooms.
-Activate 3 items (or gather 3 items from rooms) So walk around dungeon until you see enough rooms.
-Skirmish/Cleanse Walk around dungeon and find room battles. Only difference is you can avoid wandering uselessly but that's only if you get to scout before, but scouting is chance based too. So same.
-Scouting quest is literally walking around dungeon
-Boss missions are slightly different since you avoid other rooms to hold on to your strength until boss.
Also why does bosses punish you for trying new tactics? Break the guy's stuff and they all get angrier and stronger. Or the game doesn't even let you break it. It's opposite of Fear&Hunger instead of outsmarting the fight you get punished for not grinding until boss HP runs out.
And all the dungeons feel the same, even though warrens are square shaped and weald is straightforward because of how missions are structured, you end up walking in a single line.
They could have added more variation, making dispersed paths that doesn't connect later on, with different rewards and risks so you can choose where to go or add VIP escort missions or survival ones where you fend off waves-Like farmstead-. Or ability to send another party to a lower level mission so they can grind themselves while acknowledging threat of losing them out of your control.
Like add option to split party in half in scouting mission, so they scout faster but they need to be more self sustaining, and why not make speed more useful.
Or make the layout more complex and give us ability to flank enemies in cleansing missions with a %100 chance to surprise them.
Or attend to hamlet's needs to upgrade it instead of grinding busts.
Things like buying campfires in short quests, using laudanum for stress healing, scouting for the room right next to you so you can plan ahead, arbalest/musketeer healing bleed, plague doctor having stronger battlefield medicine so she can be a weak healer, occultist having min 1 heal so he doesn't kill people randomly with bleed, campfire scouting skills being passive so you get the buff but don't spend time on it, meeting allies or another party you sent before etc. would make the game a lot more enjoyable.
Camping skills take too much time and half of them are useless. Scouting should be given free at least for the room right next to you and all the skills related to scouting are so useless they are not worth the time and instead should be passive skill for equipping that hero. Having +%25 damage is better than idk a chance to scout ahead the corridor you will walk anyways because there is no other way.
Only differences are farmstead dlc and player's choice antiquarian rushes for money those feel nice but still you have to grind for the good missions and resources.
It's really, mostly grinding for a while so you can train your heroes faster and then they will reject your orders or die for some nonsense. It's a common thing for the game to unnecessarily restrict stuff so you grind more. Mods can help with that.
This game needs a remake with all of it's mods. Promise is good but you can't connect with heroes and their loses because heroes themselves don't care, they don't care if they accidently kill some of their own, or they don't care if they survive hell, they simply go to tavern have some drinks and get a random quirk.
Also Ancestor is cool but he talks too much for my taste.
Also even though nobody cares about it, I think it would be a nice touch if the same effect was seen at the same time. Like two heroes get blighted, instead of the horror+blight it would be comfier showing the blight once on two heroes and then the horror.