Dr Wookie

Darkest Dungeon: Fear is a mind killer, and so is Eldritch Pull

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Yeah, same impression that new stuff just doesn't shake up the game enough to warrant another playthrough (not to mention new game + mode).

 

Still a good game for sure.

 

I should mention that I specifically chose not to play it in Early Access, though I did purchase it after seeing it at PAX, so this is my first time actually playing. I guess I was expecting more of a MASSIVE CHALICE sized experience.

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I hear it gets more challenging when you hit Veteran level dungeons. I've only played a couple of hours of ver 1.0 but I could see people not wanting to play the early stuff. I'm enjoying it so far having only played about 6 hours of the first early access release otherwise.

 

Also, there's the "complete within 92 weeks or you lose" mode.

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I'm not really looking for it to be harder, in fact I fear when it gets harder because I'm not going to start over at this point. If I die, I'm done with the game. What I really want is each individual dungeon run to take less time, or for there to be less dungeon runs, or something. I just got past my first long dungeon run, and it was looong.

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I should mention that I specifically chose not to play it in Early Access, though I did purchase it after seeing it at PAX, so this is my first time actually playing. I guess I was expecting more of a MASSIVE CHALICE sized experience.

 

Ahh... end game was lot faster in various phases of early access cause of few exploitable strategies...

 

Like, the camp buffs used to last indefinitely so medium and long dungeons were actually easier and faster because you would just pop camp at start and run the entire thing with really buffed party (buffs were better too).

 

I guess in that sense I got to taste the game before it got too drawn out, as you are probably right that it's probably too drawn out as it is. 

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I kind of feel similar about there being too many dungeon runs now. I have an old save file lying around, but I made most of my progress there early on when physical damage and hellions in particular still ruled everything. I started from scratch with the full release, and now the amount of work I'd have to do to get my buildings upgraded again just feels really daunting. At the same time, with the changes made to the games economy and how much more gold you have to spend on treating diseases, R&R, etc., those cost efficiency upgrades feel really crucial to long term progress.

 

As it stands, I got several full crews up to Level 3&4 pretty fast but I'm still a long way from actually being able to upgrade their equipment and skills to the same level, let alone adress their most concerning quirks, and consequently they all struggle a bit with the missions I send them on. I haven't lost too many, but it still means they need to have diseases or stress removed pretty often. Because hamlet upgrades are still permanent, it feels like the most optimal way to get ahead with the way the systems interact at the moment would be to throw my current roster into the meat grinder until I get a more efficient base and can then replace my losses with better equipped, better trained squads. That would be such a massive timesink. and still, progressing as I am now, with the occasional losses and the incredibly annoying hero perks doesn't feel like what the game is, it just feels like the annoying thing I have to do for now because I am not at that high-end level yet.

 

Also, while the the sanitarium definitely needed to be nerfed in some way so you could no longer keep your entire roster basically flawless, now that it is more costly to remove negative quirks, I feel like it highlights how randomly you get stuck with them. This was probably already a problem since forever, but it was relatively low-key when you got to remove those quirks after every single expedition. Now that they stick around for longer, I get pretty annoyed when a hero did really well on a mission, rolled over all the enemies, found lots of treasure, comes out with less stress than before, and then the result screen randomly declares that they picked up a terrible new habit and got infected with an awful disease. When did that happen then, eh?

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I think that's pretty much where I'm at. 8 people at level 3, a couple at 4, but just finally got level 2 weapons and everything else at level 1. I've gotten pretty good at the low level missions, to the point where I generally can take in two level 0s and two level 1s and end the mission with less stress than I started, but bad traits seem to rack up pretty fast regardless. On the plus side, I'm getting quite a few positive traits, but the cost to lock one is so prohibitively high at this point that it's getting frustrating to lose the ones I like.

 

I'm starting to wonder if maybe I just picked the wrong upgrades in town, focusing too much on price reduction maybe? I dunno, maybe I'll play some more tonight so I can offer some more useful criticism.

