David Sanders
David SandersImagine, if you will, that one day you receive a letter from one of your distant family members in which they bequeath to you your ancestral home, as it is your birthright. Your family member proceeds to explain that they have squandered your family’s fortune in an attempt to unearth and eradicate unspeakable horrors from beneath the land upon which your ancestral home is perched.
Having failed in that endeavor, your family member beseeches you to return to your family’s home and succeed where they could not. Should you choose to heed their words, the task of eliminating this corrupting evil falls upon your shoulders.
The events I’ve just described within that hypothetical scenario set the stage for the events of a game I hold near and dear to my heart, namely Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon. Throughout this review, I will provide you with a glimpse into what you’ll be delving into should you choose to purchase Darkest Dungeon. I hope that everything I’ll be demonstrating within this article won’t lead to a test of your resolve.
In order to reclaim your birthright and banish the various horrors from your family’s home, you’ll need to hire mercenaries suited to the task. You begin the game with a party of two such mercenaries who are differentiated by their classes; more specifically, your first two characters are a Crusader and a Highwayman.
You’ll control them over the course of a tutorial of sorts, which will teach you the basics of combat and a few other gameplay mechanics that shall be discussed in more detail later in this review.
After completing the tutorial with your first team of mercenaries, you’ll reach the town which serves as a hub where you can do several things. You’ll unlock more facilities in town as you complete more quests; and I’ll discuss each facility in detail later. Immediately after the tutorial, all you’ll have access to is the stagecoach, from which you must recruit two more mercenaries so that you may fill a party of four.
The next two heroes you’ll find in the stagecoach are a Plague Doctor and a Vestal. Having said that, I think now is an appropriate time to discuss the various general combat styles you’ll find among mercenaries you hire. Personally, I like to think of the various mercenary classes as archetypes one might find in a game such as World of Warcraft. By that, I mean it seems to me that there are such things as tanks, bruisers, casters, healers, etc.
For example, consider your first full team of mercenaries. As I said, this team is composed of a Crusader, a Highwayman, a Plague Doctor, and a Vestal. The Crusader, in my mind, is a combination of a tank and a bruiser because they can withstand and inflict considerable amounts of damage.
The Highwayman possesses abilities which enable both ranged and melee combat, so I consider that class to be a general “damage dealer.” The Plague Doctor can provide buffs and limited healing to their teammates, as well as inflict various debuffs on enemies. Lastly, the Vestal can provide more effective healing to teammates while also damaging enemies from range.
However, in order for any class to use the majority of their abilities in combat as effectively as possible, they should be in a specific position within the party. For example, the Crusader should typically be placed at the front of the party so that their abilities can damage more than one target.
You can easily determine which positions and targets will increase the effectiveness of the abilities of a given class by right-clicking any member of that class, as you’ll see in the image below.
Certain enemies have abilities which can rearrange the members in your party so that they may not be as effective in combat. An enemy might have an ability which hooks one of your party members and pulls them to the front, for example. Additionally, if your team starts combat while they are surprised by the sudden presence of enemies, the entire party may end up scattered into random positions.
It is possible to move party members back to their preferred positions while in combat; however, doing so will constitute the entirety of the affected party member’s turn. Because of this, it is usually best in my experience to wait until after a battle to return your party to its most effective order if at all possible.
Of course, before you embark on a quest through any of the zones you’re tasked with clearing out, you’ll need to purchase supplies that will (hopefully) play a significant part in ensuring your team’s success on any quest which awaits them.
There’s a vendor in town who will sell you several useful items for your journey in return for any gold you accumulate from questing. You can buy such necessities as torches, food, bandages, antivenom, shovels, skeleton keys, and more. However, while you’re provisioning for each upcoming quest, you need to be sure you only purchase an amount of supplies that you’re certain you will absolutely need and actually use while questing.
That’s not just because purchasing unneeded supplies costs you more gold; supplies also take up room in your inventory. This means that if you bring too many supplies you don’t end up using, you’ll have less inventory space for treasure. That, in turn, may leave you without the funding for sufficient supplies on a future quest.
You must essentially find a “sweet spot” that ensures you’ve brought enough supplies to avoid both running out of necessities and burdening yourself with things you don’t end up needing. That way, your team will (in theory) have everything they need and be able to bring back as much treasure as possible.
Personally, when I’m provisioning for a quest, I usually get four bandages and four units of antivenom (one for each party member), two shovels, and every torch and unit of food available. That may sound somewhat hypocritical considering I just explained that properly provisioning is crucial to lucrative, successful quests; however, I’ve found myself using torches and food much more quickly than any other supplies.
