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[More_Badass]

Site | Price: $24.99 | Platorms: PC, Mac
Steam | Humble | GOG
PS4, PS Vita, iPad versions in development

Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic RPG about the stresses of dungeon crawling. You will lead a band of heroes on a perilous side-scrolling descent, dealing with a prodigious number of threats to their bodily health, and worse, a relentless assault on their mental fortitude! Five hundred feet below the earth you will not only fight unimaginable foes, but famine, disease, and the stress of the ever-encroaching dark. Darkest Dungeon focuses on the humanity and psychological vulnerability of the heroes and asks: What emotional toll does a life of adventure take?

Darkest Dungeon is not a game where every hero wins the day with shiny armor and a smile. It is a game about hard trade-offs, nearly certain demise, and heroic acts.

Can you stem the tide of eldritch horrors erupting across your family’s ancestral estate?

Release Trailer | Early Access Trailer | Playstation Teaser | House of Ruin | Terror and Madness

• The Affliction System – battle not only monsters, but stress! Contend with paranoia, masochism, fear, irrationality, and a host of gameplay-meaningful quirks!
• Striking hand-drawn gothic crowquill art style
• Innovative turn-based combat pits you against a host of diabolical monsters
• Narration system to celebrate your successes...and failures
• 14 (and counting!) playable hero classes, including Plague Doctor, Hellion, and even the Leper!
• Camp to heal wounds or deliver inspiring speeches.
• Rest your weary, shell-shocked characters in town at the Tavern or the Abbey to keep their stress in check.
• Classic CRPG and roguelike features, including meaningful permadeath, procedural dungeons, and incredible replay

Game Informer - 9.25/10

Darkest Dungeon is an incredible take on the classic dungeon crawl. The game brings Lovecraftian lore to new heights with cool classes, powerful narration, stylish art, and addictive gameplay that will keep you crawling back to battle slithering monstrosities even as your favorite heroes become corpses.

Hardcore Gamer - 8/10

Darkest Dungeon is difficult, but not because its systems are unclear or unfair. In fact, the richness and complexity of its mechanics are miraculously transparent. What makes Darkest Dungeon challenging is balancing and equipping a party and the essentially unpredictable nature of the dungeons and combat. The art style — hand-drawn and evocative, with just enough effective animation to keep things interesting without adding overwhelm to the already busy nature of the action — is beautiful, and its music and stentorian narration are perfectly in sync with the characters. The whole enterprise is polished and a lot of fun.

 

[Roldan]

FINALLY.

One step closer for playing it on Vita.

 

[Begaria]

I put about 27 hours into the Early Access last year, and stopped since I wanted to experience the full game. This is definitely one of the best kickstarters I've put money in to. Can't wait to play it tonight.

 

[names2hard4you]

Subbed. Can't wait to get back into this game. Gonna start from scratch, because why not.

 

[Corpekata]

January too packed man.

 

[Gothos]

Finally! Subscribed Only a few hours now. I wonder what is included in the final update.

 

[CrispyGoomba]

Aww man, I thought it was coming out tomorrow on ps4. I'll just go ahead and buy on steam cause I'm not really playing anything else right now.

 

[Ucchedavāda]

I played this a few hours after they sent out the backer keys, and it was a lot of fun, but have mostly been content to wait for the full release. I do remember there being a lot of blow-back due to anti-cheese mechanics that were added a while back, but how is it shaping up these days?

 

[toastyToast]

The "Wait until they're diseased, mad and crippled and give them the boot" simulator.

 

[RMI]

I'm curious to see what the final version of the game adds. I have been playing the latest early access version for 20+ hours and think this game has lots of problems in terms of grind, lack of variety, and meaningless progression. hopefully the final dungeon adds a twist and isn't just a differently themed version of one of the existing dungeons.

 

[thelatestmodel]

From the sounds of it the devs have been listening - I saw Steam reviews that absolutely hated what they were doing to the game, but now they're all positive and saying "this and that has been fixed or made optional".

Think it's definitely time to pick this up.

 

[Fine Ham Abounds]

Art style is kinda interesting, I'll keep an eye on this

 

[DrArchon]

Grabbed this when it first came out in Early Access and had a blast for a few days before putting it down and not touching it again. All I've heard since is people whining about various changes, but nothing really specific.

How much has changed since it first went up in EA? Is there anything big that I should prepare for when I get back in?

