I do not recommend Darkest Dungeon for a casual gaming audience for a few reasons:
- Casual gamers are seeking to play games that require both skill and RNG, and are typically entertaining if what they can do can be overcome with skill.
- Using the description: "Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring."(We will reference this nitpick later)
- Casual gamers are an audience of people who purchase games that are *easy* to get into, typically, even if they puport to be challenging. Think how Diabola games work, Slay the Spire (Card Game Roguelike), or other Roguelikes like Hades and the Binding of Isaac. This is not a *easy* game to get into, at all.
Here is why(This is an anecdotal testimony reviewrs): I bought this game a really long time ago when I was like, what when I write this now, 17? I didn't play it until I'm 23 now, and in College. I initially liked how it played; It was definitely difficult because I had DLC enabled, but I played on the lowest difficulty (Radiant), and I found it was incredibly difficult to still play the game. I busted that, lets be clear. Did all the wrong things. Didn't know to loc my quirks (or remove negative quirks like kleptomania where they steal and lock your loot, so you lose magic items aka trinkets here), to burn characters as fast as they come because you will be playing fast weeks of bad quirks, and what not? Okay, sure, basic anecdotal concepts.
I eventually restarted on Darkness Game Mode(the intended experience), and I am immediately going to tell you this game has a difficulty spike problem, and its not obvious. The first few weeks played like normal, hunt down stage coach and gear upgrades with portraits as fast as possible, using Aquarian (this class dramatically increases gold/loot drops, which you need for accelerated gameplay), and even Veteran had some minor spikes but you basically walked into the usual same problems, you know? If you don't study the boss you're fighting, bad comps kill you. Mismanaging stress, kills you. Guys, these are all really easy to understand since it talks about this in the games description.
Full stop, once you hit Level 5 (Champion), you have no idea what you're doing. The immediate difficulty spite is that everything has an absurd crit rate, HP, and dodge, meaning that if you don't get every class in the game (every except Vestal carries or something like Abomination), you will never have the correct comp for bosses (all bosses dramatically go up in difficulty), and all regular mobs will heart attack your heroes (stress reaching 200/already at death door) within the first....I counted on average five fights? (To be clear, you are expected to be able to do dungeons that could include up to 20 fights). This is not okay, because remember, I haven't mentioned but your heroes permanently die when killed (obviously! It's darkest dungeon! its advertised), but you spent hours (I have 60 hours man, I am not gonna get a refund), building your cool comp and 3 of them die immediately (look at my achievements!), and then every single time I attempted a [short] or [medium] lenght champion, at maxed out stats (resolve 5, resolve is levels ya all), if I did not kill everything first, my entire team dies. if I have the wrong comp (non-boss fights), my entire team des. What does this result in me?
Looking. Up. A. Wiki. (the community discord says to do this too)
No, stop. I should not have to reference outside sources, study them like a college class, and work up all the correct resources, which 30 minutes out of my day to raise multiple, just eventually to potentially get them killed. But, Zachary_XYZ_Fusion hasn't mentioned this game has RNG? Guys, at Apprentice and Vet, you maybe suffered 10 crits to 15 (if you were insanely unlucky) in the first 20 fights I mentioned. In the first five fights, I had nearly 12 (5 different champion level correct comp parties), and I am not going into the math for this review. It's already long.
This wiki issue is not strictly at the highest level [champion], you need the wiki to look up bosses because they're all comp specific (meaning you will die almost everytime unless you memorize the correct relevant mechanics, and first timers will often incur 1 casualty toan entire party kill, even at veteran). It's okay though, you can just make more heroes right? No, guys. It's RNG to get the correct heroes, its RNG to get the right quirk, its RNG to not get critted, dodge, or hit, and its RNG to hit, to do damage, to crit, etc. Everything, and I mean, everything is RNG, to such a degree that I am having to applied my algebra 2 mathematics, and create sheets to make sure I don't get my party killed.
Guys, I am a casual gamer. I do not like having to do this, because its anxiety inducing, its not fun. Also, if you do not have the DLC, the game is significantly harder and is even more sensitive to party comps. Again, this is far too much detail. It shouldn't be mindless, I will say that, but this is more violent RNG than what's typical, and expects to eat up yours hours of your lifetime, ya all. 60 hours I am not getting back on this 100 year lifespan, with a frustration of failure and dissatisfaction, because of how much RNG is prioritized over your actual skill to plan or get things right.
I am going to wrap back around to this, since I called it a nitpick. "Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring."
Translation: Darkest Dungeon is a roguelike turn-based RPG, focused on using randomized methods to challenging logistics methodology and numerous back to back setbacks, focusing on the psychological stresses of adventuring.
This framework matters to emphasize the tediousness, and continous failures I do not find fun. Another way to also put it, this is a "Fail upwards" game, meaning that you need a disproportionate amount of frustration in order to find this fun. No, I do not like fail upwards games. Will I still play Darkest Dungeon regardless of this review? Duh, I am a masochist and a sore loser. But the point of this review is to make sure you buy this with this awareness, and while it might be "very positive", I am not one of those people. I am probably not smart enough for a game like this, and maybe I'm not the audience, but I bought it, and I don't like it.
Thank you for reading my reviews, Caretakers! Stay frosty, don't get infections, and beat back the evils of our Ancestor!
