Darkest Dungeon - Review @ Shacknews

HiddenX

HiddenX

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Shacknews recommends Darkest Dungeon:

We All Go A Little Mad Sometimes

Before you start seeing manifestations too horrible to describe, though, you inherit a huge manor perched above a decrepit town. From these humble beginnings you learn that your ancestor unearthed hellish beings that cursed this land and its inhabitants. It is up to you and the heroes you acquire to rid this land of the horrors.

Darkest Dungeon has the core elements of your typical roguelike: procedurally generated levels, permadeath, and punishing difficulty. However, it stands out from the crowd with its stress mechanic and the quirk/affliction system. Darkest Dungeon drives home the point that your adventurers are not overpowered deathbringers that can barrel through these dungeons while high fiving each other and chuckling throughout it. They are flawed humans that face horrors that they can barely conceive, and will leave them physically and mentally scarred.

Dungeon crawling leaves a toll on your party, causing permanent (well, permanent-ish) changes to them. Sometimes these changes can be beneficial. They may be able to navigate the Ruins better, or are faster at the start of a fight. However, most of the time they are afflicted with negative quirks like being more stressed in low torch light, or a drinking problem. The quirk and affliction systems create a personality for your adventurers, allowing you to grow attached to them, so it will hurt more when they die a brutal death. That's when, not if.

[...]

Darkly Rewarding

Darkest Dungeon takes the staples of roguelikes and adds the atmosphere and themes of Lovecraftian Horror and does so with incredible success. The game captures the feeling of battling an unending wave of nightmarish abominations with little to no chance of hope. But when you do succeed you feel like a million bucks. The difficulty may deter many people from trying this game out, but if you are brave enough you will be rewarded with a rich experience.

Score: 9/10 - Great
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More information.
 
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This game is just amazing !!!
I see it as a revolution in cRPGs genre, as Dungeon Master, Ultima, Fallout and other Baldur's Gate in their time.
We'll see how RPG developers react to that game and how their games will be affected by DD. ( or not,, but that would be such a shame ).

And I sound my barbaric yawp, "Long live Red Hook Studio for that jewel !!!"
 
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I'm having a lot of fun with the release client.
 
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Risine said:
This game is just amazing !!!
I see it as a revolution in cRPGs genre, as Dungeon Master, Ultima, Fallout and other Baldur's Gate in their time.
We'll see how RPG developers react to that game and how their games will be affected by DD. ( or not,, but that would be such a shame ).

And I sound my barbaric yawp, "Long live Red Hook Studio for that jewel !!!"
Click to expand...


Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer
 
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I think that depends on which site you usually reside.
 
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Watched some one stream a play through, and it looked… grindy to say the least. One fight lasted about 5 minutes, followed by 20 seconds or so of moving only to encounter almost exactly the same fight, but with an added tank enemy that took tiny bits of damage, making the fight around 10 minutes long.
 
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A fight 10 minutes long? You sure you watched Dragon's Dogma and not some MMO raid?
 
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Gunderson105 said:
Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer
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Lol :p

I'm playing it after 30 hours played during early access and I'm still having fun despite the grindy aspect. I really like the new classes and the new areas.
 
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Gunderson105 said:
Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer
Click to expand...

ok, fair enough. But I think there's huge potential for RPGs to go further than standardized str/acc/... we have had for decades.
Future will tell, but I'm confident.
 
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While it can be a bit grindy, those are not normal fight lengths. I'm not sure if the guy was playing slowly in order to narrate the video or something like that, but most fights last about 3-5 rounds in my experience, and some are over in only 1. If a fight is going long it's usually a very bad sign.

Ovenall said:
Watched some one stream a play through, and it looked… grindy to say the least. One fight lasted about 5 minutes, followed by 20 seconds or so of moving only to encounter almost exactly the same fight, but with an added tank enemy that took tiny bits of damage, making the fight around 10 minutes long.
Click to expand...
 
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Ovenall said:
Watched some one stream a play through, and it looked… grindy to say the least. One fight lasted about 5 minutes, followed by 20 seconds or so of moving only to encounter almost exactly the same fight, but with an added tank enemy that took tiny bits of damage, making the fight around 10 minutes long.
Click to expand...

I have never had a 10 minute fight....I don't think.
 
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10 minutes doesn't seem bad. I remember some 1/2 hour wizardry 8 fights and I think I had a pool of radiance fight last 3 days. Ok, not really but it felt like it.
 
Who cares if a fight is 5-10 minutes long (and I don't think it's too realistic after the many hours I put into the game) if it's tense as hell? DD can be super tense, and you need to consider each of your actions in a battle (if facing enemies on the right challenge level).
 
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