 

[Draft]

Best voice over of 2016 already in the bag.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy1RoYlej6xWqRRci7K_OuQWa-7UgG0uo

 

[-MD-]

Nice OT!

This game is crazy addicting, I put like 40+ hours into it over a 2 week period last year, decided to stop so I could play the complete game.

Gonna start a clean playthrough soon for sure.

 

[UCBooties]

Have the developers said anything about whether the PS4 and PSV versions will be cross-play or cross-buy? This seems like a great fit for cross-play.

Will definitely be picking this up on Feb. 3!

 

[Baliis]

I should probably play this game at some point. Backed it on kickstarter, but when it went into early access, it would crash immediately on launch so I never got around to trying it.

 

[Aureon]

This game is amazing.
Throughly fuck red-level missions and their bad habit to go Crit > leave dot > kill your character with dot on next turn, though.

 

[Birathen]

Very, very fun game. I love the artstyle. I played it a few months back but found the RNG gods unkind. Seems they changed the RNG some or I have manned the fuckup but Im doing better now.

I havent had time to check to try out all the new classes but they look good :3

 

[Begaria]

I played this a few hours after they sent out the backer keys, and it was a lot of fun, but have mostly been content to wait for the full release. I do remember there being a lot of blow-back due to anti-cheese mechanics that were added a while back, but how is it shaping up these days?

From the sounds of it the devs have been listening - I saw Steam reviews that absolutely hated what they were doing to the game, but now they're all positive and saying "this and that has been fixed or made optional".

Think it's definitely time to pick this up.

Grabbed this when it first came out in Early Access and had a blast for a few days before putting it down and not touching it again. All I've heard since is people whining about various changes, but nothing really specific.

How much has changed since it first went up in EA? Is there anything big that I should prepare for when I get back in?

From what I've been reading over the last year: they've added several classes, new mechanics, and the release today will have (obviously) all of the dungeons.

The anti-cheese mechanics you guys heard about that people were complaining about is come class balancing but mainly Heart Attacks and Corpses. Corpses were added in as a mandatory addition at one point, where if you killed an enemy they wouldn't simply disappear like the original EA release had, instead they would leave behind a corpse and you'd have to hit again to make it disappear to get the row rotation going. It added a pointless additional round to kill an enemy that was already killed.

They made that optional in an update later - you can turn it on for additional challenge if you want.

Heart attacks were also added, which is if your stress level reaches even further than the 100% it was already at, your character could suffer a heart attack for an insta-death. They also made this an optional mechanic (it was mandatory when first patched in) you can turn on for additional challenge if you so wish.

The news on these changes:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/24/darkest-dungeon-corpses/

I don't like the sound of the Corpse mechanics, so I'll be playing with that off. I might keep Heart Attacks on since it does sound intriguing and well within the scope of the mechanics.

 

[DrArchon]

Thanks for the info! Interesting additions, but I'm glad they're optional because I had a tough enough time with Darkest Dungeon without that stuff.

Glad to hear the game wasn't ruined or anything.

 

[Uthred]

Thought heart attacks were always part of the insanity mechanics, to be honest they seem basically mandatory as without them insanity really lacks teeth. Didnt like corpses at first but in play they actually work out useful at times, especially if you can move the enemies around.

Played this back in early access and then got into it again over Christmas. Is there a patch list of the differences between the current version and release version?

 

[spannicus]

Waiting for vita

 

[Sub Zero]

I think it's a pretty overrated game. It sure has a nice art style, good humor and can be addictive at times but it's too grindy, and the character customization is pitiful. You can only equip your characters with trinkets and only choose their combat and camping skills. Everything else is linear

 

[deleted]

I was gifted the game last year and have been waiting for it to be finished. Hopefully it's right up my alley, I don't mind hard games, but when they become too unfair or random I just loose interest rather fast.

I might just start with the full release since I'm getting into Hellboy comics atm too which are a nice fit in atmosphere.

 

[Mdk7]

Glad i backed it, hope to play it on Vita soon.

 

[GuitarAtomik]

Been looking forward to this for Vita, but have they ever mentioned an Android version? That might be even better for me.

 

[DrROBschiz]

Glad i backed it, hope to play it on Vita soon.

I know man!

