The estate may have been reduced to ruins due to neglect and exploitation by nefarious forces (human or otherwise), but the hamlet that was populated by the lord’s peasantry is still around. The final goal is to breach the titular Darkest Dungeon, where the deceased lord had spent so much of his wealth, efforts and sanity to unearth. Next, the player character is to take on foolish adventurers who are looking for treasure and riches, and use the wealth that is gained to rebuild the hamlet so that it can function as a base for deeper forays into the estate. The recipient happens to be the disembodied player character.Īfter surviving a perilous journey that also acts as the tutorial, the player character arrives at a hamlet in the ruined estate. Seemingly after having had too much of seeking out the esoteric and the profane for the power to go beyond mortal, the aging lord committed suicide, but not before sending out a letter to his descendant. One of the worst examples of the latter case occurs in the estate of a particularly (but formerly) powerful feudal lord. These are made all the worse by things from beyond who are always looking for opportunities to ingress into the lives of mortals – and yet, there are the foolish and/or wicked who court their favour. There is a lot of such cynical melodrama in the writing.

This game’s version of Europe is a cesspool of hideous inequality, if it is not already devastated by wars between supposedly civilized nations and/or with savage barbarians who greed outsiders with arrows to their heads. Slavery and sacrificial rites are common in the game’s version of the Middle East. Vices and atrocities of all kinds are rife among what passes for humanity. The setting of the world in Darkest Dungeon is a dark fantasy one. Therefore, the only remaining avenue of making a game difficult without drawing condemnation is to resort to the most fickle of factors: luck.įor better or worse, Darkest Dungeon is one such game. The game-maker risks fallout with the consumer base, especially if seasoned players, or even the game-makers themselves, could not come up with a “fair” in-game solution to beat these opponents. On the other hand, making opponents that are very powerful would lead to claims of them being overpowered and terribly unfair. It is inevitable that the player will claim victory, if the player is motivated to keep on going.

The reality with video games is that if there is an in-game opponent that the player must defeat, that opponent would have to be designed to be beatable. By Gelugon_baat | Review Date: August 7, 2018

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