Recent reviews by WRussoW

Nice weather!

I'd like to begin with a simple fact that the game is still scary despite its age. It manages to grasp the horror essence very well. It's also still fun to stroll, drag stuff around, spin it in your hands. Inspecting everything seems like a good idea though sometimes it takes such an extreme you feel like you make friends with nearby walls as you try to get what you need to find. But as far as you're oblivious to the surrounding and don't know what to expect, you'll be creeped out be every possible noise the game throws at you during your searches for the solutions. I wouldn't say it has big replayability potential as you will notice that most events are scripted. So as you achievement hunt, you may get tired a bit, though hardmode brings out a new spark to the whole process as it tests how well you've managed to remember everything and pull every action as efficiently as possible. But beware, you might be met with crushes quite often.
Additional "Justine" content feels nice as well. All of a sudden it actually requires you to use your surroundings, so don't get lost there because the main game didn't really force you to carry things much. Though the free DLC has it own issues like the game's closure when you exit or simply die. Not to mention that having to repeat the whole process of completing it at least several times to see all of the endings doesn't really seem all that rewarding.
The workshop support is amazing and allows you to explore new experience as you spend more time in the game.
All in all, the game aged well and it would be a good choice to give it a shot.

"Nothing is meant to be fair, and apparently by design" - Mathieu Cote (Game director On Dead by Daylight)

I can give you a single reason why you shouldn't buy the game: since 1992 there's not a single other title or game that Behaviour Interactive, the video game developer, owns that was somewhat successful and not related to Dead by Daylight's IP in any way while even DBD itself was originally made by Swedish studio Starbreeze Studios. It should be telling.

Now I will try to explain why I write a negative review despite having a lot of hours and constantly playing this game to this day.

From a psychological standpoint:
The game lures people into gambling addiction on purpose!
If you're online enough, you could have seen people complaining over the fact that they don't really appreciate Dead by Daylight but they are unable to quit it. The fun fact is the game that is based a lot on RNG factors, aka luck, and tries to look "competetive" develops gambling addiction. It's the core issue.
You win, then you lose, after that you go for another match to show off your skills of defeating the unfair events and survive or kill every survivor. It's addiction is based on a constant feeling of irritation, the developers acknowledged it during one of their interviews. Gambling addiction funnily comes from losing, not winning. It will make you want to go into another match to blow the steam off after getting defeated previously and finally succeed. Yet you will still be annoyed by everything. By one of the most toxic communities, by poor balance decisions, countless bugs, cheaters. Despite bringing the feeling of satisfaction sometimes, your mental state overall will be worse by the end of most play sessions as you get drained out. You won't play this game because you like it, you will play it because you're addicted to the constant feeling of surpassing the irritation waiting for that perfect match to boost your dophamine. And the worst part is that you will feel rewarded because of the fact that you got luckier than players who are there to mock you and verbally abuse you by the end of a game no matter if they win or lose. It's not healthy no matter how you look at it. Even if you have "thick skin", it's simply unenjoyable to waste your time on such people when you think about it. And it's even more unenjoyayable to play a game where the developers do not make attempts at discouraging bad mannerism of the community.
PVP games have toxic enviroment more often than not in general but at least they try making the gameplay more skill dependant and you can actually feel rewarded for your skill. Not luck, RNG.

From an account security point:
The developers and the publisher, Behaviour or BHVR for short, are extremely incompetent. There's a very meaningful review in the top ones from a person who used to work there that I really recommend reading if you haven't done so. With the date of the review it's laughable that such issues described are still there. As an example of the incompetence, simple griefers could have banned people: they went online, started streaming while pretending to be a person they want to ban. With no investigation, staff has sent out bans to the actual users without any real capability to appeal the ban properly as support is very quick at closing submitted tickets. And they put HWID bans, so your EAC, Easy Anti Cheat program, will detect your hardware. DDoS attacks happen too often in this game as well, be aware if you still want to play it for some reason despite all of the valid point made in many negative reviews.
This game has a large number of cheaters especially for an online game that is also not free. I don't even talk about subtle onces, they are actually just customers for the developers as they said so themselves, look at the review of the person who worked there. I talk about the onces who straight up can keep you in a match for an hour while they break the game.

Talking about the other reasons why I can't recommend this game:
- It requires you to waste too much time grinding and paying despite not being a free game. Licenced characters can only be purchased via real money and if you want to get original ones for free, you need to put 50-60 hours for each character. And there are so many of them, it may take 850-1.020, if not more, hours to gain them all for free. Even more, considering they still add characters. This monetization policy is applicable for "free to play" games but Dead by Daylight has a noticable price already.
- The developers work on their game under flowed decision making of the higher-ups. Therefore, the game's "health" has never been a priority even when it's being stated as a goal. The reason for that is the fact that this game does not have any competition. This brings flaws and small patches that do not really feel drastic and entertaining. Moreover, if the upcoming changes are disliked by the community, it may take many years to be tuned or revisited again.
- The game feels dull actually. It doesn't have anything to do with the amount of hours one may have. The reason why you may be entertained for long enough is, again, RNG of the whole gameplay loop. We have no new content base gameplay additions, only new skins, killers and perks that kind of change gameplay in very illusive ways. Perks themselves don't do much outside of boosting efficiency of your actions that are few and same. Currently the game has a small number strong perks that the community takes and the other perks are not being used at all unless a player wants to feel less powerful for fun that often backfires with how unhealthy the community is. Instead of constantly working on the previous perks and killers the developers prefer to make new perks and killers for the sake of pumping up money even though new content ends up being recycled previous ideas and concepts. They rarely change anything, it's lucky to have a patch with some big interesting changes at least once a year.
- The developers obviously lean towards the side that brings more money with the help of the cosmetics. They often push out strong perks and killer only to balance them after sales of the new content go down significantly. So if there's a new perk that really dominates out of a proportion, be ready to see it for a year or two.
- The moderation on Steam and the official forum will most likely ban you for showing excessive concern about the game's health since if you complain too much, it ends up spreading negativity. This creates a false sense of positivity when the community is constantly annoyed with BHVR.
- I will point it out again, the support isn't really helpful and deals with many issues quite poorly. The in-game report system only flags certain players, they won't get banned if you press a few buttons there. To have a person banned for sure you need to take extensive amount of steps and most of the times you need proof. So if you don't have your games recorded or any other evidence, you can't sumbit tickets to support effectively.
- There are constant FOMO practices like exclusive battlepass skin recolors.
- The game lives off licenced content while having little to none original noteworthy authenticity, recent failed releases of BHVR tied to the game's franchise prove that.
- You will have to close your comment section. I've never seen a community being this obsessed with leaving toxic comments on your profile.
- The developers used to make insensitive comments in regards to accessibility features like colorblind settings.

Please, do not support this mess. It looks fun on the outside but it's a mess.