LogFAQs > #933302813

#8





Years of release: 2015-2016 (PC early access), 2016 (PC/PS4/Vita? there's a Vita port of this game? the fuck?), 2017 (iOS), 2018 (XB1/Switch), 2017-2018 (DLC)
Beaten?: Completed a 100% run on Bloodmoon mode

One of the things I've had a problem with in a lot of games, but especially RPGs, is a lack of the feeling of danger. I get a thrill out of knowing that death or failure would be a serious setback, if not an outright true game over like in the arcade days, and it heightens the feeling of adventure to me knowing that there is real risk into venturing forth. I remember getting this feeling first out of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, in which you have to make a rather long trek to get to new places, and venturing into a new cave brings with it the possibility that you might die and need to start over, which really brings an urgency to the gameplay that you don't find in games that don't have lives or continues. This is a big reason that I've gotten into the Roguelike genre so hard - death always matters at least a little bit, while you can always start up a new run pretty quick you never want to lose your old one, especially if you've gotten quite far into the game, and to me, that makes the games feel exciting.

I say RPGs have a particular problem though for a few reasons. One, you can usually always save just before any dangerous boss fight, so there's no penalty for failure. This is NOT a bad thing, to be clear, it's probably the best way to design most games for most people, but it does come with a cost. Two, in most RPGs, if you're having trouble with a fight, you have the option to just go level up a bit more. Doesn't work in every game, but it works in most. Three, in most RPGs, you can either just spam healing items to win if you really need to, or you can find some sort of broken combo that will solve the fight if you look hard enough. This all isn't a bad thing, either, since it allows for an interesting, adjustable difficulty curve and puts a focus on hunting for the best strategies over working them out on the fly, but there is something missing, I think.

Darkest Dungeon is not a game for everyone. I daresay it's barely a game for anyone - I'm genuinely surprised at how many people have played and enjoyed this game to any degree, because it's difficult, intense, unforgiving, and from my experiences most people are sort of lacking in the tactical acumen I think this game demands. It is so precisely up MY alley in its game mechanics, however, that I am willing to forgive, and eventually even indulge in and enjoy, the dark and brooding atmosphere and Lovecraftian aesthetics that I would normally shy far away from. It provides me all of the risk and danger and on-the-fly tactics that I desire so greatly and executes them with ~~impunity~~ precision.

Darkest Dungeon is a bit of a roguelike-adjacent, in that the game is procedurally generated, the dungeons you enter having random encounters, the heroes you recruit having somewhat-random abilities and traits, and any of your characters dying is permanent. It is not a roguelike because instead of playing run after run of expendable heroes, this is a long and grueling campaign of at least 30 hours, in which you recruit many heroes over time, and while they may permanently die, the general state of affairs in the game continues, although on hard mode you can permanently game over, even quite late into the campaign, and have your save wiped. Not for the faint of heart. On normal mode, it's a bit more forgiving, since losing your heroes is a setback that you can endure - it's possible to get things to a state that's so bad and hard to dig out of that it's almost easier to reset the game, though. I did. I didn't mind. I could have played better. I learned from the experience.

You form parties of four out of your heroes, who are all generic people from one of 15-17 different classes, on missions into dungeons, which are basically series of rooms and random battles that you must endure on your way to completing your objective. Survival is not easy, there are no healing items to endlessly chug when things get bad, and running from battles comes at a high price. You must manage both your characters' health as well as their sanity as they encounter horrors; this has a very Arkham Horror kind of vibe to it in that sense. It's quite a grind, as you level up your heroes and take on more tasks until eventually you are ready to storm the Darkest Dungeon itself, which absolutely lives up to the hype of how hard and scary it is.

Darkest Dungeon is probably the most balanced game I've ever played, which is a high compliment. Every single class in this game is useful, although a couple are more essential than others (the healing Vestal and Occultist are must-haves; classes like Bounty Hunter and Abomination are a bit more niche). Every class has 7 different skills (this includes a basic attack) and you get to take 4 of them - I think there are only one or two skills in the ENTIRE GAME that I never found a meaningful use for, and I think both of them were significantly upgraded in the most recent patch. Everything else has its place. And not only is every skill in this game useable, so is nearly every party formation and every possible strategy. Despite the fact that this game is difficult, you can make almost anything work if you know when to use what. You probably don't want a party of four people of the same class in most cases (though there's a couple you could do it with), you want frontliners at the front and supports in the back (every class has skills they can only use from or against particular positions in the party order), but I've found myself with a fairly uneven bunch of heroes available to me for a given mission and still managed to cobble something together that worked. The breadth of options that this game gives you is really impressive. Yet, nothing is broken. There is no way to break this game wide open; you pretty much have to play by its terms. You can level up your heroes and give them equipment, but there is only so much you can do. Grinding will not save you. You need to be at the maximum level to even stand a chance at the endgame, anyway.

Every battle winds up demanding. Enemies can deal huge critical blows at any time and any mistake you make can be very costly. It pays to know when to use what skill, to pay attention to enemy formations and coordinate your tactics accordingly - trying the same strategy against every enemy formation will not work in the long run, adaptability is crucial in a way that I don't see in most RPGs. The game plays out kind of similarly to a pen-and-paper RPG where you see the % odds of hits and