Facing the abyss...

Yes you might have recognized that quote if you play the game Darkest dungeon XD



A few months ago I made a review about the early access version : Darkest dungeonA little while ago I discovered an interesting and pretty unique game : Darkest dungeon
At first, it looks like your usual dungeon crawler, where you battle horde of enemies to get your hand on treasures and artifacts. It's turn-based, 2d scrolling with a distinct dark, gritty comic style to it.
It's main particularity though is that it focuses a lot on the stress tied to the job of adventuring. During their expedition, your little group is going to be submitted to various horrors, fall into deadly traps, encounter eldricht monstrosities and it's going to take a toll on their sanity and their will to fight. And if one member of the group dies, well that's it. The game auto-save automatically to prevent you from trying to fix a mistake. You are just going to have to live with it, learn the lesson and make better choices next time.
This make the game very intense and downright captivating. After a while you start to understand that the little stress bars that unnervingly progressively

I was already really enthusiastic about it. But now the final game has been released and I have to say : it keeps every of its promises and more. Now it's not only a very good game, it's a little masterpiece in my opinion

It's very creative, original with a great atmosphere and a ton of personality. And it's downright captivating.

It starts off as a classic rogue-like dungeon crawler but you quickly start to see the differences. The first and biggest one is you are not just playing a party of adventurers, you are actually their manager. You rule over a city where adventurer come and you have to dispatch them to various missions in order to accomplish certain goals. You have to plan carefully your next expedition, chose what items you should bring with you, the composition of your team, what the remaining adventurer should do in the meantime. It's a game that put you before a LOT of choices and dilemmas. And some of them are crucial.

It's also brutal and unforgiving. It will punish you HARSHLY for your mistakes. You can be as cautious as you want, you will almost certainly lose some of your adventurers in the course of your adventure. And yet, the game is hard but rarely unfairly so. Sure a bad roll resulting into an enemy landing a devastating critical strike at the worst moment possible will screw you badly and is random. However, the choices that led you to that precise point are not. There is something of a butterfly effect going on in this game that is quite fascinating when you look back at it.
Moreover, the game almost always give you that option of immediately retreating from a battle going badly wrong or even aborting a mission altogether. Except most of the time you won't, because the game is very good at making you want to push your luck.
For example you finished a mission. Congratulations ! the game ask you if you want to come back victorious to town or if you want to continue exploring a little more. Your group is stressed, wounded... but there are only TWO rooms left to explore...  Deep inside you know you shouldn't but.. it's so tempting ! Come on it's only two rooms, what possibly could go wrong ?  Well, count on the game to show you XP When things starts to go wrong in Darkest dungeon, they will create chain reactions and make your situations descend to hell very quickly. You then have to grit your teeth, endure what is thrown at you and seize your chance when you see it, all the while cursing yourself for being too greedy..

it's a game about assessing and managing risk. And it's very good at it. You will grumble at it for mercilessly kicking you around, but on the other hand, victory feel all the more sweet when you barely managed to triumph over a powerful enemy by what sometimes will feel sheer force of will !

The game is also very rich and very well designed. There are many class of characters and I started by thinking some of them were weaker than others. But when you play for a certain time and experiment around, you realize they are all good and bring something of their own to the table. Experimenting with various combinations of heroes is fascinating and feel very rewarding when you find some good combos.
One of my favorite team is a Vestal and 3 Grave-robbers with different speed, using lunge in turn. It's certainly not the best combination available nor the safest but boy is it fun ! XD

The graphics are excellent, with an awesome gritty and dark comic style and the sound is of the same caliber. The narrator voice adds so much to the thrill of a battle too

I'm nowhere near the end yet as the progress is slow and I'm just launching the game once in a while when I'm taking a break but it's a great journey so far
I totally recommend it ! I think it's a little masterpiece and it's well on its way to be the game of the year for me

And you if you played it, what compositions do you think are the best ? :3