So I've started playing the early access version of Darkest Dungeon and I am really liking it. The story is simple enough, your part of a family who was away when they decided to investigate the darker aspects of their castle manor. They obviously unlock the gateway to madness and your recalled to reclaim your heritage and fix the damage done. Your not a fighter however, so instead you guide adventurers through dungeons, fighting the various horrors, trying to survive against madness and death. It is not easy.
The game has a dark setting, with low light and a dark art style. The music also emphasises this and it's wonderful. Gameplay involves picking four adventurers, give them some supplies and enter a dungeon to achieve an objective. Success means getting heirlooms to upgrade parts of the town and gold to help with things such as supplies, stress relief, cure ailments and upgrading adventurers. The game is hard however. You'll find you never have enough gold to keep up with the removal of stress and negative effects, upgrades and supplies. This means your sending in new adventurers into dangerous situations in order to grind money. People will die and they don't come back. Too much stress in a dungeon will cause that adventurer to take a test, usually resulting in a serious breakdown, though sometimes a heroic feat. Once they loose it, then the real problems occur. They can upset their party (causing them stress), can refuse heals, refuse to move positions (and there are monsters which will knock your party out of position as does being surprised) and will sometimes refuse to preform an action or even do an action of their choice. This can really screw you over in fights. If things go too badly you will be forced to abandoned the quest, which has a number of negatives, though all remaining party members will survive.
This is what I like about this game. I like the whole role-playing, the dungeon runs, fighting the various evils and horrors. However, most such things never seem to have any real effect on those involved. I mean, how many times does one enter a dark place of horror, see insane things, battle nightmarish creatures and come out of it like it was just an everyday thing? All the time it seems. As an adventurer keeps doing these runs, they earn positive (increase stress resistance) and negative (fear of beasts) effects which will effect how they act in the future. You can cure some of the negatives, but it takes time and money to remove each one and rarely will you do it as you need to manage what is worth spending on.
This game can be very frustrating at times. I've had battles where my party keeps missing attacks or refusing to do things that have cost them. If you get really angry when playing games, you may want to skip this, but if you are patient and can spend the time then you may enjoy it. Either way, I am loving it and it's given me a few new ideas for some stories.
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