There’s one more thing I feel compelled to discuss before I stop droning on about topics related to provisioning. Any quest that’s longer than those which the game designates as short in length may offer you the ability to camp during the mission. While you’re provisioning for such a quest, you’ll notice that at least one unit of firewood is in your inventory. Right-clicking this firewood while on a quest will initiate the process of camping.
Camping can be quite useful on longer quests, as it offers your team of mercenaries some time to recover some degree of the physical and mental strength they’ve expended since the quest began. While camping, your party can consume a set amount of food to help them recover, provided you purchased a sufficient amount of food for this purpose.
Additionally, each class has unique abilities that can only be used while camping. These abilities can provide benefits to either whomever uses them, or to the entire party. For example, the Crusader may give a zealous, passionate speech in order to relieve some of the stress of his comrades (which I’ll discuss shortly), or the Highwayman may clean his guns in order to improve his accuracy in combat for a time.
Once you feel adequately prepared in terms of your team member selections and provision purchases, it’s finally time to embark on a given quest. At this point, I can finally begin to discuss the real “meat” of Darkest Dungeon and illustrate why I enjoy the game as much as I do.
There are five in-game zones which must be cleansed by defeating the various evils within. These zones are known as the Ruins, the Warrens, the Weald, the Cove, and the titular Darkest Dungeon. There is also a sixth zone, the Courtyard, if you’ve purchased and enabled the Crimson Court DLC. You’ll begin the cleansing process by completing short quests in the Ruins, and you’ll unlock the ability to quest in other zones as you progress. I consider the Ruins and the Weald to be decent starting points.
Questing within these less-intense areas will allow your mercenaries to gain the physical and mental fortitude necessary to eventually brave the journey into the Darkest Dungeon itself. That is, of course, assuming none of them die or go insane before then.
During the questing process, there are two main factors with which you’ll have to contend in order to achieve victory, not counting the enemy forces which stand before you. One of these factors is usually entirely within your control; the other is typically significantly less so. These two factors intertwine with one another on a frequent basis, and failure to keep them in check will likely prove catastrophic.
Of course, I’m referring to light and stress, respectively. The former of these will likely take less time to adequately discuss, so I shall begin with that for the sake of keeping this review relatively concise. As I’ve established, you’re sending a group of mercenaries into various dangerous areas in order to combat occult forces of varying types. I haven’t heard of many mercenaries who would be willing to fight such horrors at all, let alone in a completely dark room.
Thus, it falls to you to make sure your group’s path is continually as well-lit as possible. That is precisely why I buy so many torches every time I provision for a quest. The torch meter at the top of the screen will advise you of the current light level. Torches can be used increase the amount of light until the meter reaches capacity.
There are advantages to keeping the light meter as close to capacity as possible at all times. Firstly, if your group’s path is lit well enough, they can occasionally scout areas between rooms to look for traps, the presence of enemies, curios, or treasure. Without scouting, enemies and traps will likely appear unexpectedly at a very inopportune moment.
Secondly, as far as I can tell, your group has a chance to surprise enemies if the light meter is close to capacity. If this happens, all of your party members will be able to take a turn in combat before any of the surprised enemies are able to react. Likewise, if your mercenaries find themselves surprised by enemies, they will be unable to react until all enemies have taken a turn.
The main advantage of ensuring a path is lit well enough, however, is that your party will suffer less stress if the light meter stays at or near capacity. That leads me nicely into the discussion of the bigger, less-controllable factor with which you must contend in order to emerge victorious.
As I’m sure you might expect, trudging through dungeons filled with unspeakable horrors standing in your way and relying on people you probably don’t know to help you slay those horrors is an exceptionally stressful job.
Because of this, you must always keep a careful eye on your mercenaries’ stress meters (the series of white squares just below their health bars). Obviously, you want those meters to remain as close to empty as possible, but maintaining that is considerably more difficult than it might seem.
There are several factors that can negatively affect the stress level of a given team member. Low levels of light, sustaining a critical hit from an enemy, and seeing a comrade take damage are quite common reasons why the stress levels of your mercenaries might increase, although quite a few more reasons exist. Certain enemies might also have abilities that raise a party’s stress levels rather than inflicting damage.
Another mechanic that negatively affects stress levels is known as the “Death’s Door” system. Basically, when a mercenary is reduced below a single health point, they do not necessarily die. Instead, they’re considered to be “on Death’s Door.” At this point, any amount of damage from any source can kill them unless they’re somehow healed before sustaining a fatal blow.
