The story and atmosphere also isn't as good. "Help, I opened an obviously evil door and now there are monsters beneath my house" is a way better setup for this kind of game than "It's the Lovecrapocalypse so let's go on a roadtrip."
I gave DD2 a try. It's definitely better than the first since losing doesn't permakill your heroes, it just sends you back to the start of the map and rolls the quirk slot machine again. It's still annoying how eager it is to instakill you, though.
Honestly, the only reason I keep going back to it is because it has the best atmosphere of any game I've ever played. The graphics, the character designs, the music, and THE MOTHERLOVING NARRATOR all work together to make it one of the only games that actually feels Lovecraftian, and it...
It's less about the time it takes to reset, and more the fact that there's nothing I can do to counter it. No matter what, the game will just randomly hit the "Kill Player" button and erase all your progress. I'm convinced that the devs just didn't know how to properly balance a game, and rather...
Darkest Dungeon be like...
>Battle starts
>Enemies get to attack four times in a row
>Two heroes killed right off the bat
>I finally get a turn
>Attack misses
>Enemy attacks
>Criticial hit
>Death's Door
>Stress accumulates
>Heart attack, third hero dies
>Third hero's death stresses out fourth...
Pressing the blue button is inventing a solution to a problem that was, in itself, created by the solution. By not pressing the blue button, you eliminate any reason to press the blue button.
IYKYK