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I think that's pretty much where I'm at. 8 people at level 3, a couple at 4, but just finally got level 2 weapons and everything else at level 1. I've gotten pretty good at the low level missions, to the point where I generally can take in two level 0s and two level 1s and end the mission with less stress than I started, but bad traits seem to rack up pretty fast regardless. On the plus side, I'm getting quite a few positive traits, but the cost to lock one is so prohibitively high at this point that it's getting frustrating to lose the ones I like.

 

I'm honestly getting to the point where I think that the design tension of avoiding and removing traits is probably not a good dynamic for the game. To me, it just feels like there's no decision space after a certain level of learned skill: either the trait is a meaningless five-percent reduction to something and I just ignore it, or it's something that vastly reduces the character's utility and I have to remove it immediately if I can afford it or at my nearest convenience if I cannot. I would rather have bad traits be much less frequent and more transformative, the effect of leaving a character too long with too much low-level stress or of taking them on too many consecutive dungeons, and also have them be hard if not impossible to remove, just a part of the character now. Constantly paying large sums of money to make bad things go away just isn't fun enough for me after a dozen hours or so.

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I did a couple of missions last night, beat another boss, and had fun doing it. Maybe I was just trying to play too much in a chunk? Maybe even playing in little chunks will feel tedious? I guess I'll find out.

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This is a bit belated, but I finally got around to finishing a post about Darkest Dungeon from ages ago.

 

Here's a copy-paste of the text:

 

Quote

Darkest Dungeon is a turn-based RPG and tactical combat game set in a grim and foreboding world, clearly influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. It strives to strike a careful balance between accessible simplicity and challenging complexity and, for the most part, has done an admirable job. Dungeon's simple control scheme is complemented by its well balanced difficulty curve, as well as an overall excellent interplay between its theme and robust set of mechanics. However, a number of key issues related to feature-bloat and interface usability prevent it from being entirely successful. 

 

Each time you venture forth from the game's main hub, you draft a group of four heroes to form your party. These characters are drawn from a larger pool available in town, which can be expanded and replenished between each quest. Each has its own class, complete with a slew of stats, skills, meters, and much, much more. There are also upgrades and unlocks available for the town itself, which allow you to recruit more or better heroes, upgrade their equipment or skills further, and remove problematic traits. This extra management layer is certainly significant; I found myself spending about a third of my overall playtime tinkering with my town and patching up heroes.

 

Despite this variety of interconnected gameplay systems, Darkest Dungeon can easily be played with just a mouse, or even a trackpad. The game's turn-based structure ensures you are not pressured to respond quickly, and the side-scrolling nature of the game's exploration and combat further simplify the control requirements. Overall, the dense mechanical layers generate a satisfying challenge while simple controls still allow the game to be enjoyed on nearly any device.

Further, Dungeon's sense of difficulty and complexity complements its overall Lovecraftian aesthetic. The trademark horror and hopelessness of the Cthulhu universe come across clearly in Red Hook's art direction and script, but also through the game's borderline-overwhelming mechanical density, and its overall tone of hopeless difficulty and overwhelming odds. The mechanics, theme, and art of Darkest Dungeon are all in careful alignment.

While complexity is an important part of how Dungeon challenges players, it does at times feel a bit overwrought. It feels as though some systems are managed separately only for the sake of adding additional management overhead, such as tracking diseases apart from negative quirks, or leveling up characters themselves independently from their abilities. The over-segregation of Dungeon's management component leads to a real feeling of feature-bloat, which I found forced me to spend more time than I would have liked flicking through menus instead of enjoying the gameplay.

Parts of Dungeon's interface also leave something to be desired. For instance, unlocking new character abilities is done at a specific town building, but equipping those abilities can only be done when selecting a quest. Being unable to equip abilities when you unlock them invites the possibility of forgetting to select them when starting a quest, which led to me having a very ill-equipped party on several occasions. Adjusting the interface to allow for unlocking and equipping abilities on the same screen would completely solve this, and I struggle to understand why Red Hook choose to separate these functions.

Similarity, when patching up your party in town (removing diseases, curing negative quirks, etc) players have to drill down through several levels of menus to see which characters are afflicted with which ailments. This might not sound that problematic, but when you have dozens of characters to manage the frustration adds up. It can be difficult to remember who has the Black Plague (a disease) and needs to be sent to the Sanitarium's medical wing, and who has Alcoholism (a quirk) and needs to be sent to the Treatment Wing instead. A possible solution to this would be placing character portraits next to the building slots which cure them.

