Darkest Dungeon®: The Crimson Court

While the crimson court expansions offers some challenge and variety for veteran players, I wouldn't recommend to activate it on your first playthrough, or at least don't visit the relevant locations until you got quite far into the game and figured out how things work. That's mainly because it adds an other layer of obscurity to a game that's already rather poor at explaining relevant game mechanics to the player. Furthermore: having to manage blood supplies and potentially spreading curses on top of your reagular ingame duties can be a bit stressful. Beeing dependant on items that drop on random encounters (invitations) to progress the story isn't particulary great game design either. Unlike the Shieldbreaker DLC though you'll get your money's worth of content with this one.

I think the Crimson Court does an excellent job of expanding on absolutely everything Darkest Dungeon had to offer - artwork, atmosphere, combat, and management. The new dungeons are absolutely huge and done very complementary to the base game. I think old veterans will find it a very fresh experience and new players will find that they offer meaningful progress at a more satisfying pace than the "all-or-nothing" dungeons of the base game. At its throbbing, pulsating insect heart, Crimson Court adds yet more madness to what you already have to manage. This makes the game more complicated and arguably more frustrating, although I don't think it makes it harder. I believe anyone can master Darkest Dungeon, but a great many people have made it clear they don't have fun doing it. Perhaps even fewer will be up to the challenges Crimson Court has to offer. If you're a die-hard fan of Darkest Dungeon and just want to support Red Hook, or you've heard about the fabled Darkest Dungeon experience and just have to see for yourself, you shouldn't be disappointed with Crimson Court. This game will always stand out from the rest, but it will never be for everyone.

I've put many hours into the game and I will say it's been fairly enjoyable. My only gripe is the RNG being too strong. I love that you can lose a character for good. I love that the game is difficult and if you don't bring the right group with proper gearing and talents you will suffer. I love the cohesive nature of the group vs the AI. And if the developers had tuned the game to that, this would be one of the better games I've ever played. My only gripe is the RNG being too strong. RNG can and will destroy the best possible groups/setup regardless. I don't mind RNG making things harder, but I've lost enough well equipped and prepared heroes to RNG for this to be OK. Similarly, I've had other dungeon runs that should be hard be a cake walk. In my opinion this game could really be great. It could make the top game lists that people seem to enjoy making. It could be totally addicting. There is so much "could be" in this game. But it all gets lost to RNG, for good or bad of your hero group. I would prefer each run, each boss fight to be based on skill and preparation rather than being determined on the luck of the dice. I hope the Devs take the many reviews to heart and try to turn the "could be" into "is." That said, would I recommend this game? I'm not sure. I suppose it comes down to your definition of enjoyment. I have put enough hours in to make a worthwhile purchase to me. But this won't be a game I come back to again or spend marathon sessions playing simply because all the hours spent can be wiped out due to bad luck. If you don't mind luck being an over-riding factor in your games, this is a must buy. I keep checking back to see if they patch this game to make a fully enjoyable and immersive experience. I hope they do, but for now be prepared for a roller-coaster ride simply because the dice rolled in your favor or against you.

I feel like there isn't really a sense of urgency at any point in the vanilla game if you're playing on any difficulty but Stygian (imposes a limit on hero deaths, and a deadline to reach in the campaign) [bloodmoon in Crimson Court], and because I'm too pussy to play on Stygian difficulty this new 'layer' I'm talking about here really adds so much to the mix. It's the core idea of Darkest Dungeon: risk management, and the simple task of knowing when you've lost a battle; the Crimson Court is just more of it. So, yeah, I hate to see these rage-induced reviews (reviews which made me actually avoid Crimson Court when I first started playing) potentially scaring people away. I understand their madness, but the game's RNG isn't unfair, and it's not all RNG. The reason people whine is because of the way hero death works: once a hero reaches 0 HP, every following damaging attack against them from that point has a chance to kill them permenantly (this stat is viewable at all times, by the way). My theory is that if this mechanic wasn't in place and heroes died once they reached 0 HP we'd see a lot less whining from... whiners. Likely the same reason they whine about Crimson Court: to get infected with the curse a hero must lose a roll of the dice. Losing the roll of the dice will always make people rage, but in this game's case failure is basically entirely on how you manage risk.