Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon is a dungeon-crawling RPG that pits players against gruesome and terrifying beasts as they explore the expansive catacombs under a gothic mansion. Rounding up a team of hearty adventurers, you'll descend below the manor, balancing your health, stress, and physical advantages. As you successfully complete your delves, your party will grow stronger. However, one false move can equal a swift death, with your beloved adventurers gone for good. Tough, evocative, but immensely rewarding, Darkest Dungeon is an addictive adventure that's not afraid to be a bit cruel at times too.

Main Game Features

• Descend into the depths of a mysterious mansion
• Mixture of turn-based combat and traditional exploration
• Ultra challenging gameplay with permadeath

Story

In Darkest Dungeon, you are the lucky inheritor of an ancient estate handed down by a deceased ancestor. Unfortunately, before passing away, your relative pursued dark dreams of power, digging deep into the underbelly of the mansion's lower floors. Far underground, terrifying and unspeakable horrors awaited, unleashing themselves on the surrounding land. Now the owner of this cursed place, you must recruit a trusty group of four adventurers and follow your ancestor's footsteps and uncover their ultimate fate. While the premise of the game is intriguing enough, the story itself is somewhat predictable, leaning into genre tropes of evil entities and the undead. Luckily, the plot is revealed at a good pace that always keeps you invested, but those looking for a complex narrative about the nature of the afterlife might feel a bit underwhelmed.

Gameplay

Like any good dungeon-crawler, the gameplay is the heart of Darkest Dungeon, combining turn-based combat with free-form movement, allowing you to search the shadowy depths of each room and hallway. Dungeons are procedurally-generated, offering a new layout every time you visit them, so you can never expect the same adversity every time. Before embarking on a trip, you can prepare in Hamlet, the nearby town that rests close to the mansion. Here, you can recruit heroes for your dungeon runs, upgrade existing heroes and equipment, relieve status ailments, and trade with merchants. Before embarking on any adventure, you'll need up to four heroes, as well as provisions such as food, torches, and healing items. Once you've made your preparations, you're free to risk life and limb in a variety of locations.

Inside a dungeon, you'll explore a basic map, investigating rooms via interconnected hallways. While moving through hallways, you can investigate various elements of the environment, often finding valuables to collect. However, your inventory is limited, so you may have to leave some goodies behind. Your party must be continuously nourished with food and torches must stay lit, or heroes will begin to suffer from stress. If they experience too much stress, their stats will be negatively affected, throwing off your game plan. Combat is turn-based, similar to classic RPGs like Final Fantasy, and with fifteen different character classes, you can create some significantly destructive teams. The game is meant to be incredibly challenging, so you can expect heroes to die, quests to fail, and a feeling of utter defeat.

Conclusion

For fans of dungeon-crawling RPGs, Darkest Dungeon presents a meaningful challenge that will test your skill and will to continue. With their gloomy atmosphere and disturbing creatures, the dungeons you explore take on a life of their own, resulting in campaigns full of anxiety.

Pros

• Dark and brooding art style
• Lots of character classes
• Affliction system adds a satisfying level of difficulty

Cons

• Lacks plot and character development
• Difficulty can be frustrating at times
• Some encounters boil down to luck