So here's the thing about Dead By Daylight—its highs are high, its lows are low, and everything in between is so meh that you basically go on autopilot as you play. That being said, I don't not recommend it. It can be a lot of fun, and you can definitely get a lot of mileage out of it before you burnout, and even then some afterward so long as you don't overdo it. But rest assured, you will hit the burnout eventually and become just as cynical as everyone else in the community.

You can play as one of two roles - killer, in which you're pitted against four other players and must prevent as many of them from escaping as possible; or survivor, where you can either team up with up to three of your friends or torture yourself in solo queue, getting random teammates that will sometimes work really well together but more often than not will sandbag you or leave you to die on first hook.

And therein lies one of the game's biggest downfalls—the RNG of it all. So much of how matches play out comes down to what tiles spawn in the map, what map you get, where generators spawn, and how successful the matchmaking system is at pairing you up against similarly skilled players. Add on top of that common issues with multiplayer games—latency (a huge one), players giving up early and heavily skewing the game toward one side, griefers, chat harrassers—and you get some understandably very frustrating scenarios that make you wonder why you even play the game.

And building on top of that, you have gameplay and meta that have grown extremely stale. For killer, it's camping/tunneling/slugging to quickly eliminate someone and tilt the game in their favor while using maximum gen regression and aura reading perks; and for survivors, it's bringing items with powerful add-ons to help them finish gens quickly or prevent hooks while using perks that best help waste the killer's time and prevent forced death. To an extent, this makes sense because obviously each side will want to use things that help them achieve their objective. But in practice, it just makes so many matches unfun to go against, especially when factoring in the previous issues with RNG and multiplayer problems. And if you don't want to run the meta? Well, enjoy getting tunneled out of the game or having 5 gens finished before you can get more than a hook or two. Obviously, this is not always the case, but again, we're talking the majority of matches and what sort of mindset the lingering feelings of these games put you in. Which doesn't even take into account the sort of meta issues that are removed from specific gameplay issues, like the toxicity and harassment in end-game chat (which can range from the more harmless playful shit-talking related to the game to the much more egregious slurs/self-harm encouragement).

Now, regarding these issues, It's not that the devs have done zero work over the years—they've made mostly small but some big changes to try to address the inevitable burnout players hit, but so far, they've done nothing substantial to really resolve it. They do have some big changes coming in Year 6, though, that should theoretically help shake up the game, so that's something to hopefully look forward to.

Ultimately, I do like Dead By Daylight a lot. The mindgame of looping and stealthing/hunting is so much fun from both roles. When you make the right call on which way a survivor went or synchronize well with a teammate to get out of a close call against killer, the feeling is so satisfying. You meet a lot of wholesome people in the game as well and can have some really nice/fun conversations in end-game chat. I've put in more than 1000 hours and have actually paid real money for fake clothes in the game. I will continue playing it and have hopes that they can still fix a lot of these issues. But to pretend there aren't some major problems would be disingenuous. The most important thing to remember is to not take it too seriously. But also, if you do feel yourself starting to (understandable), just step away for a little while and go back when you're less frustrated.

This game is such a fun time with friends! Though it's still in early access, the devs have already done a lot of QOL improvements while continuing to work on the main ongoing chapters of the game; there are now smaller, bite-sized missions you can play that have elements of RNG to them for replayability. The graphics and character movement animations aren't amazing, but they don't have to be—the atmosphere and level designs are wonderful, and the monsters that come with each one are terrifying when you're playing immersively, especially when you are separated from your teammates either by the environment or death. Nothing quite like wandering through a giant maze alone shouting out into the void hoping to randomly get close enough to a teammate to register the proximity voice chat. I may have had a small panic attack when I got killed and separated from my team for the first time XD.

All in all, I'd highly recommend this to play with friends, so long as you aren't expecting AAA-level graphics and effects.