Of all the games that just SCREAM portable addiction

 

[Uthred]

I think it's a pretty overrated game. It sure has a nice art style, good humor and can be addictive at times but it's too grindy, and the character customization is pitiful. You can only equip your characters with trinkets and only choose their combat and camping skills. Everything else is linear

Traits and quirks also distinguish characters. It's fairly obviously a roguelike so being "grindy" and having somewhat shallow character customisation for your ultimately disposable minions seems par for the course.

 

[Li Kao]

I really really couldn't wait for this game to be finished, resisting the early access purchase was like hell.
That being said, I stumbled upon this thread in the official forum some weeks ago and... yeah... I don't know. It could just be some particularly critical players, it could... (and kudos to the dev to let the thread be)

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/topic/i-have-lost-faith/

Not really sure what to do anymore, I fear that the game is indeed a nice and alluring empty shell.

 

[Sarcasm]

Got it on PC..will get for Vita =D

Will wipe save on release =D

 

[loganclaws]

I bought the game yesterday but hearing all this negative buzz is disappointing. I might refund it because apparently the game is very shallow and everything is RNG based with no real strategy involved.

 

[Steel]

Had it for awhile. Any major changes going from Early access a couple weeks ago to now?

 

[RMI]

I think it's a pretty overrated game. It sure has a nice art style, good humor and can be addictive at times but it's too grindy, and the character customization is pitiful. You can only equip your characters with trinkets and only choose their combat and camping skills. Everything else is linear

Might be the most overrated game I've seen in a long time. There is a lot to like about Darkest Dungeon, don't get me wrong, but very little of that has to do with the gameplay which only has the appearance of depth and complexity. Once you dig in a little you see that there isn't much there.

I don't like the sound of the Corpse mechanics, so I'll be playing with that off. I might keep Heart Attacks on since it does sound intriguing and well within the scope of the mechanics.

corpses are a non-issue in this game if you run a balanced party that can target into the enemy's rear ranks and have access to damaging bleed and blight effects because enemies killed by blight or bleed do not leave corpses. Additionally, there there a few abilities in the game that remove all corpses (but you don't really even need to use them).

I'm not really sure about heart attacks, as I very rarely get over even 100 stress.

 

[Uthred]

I really really couldn't wait for this game to be finished, resisting the early access purchase was like hell.
That being said, I stumbled upon this thread in the official forum some weeks ago and... yeah... I don't know. It could just be some particularly critical players, it could... (and kudos to the dev to let the thread be)

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/topic/i-have-lost-faith/

Not really sure what to do anymore, I fear that the game is indeed a nice and alluring empty shell.

The OP there does raise some issues, I dont think theyre as bad as they make them out to be. Ultimately though their post reads like an issue of unrealistic expectations, the game was never going to be "Lovecraftian XCOM"

 

[Sarcasm]

Heart attacks are annoying early on. Corpses...not so much. There are skills that remove them. Like a plague doctor that does attack on an enemy + clear all corpses.

 

[Xater]

So is the game already patched to be the final game for Early Access guys or do we have to wait for the real release?

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

Waiting for the Vita...

 

[-tetsuo-]

I really really couldn't wait for this game to be finished, resisting the early access purchase was like hell.
That being said, I stumbled upon this thread in the official forum some weeks ago and... yeah... I don't know. It could just be some particularly critical players, it could... (and kudos to the dev to let the thread be)

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/topic/i-have-lost-faith/

Not really sure what to do anymore, I fear that the game is indeed a nice and alluring empty shell.

Those complaints are strange. It appears that he doesn't know or like what a rougelike is. This isn't even a full blown one. He is asking to make story descisions and complaining about mechanics, wishing this was XCOM. Just seems off base.

 

[Gothos]

I really really couldn't wait for this game to be finished, resisting the early access purchase was like hell.
That being said, I stumbled upon this thread in the official forum some weeks ago and... yeah... I don't know. It could just be some particularly critical players, it could... (and kudos to the dev to let the thread be)

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/topic/i-have-lost-faith/

Not really sure what to do anymore, I fear that the game is indeed a nice and alluring empty shell.

I think you expect DD to be some mystical, PERFECT game. Every game has its problems, DD is not an exception. Personally, I expect to have a lot of fun with it

 

[RMI]

Those complaints are strange. It appears that he doesn't know or like what a rougelike is. This isn't even a full blown one. He is asking to make story descisions and complaining about mechanics. Just seems off base.

