Video Game Review: "Darkest Dungeon" (2016)

I wanted to give a shout out to arguably the best recent CRPG, "Darkest Dungeon"!

Developed by Red Hook Studios (the moniker being a sign of their Lovecraft fandom!), Darkest Dungeon is a low fantasy dungeon crawling and team management CRPG.  In terms of background, in the finest Lovecraftian tradition, The Ancestor of the player spent too much time delving into Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, hordes of monstrosities were subsequently unleashed and now it's up to the player to set things right.

Dungeon by brutal dungeon, you direct a legion of adventurers to clear your blighted estate, often at the cost of the latters' lives and/or sanity, until you face the eponymous Darkest Dungeon.

Like the grim and gritty setting, this is a grueling and challenging game, in large part because, in the best Old School tradition, Random Number Generation (RNG) has a huge impact on gameplay!  More than once, a string of bad die rolls will turn the situation upside down and you'll be screaming  in frustration at the screen.

In a big departure from the majority of dungeon crawlers, in this game, much like a soccer manager, you are more focused on developing an entire roster of adventurers to meet various goals and challenges, as opposed to leveling up a specific party.  If you miss the forest for the trees, it's easy to get too invested in a particular  adventurer or group of adventurers, spending way too much resources on them.

Mixing side scrolling movement (a la Castlevania (1986), Old School!) and turn-based combat, tension mounts palpably as you explore various procedurally generated dungeons and the hordes of opponents whittle away at the party's health and sanity, not unlike Call of Cthulhu!

There's little hand holding in this game, and one poor decision can cost you, so you need to constantly pay attention (who's attacked so far this round?) or the situation can quickly devolve into a TPK!  Moreover, this is another way that the game punishes you if you get too invested- if a dungeon delve is going poorly, sometimes it's better to cut bait and run than risk ruining or losing one or more characters to death or insanity.

In addition, between the classes, their skills and camping skills, quirks, dungeons, monsters, curios, etc., there's a *HUGE* amount of crunch to absorb, so don't feel like looking things up in the wiki is cheating!  In addition, FilthyRobot has put together an excellent and informative series of class guides, beginning with the Abomination:

Overall, Darkest Dungeon is an amazing Old School game!  It rewards planning, preparations and smart play, but sometimes stuff happens and you just have to bounce back.  The art style is apt and the artwork is moody and evocative, as is the voice acting, and the attention to detail is superb.

So, if you are looking for an intense, Old School dungeon crawler that demands your best and keeps you on your toes, you'll love (and, at times, love to hate) "Darkest Dungeon".