Despite these issues, I really did enjoy the eight or so hours I spent with Darkest Dungeon. There are some areas that could be cleaned up a bit, and it's certainly not the kind of game that I'm going to spend hundreds of hours with, but the simplicity of the controls combined with the collective challenge of it's various mechanics were more than engaging enough to help me while away a few especially long commutes. For those searching for a refined, focused experience to sink dozens or hundreds of hours into, Darkest Dungeon is not for you. However, if you're in the market for something to play on a laptop during a trip, Red Hook's inaugural title is a fantastic fit.

 

What do you guys think? Happy to hear thoughts about the game itself, and/or the writing in my post! :)

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I would generally agree that the interface is the weakest part of the game. I didn't even know that the tent up on the hill where you can buy new rest skills even existed for 3/4s of my time with the game. At the same time, I think the arcane menus actually contribute to the feeling of the game as you mention in your fourth paragraph.

 

The other big failure in my opinion is the quirk system. You accumulate quirks so fast, and with so little rhyme or reason. You can come out of a mission completely unscathed and get two negative quirks. Eventually, you just have 5 of each, which really doesn't incentivize me to cure any of those negative quirks, since they'll just be replaced soon. Having 5 positive quirks is a pain as well. Since the cost to lock one in is so high, you're likely to see your best quirks go away before you can afford to keep them. I would have liked it if quirks came less often, but had an even bigger impact on things, or maybe if all the quirk related town tasks (curing/locking) were cheaper so you could meaning influnce the system before the endgame where money is a bit more free.

 

I should also note that I've sunk about 40 hours into Darkest Dungeon now, after having bounced off of it the first couple times I tried it out, so my final statement might be more on the lines of "It's a lot of work, and certainly not for everyone, but if you can persevere through the learning curve and bad UI, there's a ton of fun to be had"

 

 

As for your writing, I found it very readable and it pulled me in and kept me reading rather well, even as someone who didn't need quite the basic introduction you were giving.

 

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On 1/27/2016 at 8:57 AM, Dewar said:

I did a couple of missions last night, beat another boss, and had fun doing it. Maybe I was just trying to play too much in a chunk? Maybe even playing in little chunks will feel tedious? I guess I'll find out.

 

To respond to my own quote from last year, for a long time I played a couple of missions here and there, and I've had a lot of fun with it in that style. I stalled out again near the end of defeating the last few bosses before the darkest dungeon itself. I've heard so many scary things about that final dungeon and how unfun it is that I lost interest.

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I agree with the UI somewhat fitting the tone/theme overall, but I'd argue you could have a UI that fits that tone without having it be a bit of an unwieldy mess. A lot of that character is from the art of the interface, and not the actual "what do I need to click on to accomplish things" side of it. 

 

I never got far enough to have the quirks really bother me, but I could see how that would end up feeling a bit out-of-control over time, with old ones constantly being removed and new ones added & limited ways to influence that. 

 

Thanks for your thoughts on my writing as well. I'm always trying to improve (despite having been inactive for a few months), so I appreciate the feedback. You're right that this piece was written for an audience that doesn't already know the game.

 

Typically, my long-form posts break down as follows:

  • Initial Impressions are for when I've spent only a few hours with a game and want to share preliminary thoughts with casual readers.
  • Reviews are for when I've beaten the game, or spent a substantial number of hours with it if that's not possible, and are focused on a traditional "buying advice" style.
  • Deep Dives are for things I've spent serious amounts of time with, where I have something very specific I want to investigate or argue. These assume my readers also have a fairly detailed understanding of the topic at hand coming in. 

I think my next post will be a review of Doom, if I can get off my ass and flesh out the skeleton post I've drafted :)

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15 hours ago, cakedotavi said:

I agree with the UI somewhat fitting the tone/theme overall, but I'd argue you could have a UI that fits that tone without having it be a bit of an unwieldy mess. A lot of that character is from the art of the interface, and not the actual "what do I need to click on to accomplish things" side of it. 

 

 

Oh yeah, I'm definitely not excusing the UI, just thinking about the choices that might have made it end up that way.

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