Often when I play a game that is labeled as unfair and difficult it's not long before this statement is boiled down to “once you understand the mechanics it's not too bad”. The biggest example of something like this is with Dark Souls where large swaths of the game are completely fair as long as you understand what you are working with. Fear and Hunger breaks this mold by genuinely being one of the cruelest and most unfair games I have ever played. Almost every mechanic in the game is designed to work against you. Enemy encounters can leave you limbless, having acquired permanent disabilities or encountering a fate worse than death and this could all occur when fighting the first enemy. The game also heavily uses RNG where simple things such as looting a crate could either reward you with a useful healing item or your sixth duplication of a useless piece of armor. Accompanying this base RNG is a coin toss mechanic that dictates how certain events will play out. Once prompted, you choose either heads or tails, and depending on the outcome you will either be heavily rewarded or dead on the ground. This mechanic is used in enemy encounters, specific world events and even searching treasure chests. Hell, even most save points require you to flip a coin to decide whether you get to save or get bum-rushed by an enemy.

After reading all of this you might be thinking “why would anyone want to play a game that is so reliant on RNG when even one mistake could set you back upwards to an hour”. The answer to this is how rewarding it feels to discover how to utilize everything the game throws at you to your advantage. Never before have I experienced such a sharp learning curve and been immediately rewarded for understanding the game. Some examples of this are figuring out how you can break save areas so that you never have to worry about getting attacked while saving or utilizing seemingly useless scrolls to acquire some of the most powerful equipment and spells fairly early in the game. One of the most useful strategies I utilized was doing a death run where once I saved I played very loosely and did not worry about dying just so I could see what the future encounters were which allowed me to prepare ahead. In all honesty, I feel this game is more of a survival horror than an RPG.

My final point I wanted to touch on was how in love I am with the dark fantasy aesthetic the game has. The setting, characters, and deep lore are all utilized to develop a compelling narrative where mortals go toe to toe with gods. The story displays ramifications one would realistically suffer from if one were to witness beings beyond their comprehension in a world that only seeks their demise. The feebleness of humanity, monstrosities being born from the darkness, and the willingness to delve deeper into hell are all themes I adore. These themes are further elevated by the game's extremely moody art style and soundtrack which worked so well on me that I felt queasy after my first session. The style of the whole game really is something I have never seen before and one I greatly admire.

I was originally going to end this review by saying “I love this game, do not play it” but to be honest I feel there are too many cool things here not to be experienced by someone that might be interested in it. It is a cruel game, yes, but it was probably one of the most unique and memorable experiences I’ve had with an RPG in a while. I know for a fact this game is not for everyone but I feel it has an overall low cost of entry. In conclusion, I love this game, play it.

Still a Dark Souls game, meaning it is addictive.

However it suffers from quantity over quality all over the game.
It has the worst bosses of the series and the worst areas. After defeting the first boss, you already know how to fight 40% of the rest.
It also has a lot of reprint of enemies and bosses.

One of the worst things is how long it takes to use consumables, even with high agility (I spent most of the time on 110 agility), it makes it feel that the enemies did not killed you but the horrible mechanics.

I was about to give this game 3 and a half stars but the last boss of the last DLC made me hate this game a little bit. It was a boring and frustrating area with a reptead boss you already fought earlier. I've never used the summons but here was inevitable. Simply the worst area of any souls game.

I only recommend this game if you aleady played all of the souls-like from FromSoftware and the Nioh series.