I think the complaints about mechanics are completely on point, especially #2.

I think you expect DD to be some mystical, PERFECT game. Every game has its problems, DD is not an exception. Personally, I expect to have a lot of fun with it

This game has a lot of problems. It's not a BAD game, really, but I just hope that if they are going to make a lot of money on this, that Darkest Dungeon 2 addresses a lot of the issues with this game.

 

[Gothos]

This game has a lot of problems. It's not a BAD game, really, but I just hope that if they are going to make a lot of money on this, that Darkest Dungeon 2 addresses a lot of the issues with this game.

Question is, how many of those problems are objective and subjective.

 

[Li Kao]

I think you expect DD to be some mystical, PERFECT game. Every game has its problems, DD is not an exception. Personally, I expect to have a lot of fun with it

Huh ? I am in no way one of the posters in that thread, and don't expect DD to be the second coming. That being said, if the game is really just a (very) pretty RNG simulator, I could see myself losing interest fast.
I truly don't know what I will do once the game is released.

Edit. I'm waiting for the day one discount for starters, no way in hell I pay full price.

 

[Randomizer123454444]

Awesome! I had completely forgotten about this, what a wonderful thing to find.

Yes, there is randomness but it can be managed quite easily. Bring proper supplies, like a shovel. Key for extra loot. And so on. Bring a good healer. I can only speak for early game (I only killed 2 bosses before stopping since I wanted to play full game), but for example Vestal with upgraded healing abilities makes combat significantly easier. Crits are non-issue. Sure, they can hit your character hard but that's why there is deaths door mechanic. I managed to survive versus a boss 10 turns longer than I should have, because my Vestal would AoE heal party, taking them off deaths door, allowing each member to take another massive hit before going to deaths door again. Stress will become issue long-term but managing that is one of the core mechanics in whole game.

So yeah, there is randomness, but the game mechanics have been designed so that you can avoid it mostly. But if you can't..well, that's why there is an almost infinite supply of new heroes!

I loved the game in early access and I'm eager to continue playing it.

 

[Sub Zero]

I really really couldn't wait for this game to be finished, resisting the early access purchase was like hell.
That being said, I stumbled upon this thread in the official forum some weeks ago and... yeah... I don't know. It could just be some particularly critical players, it could... (and kudos to the dev to let the thread be)

http://www.darkestdungeon.com/topic/i-have-lost-faith/

Not really sure what to do anymore, I fear that the game is indeed a nice and alluring empty shell.

This thread perfectly sums up my issues with the game. There just isn't anything to do outside of running through the same dungeons, doing the same "quests" until you farm and level up enough to beat the next boss. The stress system isn't dynamic enough, you just pick a bad trait (that you can remove afterwards) or die from heart attack every 100 points or so. The Quirk/Affliction system is just various buffs/debuffs that you can choose to keep or remove. I'd prefer a proper loot system and just have the quirk system as something that would make my characters more unique and fun to play with.

I know they are a small team but they could easily flesh out some of the core concepts of the game more, especially after this game has been sitting in EA for almost a year. Hopefully they'll be decent enough to keep updating the game with free content to make up for it's shortcomings

 

[Auctopus]

I was so excited for this and loved the style but after watching videos, it just seems unbelievably unfair.

 

[DeadPhoenix]

The game is random as all hell. Which is quite frankly what they said it would be from the beginning(at least, thats the feeling i got). If anything my complaint is that how easy it is to minimize the potential damage of it. Even when playing the pitch black hard mode mod I found the game relatively easy if I was trying to be careful.

Anyways, once its out I'm gonna start a new game(again) and try to to grind to much this time before taking on bosses and such(I've actually avoided fighting many of the bosses so I've got a couple surprises waiting for me, which will be nice/horrifying).

 

[-MD-]

I was so excited for this and loved the style but after watching videos, it just seems unbelievably unfair.

It's only unfair if you don't understand how the game works. I remember reading through reviews saying how brutal the game was, how the RNG will just hand your ass to you and you're back to square one etc.

I had like 4 characters die in my 44 hour run, and it was all due to me being too greedy.

 

[Spikematic]

I have around 30 hours played in the early access already. Love it! Going to start fresh for sure.

 

[Tiops]

Oh shit, I really want this game.

Unfortunately won't be able to buy it now (love those new year bills ;-, but will sure get it when possible.