It is worth noting that any mercenary who is on Death’s Door can still participate in combat, especially if their class has a self-healing ability. They will, however, suffer the effects of a debuff while on Death’s Door and for a number of turns after being healed enough to remove the Death’s Door status effect.
Obviously, being damaged to the point at which a mercenary is on Death’s Door will typically wreak havoc on that mercenary’s stress level, and usually on those of their teammates as well. If a mercenary’s stress level happens to fill halfway (that is, 100 out of 200 points), they’ll undergo what the game refers to as a “test of their resolve.” This usually means they’ll wind up with a status effect of some description.
These status effects can be either positive or negative, though they prove to be negative the vast majority of the time in my experience. These status effects can cause a mercenary to become paranoid, selfish, abusive toward their teammates, masochistic, or basically any other number of states of mind.
The things mercenaries might do or say while afflicted by such a status effect tend to negatively affect the stress levels of their teammates as well. Because of this, things can quickly get out of hand if you’re not careful. In addition to these status effects, if a mercenary’s stress bar fills completely, they’ll immediately suffer a fatal, stress-induced heart attack. As you might expect, that usually takes a huge toll on the mental states of their surviving comrades.
I suspect you might be wondering whether or not there’s a more effective means to manage stress so that you don’t have mercenaries go insane or suffer heart attacks during every quest. If that’s the case, you’re in luck.
After you complete your first three or four quests, you’ll unlock access to three buildings in town: the Tavern, the Abbey, and the Sanitarium. The first two of these buildings contain purchasable methods you can use to help the mercenaries you’ve enlisted relieve their pent-up stress. The third of these is where mercenaries should be sent if they contract diseases or have negative mental quirks you seek to remove.
Both the Abbey and the Tavern offer three methods by which your mercenaries can relieve stress, though some are more costly to use than others. For example, you can pay one thousand gold to allow one of your mercenaries to drink their stress away at the bar within the Tavern. Alternatively, you can pay slightly more than that amount to send someone to the Penance Hall within the Abbey.
Some heroes may initially have (or develop over time) negative “quirks” that will only allow them to relieve stress in a certain way. As an example, the first Crusader you recruit has the “God-fearing” quirk, which means they will only relieve stress by praying in the Abbey. That usually isn’t a problem, unless the town’s caretaker decides to use one of these stress-reducing methods for himself.
Until you upgrade the Tavern and the Abbey to enable them to accommodate more mercenaries, the caretaker doing such a thing leaves whichever method he’s using temporarily unavailable to you.
Speaking of upgrading buildings, you can do so with heirloom items you collect as treasure over the course of your quests. Spending these heirlooms, which come in several different forms, as currency will allow you to upgrade most aspects of every building in town. Among others, that list includes the Abbey, the Tavern, the Sanitarium, and arguably most importantly, the stagecoach.
Upgrading certain buildings is always an advisable idea when you have the resources to do so. As a specific example, upgrading the stagecoach will allow you to increase the size of the roster of heroes you can have at your disposal, or begin gathering you more experienced recruits who can subsequently endure more stressful quests.
Alternatively, upgrading the Abbey or the Tavern will allow them to accommodate more than one stressed mercenary at a time in each of their stress-reducers, or perhaps make their stress-reducing methods less costly and/or more effective. These upgrades are quite similar to the features you can unlock by upgrading the Sanitarium as well.
I think I’ve managed to illustrate why I enjoy Darkest Dungeon as much as I do, but there’s one last ubiquitous aspect of its gameplay that I’d like to acknowledge as I begin my closing thoughts. The game’s narrator is, in my opinion, outstanding at what he does.
He’s quick to join you in celebrating even the smallest of victories, yet equally as eager to lambaste you for each failure on your part. He also excels at instilling doubt within my mind, which I feel only serves to add to the atmospheric experience that comes with playing Darkest Dungeon.
Overall, I acknowledge that some, perhaps even most aspects of Darkest Dungeon aren’t suitable for everyone. I understand that the thought of mercenaries going insane or having fatal heart attacks might be considered unsettling at best. However, if what I’ve said about the game within this review hasn’t dissuaded you from giving it a try, I highly recommend doing so.
The only caveat I feel I should mention is that some might find its normal asking price a bit steep; in that case, I recommend picking up the most complete edition of the game when next it goes on sale.
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🔥902Darkest Dungeon
$24.99
Pros
- Unique Gameplay Mechanics
- Excellent Narration
- Gameplay Makes Player Actions Matter
Cons
- Some Aspects of Gameplay Could Prove Unsettling
