The game has developed the ability to reward its minmaxing fussiness that League of Legends-ish obsession to mess around with the Runes for hours before delving into Runeterra. To be sure, Dead By Daylight is weighed down by some managerial heft-there are multiple experience tracks, unlocks, and talent trees to attend to-but I also believe that it earns the weight. Every time we boot up something new on Steam, we're thrown into a morass of reedy systems-multiple in-game currencies piling up in the top-right corner of the screen, daily log-in bonuses exploding in the menu, flash sales glistening in the store-that can make the days before the MMOification of everything seem especially sweet. It's easy to be exhausted by what we'll call 'progression creep' in modern gaming. If you've never played Dead By Daylight, this might feel like overkill to you. Back in 2018, we re-reviewed a selection of games that had likewise evolved over time, including Hearthstone (opens in new tab) and EVE Online (opens in new tab).

This isn't the first time we've revisited an older game with a new review. The only thing stopping us from examining that evolution in a (very late) scored review was convention, and DBD's enduring popularity made bypassing convention an easy decision. Waiting nearly five years to review a game is a little unusual, but Dead by Daylight has only become more relevant since it launched in 2016, evolving into one of the best multiplayer games you can play today. (Image credit: Behaviour Interactive Inc.)

Dead by daylight huntress