Darkest Dungeon is one of the most intense and immersive games out there. A product of creative genius and flawless design, it delivers, with simplistic perfection, a difficult yet addictive experience.
Darkest Dungeon plays the long game. It builds you up for a grand bout that will test everything you've learned, as well as your ability to plan several in-game weeks out. The pay-off for this constant offensive comes in short bursts--just enough to keep you going, just enough to keep you hopeful for the next excursion. It's an extraordinary cycle that bears a special teacher--rewarding your cleverness and punishing your foolishness. It transfixes and binds you to this grand journey, dotted with failures and successes. And because you endured, because you thought your way through it, the final victory against the unimaginable evil you face at the bottom of the Darkest Dungeon is personally valuable.
Not many games deserve a 10. But this one is definitely one of them. First of all, it is something fresh within its genre. I love the narrator's voice, I love the timeless visuals and the entire team management system. The game is not for everyone: if you easily get attached to your characters, be prepared to say goodbye. You never know when one mistake will cost them their lives.
There is a lot of grinding involved in this game, but the grind is generally pretty fun. It is surprisingly addictive and great to play in the wee hours of the night.
Despite the grind, despite the perhaps undue commitment to brutality, and despite what I feel is a joke at the player's expense at the end, Darkest Dungeon still manages to be one of the most engaging and intriguing roguelikes I've ever played and I'll probably still be diving dungeons and trying new party compositions weeks from now. After all, it would be madness to stop at this point.
It would be a mistake to call Darkest Dungeon a roguelike game. It is, in fact, a more elaborate version of Cookie Clicker. You play with numbers instead of playing a game.
A generally good game, but gets repetitive quickly.
If you're not really familiar with strategic games you'll struggle a little for the first hours. The game doesn't really guide you, but there's a glossary with almost every info. Some critical mechanics are hidden like bleeding and blight stacking, without a real explanation.
The pacing is really slow: after 12 hrs I managed to beat just 4 bosses. I saw from the journal that many of them are repeated. Apart from that, the characters walk slowly in dungeon corridors and that's annoying after a while. Combat animations could be faster too.
The stress mechanic is interesting, it forces you to rotate through your roster, but it feels kinda tedious after a while.
I don't see myself going through 60+hrs to beat everything in this game, cause there's simply too much repetitiveness, but the core mechanics are good.
I don't particularly love the art style, but it has his own character.
The audio is fine per se, but completely fails to enhance the experience.
In dungeons, there are too much sounds in the background that don't really create any atmosphere. Same goes for music, not really memorable and not much pathos in it. Really a shame for a game that really needs to rely on immersive/meditative setting.
A game that is full of bad design decisions.
A sequel that is missing most of the things that made the first game great.
A rogue-lite with mechanics and RNG hell that force you to suffer many hours before you manage to achieve some meaningful progress.
And that is the main difference, where the first game makes you struggle this is make you suffer.
And it's simple, not fun.
SummaryDarkest Dungeon is a gothic roguelike RPG dungeon crawler about the psychological stresses of adventuring. You will lead a band of four heroes on a perilous side-scrolling descent, dealing with a prodigious number of threats to their bodily health, and worse, a relentless assault on their mental fortitude! Five hundred feet below the ear...