Game Review: Darkest Dungeon

Beings of unimaginable evil have been disturbed under your ancestors’ manor, and you have been left with the task of crushing this evil and restoring your ‘Hamlet’ (the main hub of the game) to its once glorious stature. But this will not be easy. Your party members will die. They will become sick, plagued by weaknesses of the mind and body.  You are not prepared for the Darkest Dungeon.

Released properly out of early access at the start of this year, it’s a massive success with 86% rating on Steam, and it’s not difficult to see why. The art style is representative of a Gothic graphic novel, and instantly captures that sense of impending doom and adventure.

You begin on a stagecoach, heading to your manor which you can name whatever you want. I went for ‘Cracked Halo’s Manor’, because it sounds awesome. Lo and behold, your coach crashes after veering off the road, and you are left to wander to the manor. But it wouldn’t be Darkest Dungeon if you didn’t get your butt handed to you five minutes in. And you do. Unless you’re lucky. From here, you’re free to look at your manor in its dilapidated state. From here, you recruit more people into your roster, and, later on in the game, you can upgrade their abilities. Hit harder, heal faster, score critical hits more often. Even upgrading a weapon can have huge affects on a party’s success.

The world you are in is not like ours. It is brimming with beasts and fiends seeking to score a killing blow. Things go wrong, people will die, and they will need to recover from stress, using one of the three different buildings in your Hamlet.

You have a church, a hospital, and a pub. Churches let your adventurers meditate, pray, or flagellate. Hospitals allow you to remove quirks and diseases (trust me, you’ll want to get rid of those). The pub has also has three segments. The bar, where your people can drink and be merry. Gambling, betting their stress away, or the brothel… which we don’t really need to explain, do we?

Weapon and ability upgrades are crucial to staying alive. Having started a new playthrough since these screenshots, there is a significant difference in the damage done and amount of damage that can be taken. You will need all the help you can get in the dungeons… one point of damage could be the difference between life and death.

The class variety is amazing. No class is the same as another, and there are certain ways you have to play certain characters. Each time you take out a new team, it changes the dynamic of the game. From Abominations to Crusaders, there are some really awesome character models and moves you can pull off. The animation style is minimal, but effective, as you feel like every move has a weight to it.

Each ability your heroes have will aid you at some point, but you have to plan your runs. Party wipes will occur, and there is nothing more harrowing than being stripped to your last man standing, and watching him be devoured by spiders. Darkest Dungeon is a nerve-racking, rage-inducing death simulator – and there is nothing I can do but love it and play it.

RIP Darth Vader.