"5. General Access
We also reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate your access to all or part of the Game or to any product or service available through the Game or any Red Hook website for any reason or no reason, with or without notice."

Nice EULA, guys. No.

"...We also reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate your access to all or part of the game..." - section 5. general access
"...When you are using the game, the game may monitor your computer's random access memory (RAM) for unauthorized third -party program..." - section 14
"...we may terminate this agreement and your access to the game immediately if you breach this agreement..." - section 20

I think the game is fine until I go to a creature den or find a drummer enemy or fight most cosmic enemies, basically the game can be okay but there are so many badly balanced/annoying enemies or bosses or mechanics that I suspect half of the game was developed by Red Hook and the other half was developed by a raging homeless person under the influence


to further explain I'll list off a few things that suck:

the max stress being lowered to 10 isn't necessarily bad on its own but some enemies have basically regular perfectly fine abilities but then add stress to them, for ex; the bishop enemy which is a regular cadaver enemy that has an ability that removes ALL positives tokens from a hero, ignores dodge, and debuffs a hero so that they cannot gain dodge for 2 rounds.

It requires a "benediction" token, which requires him to use another ability to gain these tokens. Mainly fine on its own, not anything too crazy and it requires set-up. Can be powerful against heroes that primarily need dodge and removing all positive tokens is very strong.
Then they just add on +2 stress to target for a already strong but mainly fair skill. A few mishaps aren't bad, but when so many enemies have problems like this, it stacks up

Two examples, Woodsman, which is a tanky defender cadaver enemy, has an ability named Carve The Toy which deals solid damage (4-8), has 10% CRIT, can be used from all ranks and has a 3/3 bleed (essentially dealing up to 13-17 damage ignoring crit) Mainly fine, quite high potential damage but nonetheless nothing too bad.

But it deals +1 stress on top of that. This is just an example of how enemies that aren't meant for stress dealing have perfectly fine abilities with additional stress for no reason, which again isn't too bad on its own but whenever a large percent of the enemies in the game have this problem it becomes problematic or at least moderately frustrating.

The other example is the Deacon enemy which is a cosmic/cultist enemy that you can just regularly encounter or at the end of a level. Nothing special. He is a tanky, high damage dealing enemy that has 5 abilities which all deal very high or solid damage and solid to potentially quite good debuffs. Alot of these abilities not only deal high damage and add things like bleeds or removes block tokens but he can also provide himself at the start of combat with a defense buff making him receive half damage from either all ranged or all melee skills.

This enemy is already strong, arguably too strong, but I am not kidding, 3/5 of his skills have stress on top of that. One of the abilities that doesnt IS THE ONE HE DOES AT THE START OF COMBAT. And these abilites aint no measly +1 stress, sundering steel is a high damage (8-16) single target skill that removes all block tokens and also has +2 stress. Weight of worlds hits all enemies for singularly lower damage (3-5) immobilizes them, but it also adds stress to all of them. With a 50% CHANCE TO ADD AN ADDITIONAL STRESS. Meaning he inflicts 4-8 stress each time he uses this ability with a 1 round cooldown and can be used from any rank.

The other skill, lord have mercy on your poor soul if he decides to rain it down on you, is called exultation which admittedly does need his cultist allies he spawns with to take rounds to buff him (but they are capable of healing and defensive buffs so either way) but deals a massive 15-25 damage with a 10/3 bleed. 10 damage every round for three rounds. Essentially this skill deals up to 45-55 damage and on top of that deals +4 stress with a 50% chance to deal 5 instead. Of course its also any rank. Remember that this enemy is a normally occuring enemy, not rare or special or anything.

I could go on and on but there are too many enemies to even list here that have unnecessary stress or other effects. Stress also cannot be effectively removed mid-expedition very well as stress healing skills require the target to have +5 stress to remove any stress. Whenever you reach 10/10 stress you essentially have a heart attack from the first game combined with a unsatisfying and annoying rng-reliant mechanic known as relationships.

Also have fun dealing with whatever negative trait you can gain, and -3 relationship to the entire hero party (and the deaths door debuff) If it makes you any happier, in darkest dungeon one the meltdown equivalent had a 75% chance to be an affliction and a 25% chance for a virtue but they have further lowered the chances of virtue equivalent in this game by 5%.

Traits are not balanced and are jokes in terms of balancing. The amount of nearly completely unimpactful negative traits versus character ruining ones is crazy. Not being able to reroll traits (on base, you can much much later in the game for a price) makes sense without putting much thought into it until you realize that if players get unlucky enough they either have to endure just bad rng that they have no control over or start an expedition and slowly have their heroes die to reset the traits.

Stress healing characters being required sucks big time
Many many mid-expedition bosses require certain types of teams or are nearly impossible (for ex; the sleeping general, without multiple ranged characters your cooked pal) which sucks

Memories need buffs or something like buddy never will I ever pick +10% blight resistance over +10% damage

unfortunately like the first game alot of the best strategies is just bum rushing enemies and merking them with high damage before they can do much because of stress mechanics and other goofs, making slower, dot based or more defensive teams get their hams absolutely steamed in comparison and forcing more unsatisfying combat

stun rework isnt great because stuns are much more rare now normally plus some enemies have crazy stun resistance like regular cadaver foot soldiers having 50% but woodsman having 30% is wack

ripostes are dookie now either from some free combos on the enemies

the negative relationships and their effects are unsatisfying and suck, they make a skill for each hero in a negative relationship gain a debuff whenever it is used and force them to equip it for battle, even if you reach high reputation again with one another you need to wait for an inn to get rid of the relation

the negative callouts are usally too minor to matter like why would I care if my jester stabs my man at arms for like 2 damage dude meaning all of the debuffs come from the just obnoxious forced negative skills

the possible pip down and pip up interactions can be crazy stupid at times, I assume it may be because they are percentage based so if plague doctor takes 10 damage they want to hog the heals in comparison to the 0 hp tank bleeding out carrying the team

in conclusion I do have a lot of hours but most of them have been spent not very satisfied. I have 650 hours in darkest dungeon one only on pc btw whilst writing this if it gives you a good comparison of bang for buck or quality
save your money and buy darkest dungeon one or any other roguelike or indie game