Darkest Dungeon Review

Game has a lot of issues. However, I will still recommend it, because it does well what it does. It has story, it has atmosphere, it has satisfying combat system which was new when it came out. Game has a lot going for it and it was undoubtedly very influential in gaming industry. Playing after its development had ended, I can tell that it had withstood test of time and is one of the classical games.


First one is that there is no way to know how many supplies you gonna need. Nor there is any randomization of supplies. This results in simple lack of quality of life features. You have to memorise how much supplies and what kind you would need for any mission and there is no depth or gameplay there. Just fake depth. It does not help that supply system is kinda busted too. You will be clicking on torches in order to maintain above 76 light level for bonuses only to fail at the last second and get smaller bonuses at the start of combat or get stress penalties. Food system is also bugged. Sometimes it seems that it doesn’t want to trigger, sometimes it is being triggered constantly. Bug seems to occur when you are backtracking.

Then there is just general lack of information what enemy abilities do. You do not know enemies capabilities nor you know your own. A good example are your own buffs/debuffs and how long they will last.
In addition, RNG generator is also busted, those 80% hits seem to fail awfully often. More so when ability strikes all the members of a party. It has a tendency to fail on all of them which is statistically virtually impossible.

Game is also very grindey. It spreads itself too thin and every line, every trinket, every ability and every mob will become tiresome. You have to kill every boss 3 times which is very annoying. You also do not seem to get that satisfaction of improvement. Your heroes tend to scale extremely with levels, mainly from blacksmith. However, at the same time game becomes rather ridiculous with boss capable of doing immense damage, of random battles being walk at the park in a same time. It also has extremely grindey and unpredictable heroes quests like of a shield breaker. I essentially need to do 7 quests for a specific class which appear sometimes and I have to have that class in my roster. Those quests also can ♥♥♥♥ up my run. Game seem to struggle at the later stages as it fails to provide relevant scaling outside of simply throwing more stuff at the wall and locking content behind massive grinds.

Combat system is also very RNG dependent. I’m not talking about its swingy nature, but how much importance RNG has in its game. For example, there is no way to counter traps realistically. You can have reasonable 35% chance to scout. That is it. Otherwise you are walking into a trap and there is nothing you can do about it. Some heroes have skills to increase scout chance, but it requires to have them in the party and then to have time to camp in order to purchase that buff. Or how enemies can just roll through critical strikes when your guys just keep on missing. At a veteran, my party was beaten bloody by 4 ordinary spiders simply due to RNG. Whole party went from full hp to barely alive just because how dependent this game is on RNG.

Game also is too skewed towards camp ambushes forcing a meta where anti-ambush skills are necessary.



Game is long and tedious. It is a long crusade to reclaim your estate. Unfortunately, despite long development time, this game still has a lot of bugs and issues which were not ironed out in all this time.

• Then there is an issue of speed. Turn priority is unclear and units will often violate their turn order despite having lower/greater speed. System is very imprecise and unclear. Just be happy that you are allowed to make a turn at all.
  
  
  
• Another bug is that resolve tests sometimes misfire with stress values way below 100.
  
  
• This game also does not show how any objects interact. In your journeys you will encounter many objects. Some will have an icon that they can used, some won’t. There is no way of knowing what to do outside of annoying memorisation or wiki. This game obfuscates gameplay information for no good reason.
  
  
• Game has other bugs. For example, you can pray even if your hero has a negative trait which prohibits praying. Then another bug is with Riposte which sometimes does not activate on some abilities when it should.
  
  
• There are some annoyances like getting mission completed screen before being able to loot last room. Or like trinket interface is annoying to use.
  
  
• Surprise mechanic is broken. Your heroes can’t get surprised in Radiant or Dim light according to wikipedia, but they get surprised regardless. Furthermore, game shuffles your units when surprised, but it doesn’t do the same to enemy formations. This is quite common bug and one giant oversight in this game.
  
  
• Game has an issue with Riposte mechanic. It is often arbitary which attacks in which hero counter attacks and there is a bug where if there are two valid counter attacks to happen, only one hero will retaliate.
  
  
• After mid to end game, town events just disappear. Developers did not playtested enough of their long game and don’t know that sometimes events do not pop up. This is especially problematic as heroes refuse to do low level quests and you need special events to pop up which would allow high levels to do low level quests, mainly to finish a boss and level last guys to another range of levels. Quite huge oversight in my opinion and is a major reason why you do not create long games in general. If developers themselves can’t properly playtest their game once, then why bother creating such a massive grind in a first place?
  
  
• There is a bug where your hero might skip the turn. Tend to happen when he is brought at Death’s Door.
  
  
• Another bug is where dream sequence abruptly ends wiping your whole progress.
  
  
• There is a bug where heroes will have random negative modifiers. Game calls them either “town” or “other skills”. However, there are no mechanics or perks which would give those modifiers.
  
  
• Stress eater activates regardless of a stress level. A lot of conditional requirements seem to be bugged in this game.
  
  
• Medicinal Herbs do not work in removing diseases which you acquire on the field. This is a bug since there is no indication when herbs do work and when they do not. Just some random diseases can’t be cured on a field for some reason.
  
  
• Taunts in form of marks do not work at all. Enemies seemingly ignore them.
  
  
• Quest item system is busted. It tends to spam same few items every week. Some very rare items appear constantly and are way too powerful. Items are extremely disbalanced. Most rare items are useless while others are game breaking.

Game is tedious, long and grindey. Everything novel and atmospheric about it gets grinded down into monotony and repetition. Game is designed to waste your time. It is difficult to fail, but also difficult to progress quickly. Game wastes way too much time to be worth replaying for anyone, but most dedicated of fans. However, I believe it is a journey which everyone should experience at least once!

