Darkest Dungeon®

I had read the other discouraging reviews and largely dismissed them as whining, but the unfortunate truth of the matter is this a game with some real potential which is ruined entirely by curious and questionable design. The odds are always against you. And normally I would accept that as a challenge. I don't use walkthroughs, I don't employ cheat codes, and I don't search for exploits. If I just wanted to see the end of a game without any effort, I could watch a Let's Play on Youtube. Hell I don't even save scum, in every game I play I keep but a single save game. I like having the odds against me, but until now, I had always taken it for granted that there was a chance for victory. This is a game of grating, and inevitable, defeat. This game employs a sanity metric by which you must race through each dungeon as quickly as possible, juggling the usual and uninteresting management mechanics which have become depressingly universal in games of this type: Food, Medicine, Health, Fatigue/Sanity etc. Even at the introduction enemies routinely hit for twenty to forty sanity per hit, fortunately, your peons begin with roughly 100 sanity. Better yet, there are mechanics in play by which to 'earn' sanity back, such as striking for a critical hit;. In the case of an enemy crit everyone on the team will lose between ten and twenty sanity, yet when your characters score a crit, that individual and perhaps another will receive between four and seven. But really, the sanity thing mostly works until you get mid game, and then you frequently see your entirely party driven out of their mind within minutes of starting a dungeon. You will grind out three levels and a couple thousand gold before your Crusader or Seeker can hit for twenty damage in a swing, but you will see crossbowmen routinely landing critical hits for those numbers from the third dungeon on. And by routinely, I mean a few time in any fight that lasts longer than three rounds. By the way? An 85% change to hit is really never better than 50/50, keep that in mind. Sadly, that sort of disparity applies to everything. Furthermore, there are a myriad of arbitrary pay-walls which keep one from using anything even remotely reminiscent of strategy or even tactics by which to eke out marginal successes. Try grinding out low level areas and improve your peons? Well, you will find after two levels they will grow "bored" and opt out until tasked to something their level, which is always beyond their capability since to keep them sane and at ease, a veritable fortune is required after every successful mission. Employ them like cannon fodder and simply replace them as necessary, investing in the infrastructure of your estate to possibly arm and train future recruits? You will find yourself boxed out of low level areas, and that those upgrades to your weapon and armor smithies cannot be applied to new recruits until they have gained some experience. Choice and consequence? Risk and reward? None of these things are here. Just a weighted RNG waiting to punish you for playing. The ambiance is nice, I would love to see where the story goes, but as an adult I just don't have the time to invest in playing the odds until finding the rare success run that would see me through to the end. Spend your money on DPRK treasury bonds instead of buying this game, I mean, if you are going to throw it away any way at least have a laugh doing it.

Ok, I loved this game. I'm a big fan of difficult roguelike games. FTL was my big Love. Dark/Demon Souls are fantastic, in my point of View. So, Darkest Dungeon has kind of the same feeling to it. I died many times, lost many Characters - but thats ok, because you get better while playing it but you still can die (pretty much like the Souls Series). I played about 150 hours and was in love.... And then, Level 5/6 Dungeons appear. Dodge doesn't really work anymore (dodge build=delete). Even a little spider Crits you half the time. Enemy Casters take 3 Hits before they die from a full upgraded Damage Dealer. Difficulty ok, but this is no fun. Yeah Yeah, we Monsters are so lucky and always Crit........ Nothing to do with skill/knowledge, only pure luck to make the Fight. Stress Damage is not a Problem here, its a Gamebreaker. As long they don't change this, I don't recommend buying it!

Darkest Dungeon is an interesting game - on the surface it seems quite straightforward, but it has some cool features to it. You take a group of four hero's and venture through stages of varying length, there's strategic elements regarding the type of characters you have in your party and the abilities / items they are equipped with. It's basically a fairly streamlined RPG, though without any emphasis on decisions that affect the story - it's pure gameplay mechanics. The really interesting thing though is that characters suffer "stress", and the more this accumulates the more chance they will go doolally, or have a slim chance of becoming more heroic. There is also the chance of fatal heart attacks, or falling into a state where they are hovering at deaths door - will you be able to heal them in time? or can they withstand another assault? Will they crack from the pressure, or gain more resolve? In the earlier stages of the game this is a wonderful mechanic - no matter how prepared you are it is random luck, and a thrilling development when sh*t hits the fan. Hero's start ragging on each other, and before you know it the entire party is spiraling out of control. But the thing is - quitting a level causes more stress, and you have to pay to lower it. More money is earned by finishing levels - so risking your hero's life / sanity is a gamble worth taking. Unfortunately this good work comes undone the more you play. As you level up the challenge becomes frustrating, repetitive and tedious. Higher level characters won't do low level missions, meaning you have to either level up a new group or risk the higher one's getting slaughtered because they are ill equipped, and you've run out of easy money. It's not unusual to see attacks miss time and time again at 5th level stages, and your party cracking up is harder to slow down. Eventually I ended up putting many hours into developing characters, only to find they die within two or three rooms of a dungeon. Sometimes even in the first encounter they get massacred by titchy spiders, or some other weedy enemy that still pulverizes them After three weeks of playing this solidly and not getting any where fast - it proves tiresome, and the gameplay doesn't change or develop at all.

Agree with other reviews on the difficulty and RNG. Mods are available to help address this, but the GOG version of DD is so old that few if any mods will work for it. Newest GOG version appears to be 24839, from 4yrs and 35 patches ago. From what I can tell the current version of DD is 6678186.

Okay, seriously, the game has awesome art direction, awesome music, that narrator is just epic (at the onset.) I really wanted to like this game, but here's what broke it for me: Being punished for good performance. Here's what happens. The game assigns "bad and good quirks" to your character based on RNG at the end of each mission. So no matter how well you perform, you can STILL get screwed. On top of that, while recovering at inns, you develop MORE bad quirks. Your guy might cheat at dice, develop naughty sex tendencies at the whorehouse or become an alcoholic (which he can also do by drinking unpurified swine ale in the Warrens area.) Negative manias acquired from "morale breaks" (D&D players should know what these are) become permanent until cured after a mission or occasionally healed by certain characters in missions which are long enough to be able to do that. And whoever says, don't get attached to characters, indeed. You could be a stalwart badass in real life critical situations, but in this game, good luck. Characters will get struck with random crippling effects literally out of nowhere. Performed stellar? Oh well, you're now limp wristed and can't score as many critical strikes. Tough luck pal. Performed like crap? Well we're still going to randomly screw you, not by throwing critters at you or things you can deal with, but just because its fun for us. Hell, Dwarf Fortress was more "fair" than this. And the moto for that game is "losing is fun!" I'm putting in for a refund since I haven't run into a game that was this RNG unfair and deliberately so, not even the Ice Cave in the original Final Fantasy (NES) with its random 5 to 9 sorcerer(mindflayer) or 3 fighter/mage enemy parties which always seemed to strike just before the exit. I honestly don't have enough time to put days or weeks of free time into a game which will then punish me randomly. At least stupid MMO parties can be avoided or mitigated... not so in this game.