Revisiting the title hasn’t been difficult at all. Darkest Dungeon has aspects to its gameplay that beget a difficult dance with genre-slinging: RPG, Roguelite, Turn-Based story, Narrator Porn, and the list probably goes on for about as long as a video game journalist’s ability to stretch the truth is constant.
In pragmatic terms, the gameplay isn’t anything that should be revolutionary. The turn-based combat is straightforward, the looting mechanics are cut-n’-dry, and the story is a bit of a horror cliche (that works perfectly, by the way.)
But actually, I do believe the stress mechanics and randomized nature of the affliction and virtuous states help to keep the parties involved unique where they are otherwise functional replicas of every other NPC of that class. It is this that stands out to me the most in Darkest Dungeon’s DNA.
Of course, randomized names and ability allotment help with this, but the stress mechanics, in particular, are huge for this game’s ability to pull me in. I say this as someone who doesn’t generally care for traditional turn-based combat outside of a game like Hearthstone, if that even counts: Darkest Dungeon’s combat, thanks to the stress system being a second courier for failure next to perma-death itself, is gripping in a way even some modernized combat systems fail to observe.
I’m a complete newbie at the game, as some veterans reading this article might have guessed already, so my current room for discourse is small, but I felt the need to talk about this title since, on my last playthrough, I accomplished little in-game. On this playthrough, too, I’ve accomplished little. But baby steps, eh?
GLHF,
-E
