Here's the deal: the very nature of this game is punishing. It's a full PvP extraction genre game. However, it has several systems which make rebuilding and customizing gear very accessible. This is especially true if you actually do proper risk reward analysis instead of bringing your life savings into a run.

Overall this is a strong contender for this genre as it grows. The most obvious comparison is Dark and Darker which is currently further along in development. Dungeonborne generally has a bit longer duration to player encounters, but it really depends. Visually, Dungeonborne also has a cleaner user interface and animations.

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The following is a meta-analysis and will change as time progresses:

For those of you who are older than 20 years old: mastery is dead. The way that people play games now has them demanding that core fundamental abilities provide a baseline skill floor to create balance. This is in part because information is easy nowadays. If a strategy exists it will become dominant because of information transfer speed, so core balance of games is a direct comparison to prevalent meta-knowledge. In the past, knowledge transfer was slow and tedious so it was required that you look inward. This meant that a vast quantity of moderate strategies presented themselves simultaneously. Nowadays, people look outward. Knowledge is external. Blame is external. Game balance is determined by the external. Nowadays fewer stronger strategies develop simultaneously.

Part of this game is gear-based, which is a multiplier of player skill. For classes or strategies without developed builds this creates a contextual mis-balancing. Strong strategies exist, but when people see them as too tedious or too far removed from the skill floor it becomes divisive. "Sweaty" "Try-hard" "Competitive" "Abusive" "Exploiter" Pick your insult, it's as old as time. The reality is that there are plenty of other strong strategies waiting to be found, but most people demand only numerical balance and refuse to change their strategies.

The fact of the matter is that the game is early access and some balancing issues do exist. However, the division between the floor and the ceiling is mostly comprised of player skill issues within the same gear score level (and every balance patch specifically tries to address this). Each patch has been a serious improvement primarily in terms of targeting non-mastery related issues (gear/statistical issues). But (and this is probably a bug) occasionally matchmaking is imperfect and puts low and high gear score together. I have never once had this occur so it may be a regional or time-of-day issue or a misunderstanding. (If you come in with partial gear but with some of it high rarity, then you can kill players and mobs and equip a more full kit of higher rarity gear. Some people probably die to those people and think they queued in with that whole kit. Given that most people in lower matchmaking I've seen have completely unrelated bonuses when I kill people with better gear this is likely the case or those people are making really bad decisions.)

Specifically in recent patches they have addressed certain edge-case abuse strategies (heirloom interaction speed stacking), and added counter-play options against dominant powerful classes (fire flask debuff / pyro abilities). The average player who does not understand simply sees "weak class nerfed, strong class unnerfed" because interactions do not exist until someone else provides the meta-knowledge. That or some flavour of "just make my class stronger instead of requiring me to use game mechanics/items". Seriously, people say the craziest things.

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Long story short: the game is fundamentally strong and weekly balance patches directly address the issues between gear-balance and mastery-balance. This is incredibly difficult given the modern nature of game meta-knowledge and they're doing great. The genre is punishing, but this game has strong catch-up mechanics.

Do not listen to the whinging of other reviewers. Mastery is dead, so people are afraid to try strategies that aren't already meta. That or they complain because they have not been taught how to experiment successfully without external knowledge. Most players simply do not comprehend the most basic synergies and mathematical comparisons. If you want to do well you need to adapt your strategy to the situation. No amount of numerical upgrades to your class will change that requirement (without completely breaking game balance). Those types of changes only affect players with higher skill levels. Every balance patch has been very good.

Here's the deal: the very nature of this game is punishing. It's a full PvP extraction genre game. [i]However[/i], it has several systems which make rebuilding and customizing gear very accessible. This is especially true if you actually do proper risk reward analysis instead of bringing your life savings into a run. Overall this is a strong contender for this genre as it grows. The most obvious comparison is Dark and Darker which is currently further along in development. Dungeonborne generally has a bit longer duration to player encounters, but it really depends. Visually, Dungeonborne also has a cleaner user interface and animations. --- The following is a meta-analysis and will change as time progresses: For those of you who are older than 20 years old: mastery is dead. The way that people play games now has them demanding that core fundamental abilities provide a baseline skill floor to create balance. This is in part because information is easy nowadays. If a strategy exists it will become dominant because of information transfer speed, so core balance of games is a direct comparison to prevalent meta-knowledge. In the past, knowledge transfer was slow and tedious so it was required that you look inward. This meant that a vast quantity of moderate strategies presented themselves simultaneously. Nowadays, people look outward. Knowledge is external. Blame is external. Game balance is determined by the external. Nowadays fewer stronger strategies develop simultaneously. Part of this game is gear-based, which is a multiplier of player skill. For classes or strategies without developed builds this creates a contextual mis-balancing. Strong strategies exist, but when people see them as too tedious or too far removed from the skill floor it becomes divisive. "Sweaty" "Try-hard" "Competitive" "Abusive" "Exploiter" Pick your insult, it's as old as time. The reality is that there are plenty of other strong strategies waiting to be found, but most people demand only numerical balance and refuse to change their strategies. The fact of the matter is that the game is early access and some balancing issues do exist. [i]However[/i], the division between the floor and the ceiling is mostly comprised of player skill issues [i]within the same gear score level[/i] (and every balance patch specifically tries to address this). Each patch has been a serious improvement primarily in terms of targeting non-mastery related issues (gear/statistical issues). But (and this is probably a bug) occasionally matchmaking is imperfect and puts low and high gear score together. I have [i]never once[/i] had this occur so it may be a regional or time-of-day issue or a misunderstanding. (If you come in with partial gear but with some of it high rarity, then you can kill players and mobs and equip a more full kit of higher rarity gear. Some people probably die to those people and think they queued in with that whole kit. Given that most people in lower matchmaking I've seen have completely unrelated bonuses when I kill people with better gear this is likely the case or those people are making really bad decisions.) Specifically in recent patches they have addressed certain edge-case abuse strategies (heirloom interaction speed stacking), and added counter-play options against dominant powerful classes (fire flask debuff / pyro abilities). The average player who does not understand simply sees "weak class nerfed, strong class unnerfed" because interactions do not exist until someone else provides the meta-knowledge. That or some flavour of "just make my class stronger instead of requiring me to use game mechanics/items". Seriously, people say the craziest things. --- Long story short: the game is fundamentally strong and [i]weekly[/i] balance patches directly address the issues between gear-balance and mastery-balance. This is [i]incredibly[/i] difficult given the modern nature of game meta-knowledge and they're doing great. The genre is punishing, but this game has strong catch-up mechanics. Do not listen to the whinging of other reviewers. Mastery is dead, so people are afraid to try strategies that aren't already meta. That or they complain because they have not been taught how to experiment successfully without external knowledge. Most players simply do not comprehend the most basic synergies and mathematical comparisons. If you want to do well you need to adapt your strategy to the situation. No amount of numerical upgrades to your class will change that requirement (without completely breaking game balance). Those types of changes only affect players with higher skill levels. Every balance patch has been [i]very good[/i].