[h1]An unrefined Gem[/h1] Game has a lot of issues. However, I will still recommend it, because it does well what it does. It has story, it has atmosphere, it has satisfying combat system which was new when it came out. Game has a lot going for it and it was undoubtedly very influential in gaming industry. Playing after its development had ended, I can tell that it had withstood test of time and is one of the classical games. [h1]Gameplay Issues[/h1] First one is that there is no way to know how many supplies you gonna need. Nor there is any randomization of supplies. This results in simple lack of quality of life features. You have to memorise how much supplies and what kind you would need for any mission and there is no depth or gameplay there. Just fake depth. It does not help that supply system is kinda busted too. You will be clicking on torches in order to maintain above 76 light level for bonuses only to fail at the last second and get smaller bonuses at the start of combat or get stress penalties. Food system is also bugged. Sometimes it seems that it doesn’t want to trigger, sometimes it is being triggered constantly. Bug seems to occur when you are backtracking. Then there is just general lack of information what enemy abilities do. You do not know enemies capabilities nor you know your own. A good example are your own buffs/debuffs and how long they will last. In addition, RNG generator is also busted, those 80% hits seem to fail awfully often. More so when ability strikes all the members of a party. It has a tendency to fail on all of them which is statistically virtually impossible. Game is also very grindey. It spreads itself too thin and every line, every trinket, every ability and every mob will become tiresome. You have to kill every boss 3 times which is very annoying. You also do not seem to get that satisfaction of improvement. Your heroes tend to scale extremely with levels, mainly from blacksmith. However, at the same time game becomes rather ridiculous with boss capable of doing immense damage, of random battles being walk at the park in a same time. It also has extremely grindey and unpredictable heroes quests like of a shield breaker. I essentially need to do 7 quests for a specific class which appear sometimes and I have to have that class in my roster. Those quests also can fuck up my run. Game seem to struggle at the later stages as it fails to provide relevant scaling outside of simply throwing more stuff at the wall and locking content behind massive grinds. Combat system is also very RNG dependent. I’m not talking about its swingy nature, but how much importance RNG has in its game. For example, there is no way to counter traps realistically. You can have reasonable 35% chance to scout. That is it. Otherwise you are walking into a trap and there is nothing you can do about it. Some heroes have skills to increase scout chance, but it requires to have them in the party and then to have time to camp in order to purchase that buff. Or how enemies can just roll through critical strikes when your guys just keep on missing. At a veteran, my party was beaten bloody by 4 ordinary spiders simply due to RNG. Whole party went from full hp to barely alive just because how dependent this game is on RNG. Game also is too skewed towards camp ambushes forcing a meta where anti-ambush skills are necessary. [h1]Bugs and imprecise interactions[/h1] Game is long and tedious. It is a long crusade to reclaim your estate. Unfortunately, despite long development time, this game still has a lot of bugs and issues which were not ironed out in all this time. [list] [*]Then there is an issue of speed. Turn priority is unclear and units will often violate their turn order despite having lower/greater speed. System is very imprecise and unclear. Just be happy that you are allowed to make a turn at all. [*]Another bug is that resolve tests sometimes misfire with stress values way below 100. [*]This game also does not show how any objects interact. In your journeys you will encounter many objects. Some will have an icon that they can used, some won’t. There is no way of knowing what to do outside of annoying memorisation or wiki. This game obfuscates gameplay information for no good reason. [*]Game has other bugs. For example, you can pray even if your hero has a negative trait which prohibits praying. Then another bug is with Riposte which sometimes does not activate on some abilities when it should. [*]There are some annoyances like getting mission completed screen before being able to loot last room. Or like trinket interface is annoying to use. [*]Surprise mechanic is broken. Your heroes can’t get surprised in Radiant or Dim light according to wikipedia, but they get surprised regardless. Furthermore, game shuffles your units when surprised, but it doesn’t do the same to enemy formations. This is quite common bug and one giant oversight in this game. [*]Game has an issue with Riposte mechanic. It is often arbitary which attacks in which hero counter attacks and there is a bug where if there are two valid counter attacks to happen, only one hero will retaliate. [*]After mid to end game, town events just disappear. Developers did not playtested enough of their long game and don’t know that sometimes events do not pop up. This is especially problematic as heroes refuse to do low level quests and you need special events to pop up which would allow high levels to do low level quests, mainly to finish a boss and level last guys to another range of levels. Quite huge oversight in my opinion and is a major reason why you do not create long games in general. If developers themselves can’t properly playtest their game once, then why bother creating such a massive grind in a first place? [*]There is a bug where your hero might skip the turn. Tend to happen when he is brought at Death’s Door. [*]Another bug is where dream sequence abruptly ends wiping your whole progress. [*]There is a bug where heroes will have random negative modifiers. Game calls them either “town” or “other skills”. However, there are no mechanics or perks which would give those modifiers. [*]Stress eater activates regardless of a stress level. A lot of conditional requirements seem to be bugged in this game. [*]Medicinal Herbs do not work in removing diseases which you acquire on the field. This is a bug since there is no indication when herbs do work and when they do not. Just some random diseases can’t be cured on a field for some reason. [*]Taunts in form of marks do not work at all. Enemies seemingly ignore them. [*]Quest item system is busted. It tends to spam same few items every week. Some very rare items appear constantly and are way too powerful. Items are extremely disbalanced. Most rare items are useless while others are game breaking. [/list] [h1]Conclusion[/h1] Game is tedious, long and grindey. Everything novel and atmospheric about it gets grinded down into monotony and repetition. Game is designed to waste your time. It is difficult to fail, but also difficult to progress quickly. Game wastes way too much time to be worth replaying for anyone, but most dedicated of fans. However, I believe it is a journey which everyone should experience at least once!