IT HAS BEGUN: Remnant 2 kick-off

WE ARE BACK ON OUR B.S. I hope you like Remnant cause this blog is going to be Remnant obsessed for a couple blogs. I've picked up my copy, got it running on my Steam Deck and hit some hitches but mostly solvable and we are going to dig deep with this one. AV

The Color Out Of Space: Color of Madness DLC thoughts

 

As promised, we are concluding our 'Darkest Dungeon' thoughts with 'The Color of Madness'. The Color of Madness is the third major piece of DLC Darkest Dungeon released. Kicking off with 'The Crimson Court' followed by 'The Shieldbreaker' and then 'The Color of Madness'. There is also 'The Butcher's Circus' which we will not focus on mainly cause it is PvP focused and we are not fans of PvP outside of fighting games and we don't even enjoy PvP in fighting games these days.

 The Color of Madness is a slightly slimmer offering compared to 'The Crimson Court'. We do not have any new classes included this time and the Farmstead is a new location but along the way we revisit older locations but with new lighting and game conditions. Also whilst it has a small story, the main draw is the 'Endless Harvest' where you fight waves of a mixture of new and old enemies as well as a couple new bosses. The new bosses are pretty cool especially The Miller. The other major boss is The Sleeper which is a good fight as well but draws from a annoyance with newer bosses Red Hook studios has designed in that it focuses on team damage instead of focusing on just a couple heroes like their previous bosses (The Necromancer and The Collector comes to mind).

Another cool element of completing the 'Color of Madness' is new trinkets which you can purchase with the new currency 'Shards' which you can only earn through fighting through 'Color' or beating the new roaming boss 'The Thing from the Stars'. LOL we will discuss 'The Thing...' a little later, for now, the trinkets are a mixed bag to me. Some are good, some are great and some are pretty meh. I am slowly collecting them all like I did with the 'Crimson Court' sets but I'm in no rush for these ones.

As mentioned the Miller is a cool boss especially with his backstory being another poor soul caught in the Ancestors machinations. His gimmick of summoning helpers but also having a specific trinket that weakens him and he actually weakens himself when a party member has it. This trinket, a locket of his wife called Mildred even fully protects you from his party wide Area Of Effect (AOE) attack which is a nice twist. Beating the Miller through is only the beginning and you can keep fighting and then fight the afore-mentioned Sleeper whom has a prep stage then a big battle. This battle closely resembles the final Darkest Dungeon battle but not as drawn out and whilst hard, it is doable with a strong team which in my case is 2 Shieldbreakers (who are probably my favorite class in this game), a Vestal to health heal and a Jester to stress heal. This team rarely lets me down and I've even gone beyond the Sleeper once and the missions got even harder and I almost died when I ran into a very aggressive Swine Prince boss. All bosses however fall to wayside when compared to the new wandering boss 'The Thing from the Stars'

This monstrosity haunted my thoughts and unlike the Fanatic in the Crimson Court, is a re-occurring wandering boss much like the Shambler (another very hard wandering boss). I was actually scared to fight him even with my special scouted team and to my surprise I actually beat him the first time we thought. I even looked up tactics and end up not using them and we actually won pretty easily ironically. After all the set-up and thinking this might be the endgame boss, he was hard but definitely beatable with the right team (in my case A Arbalest, Houndmaster, Crusader, Hellion). However I can definitely see him being a real hard fight in highest difficulties due to his ability to constantly buff himself and shrug off even the hardest of hits. I remember one re-match where I let him buff himself too much and I felt like I was throwing rocks at a unbreakable wall. I can honestly say, at higher difficulties and without a good set up (and some OP Crimson Court trinket sets) this thing would be a nightmare.

The story is great too. Darkest Dungeon is a game that wears its Lovecraftian roots proudly on its sleeve so of course it'll pay homage to one of H.P's popular stories 'The Color out of Space' The Thing for the Stars is definitely a homage to one of the amalgamations that happened later in said short story. It is cool that Red Hook was able to go back to their Lovecraftian roots after taking a slight detour with the Crimson Court and focusing more on vampires. As I mentioned, the Miller's story is tragic and in the end, rebuilding his Mill is pretty cool because after you do it, you no longer get random meal checks when playing the main game and random meal checks was definitely one of the annoyances when playing the main game.

So on this note and blog, we have drawn to the end of our Darkest Dungeon coverage. Overall I had a amazing time with this game and I've invested a lot of time in it but just like 'Risk of Rain 2' (my last obsession) I find myself playing it less and less and wanting to focus on new games. As mentioned above, The final DLC 'The Butcher's Circus' is PvP focused and is not my jam and Darkest Dungeon does have a fan made mod called the 'Black Reliquary' which is a complete re-hauling of the game and even makes its harder (if that was possible) and some people consider it a more truer sequel then Darkest Dungeon 2 (which we will one day play as well) which I may consider playing (that and the fact that is completely free). Darkest Dungeon started as a game I was low key afraid to play because I heard about its wild difficulty, big learning curve, losing heroes to afflictions constantly and just the scope of it and in the early days it lived up to those infamous moments where all my heroes were stressed, I ran out of food just before completing a quest and I was playing by the seat of my pants and it gave anxiety like no other game but now I've really enjoyed playing it and it now rates up there with Risk of Rain 2 as one of my new favorite Roguelites.

A Roguelite blog? Yeah I do not know what you are talking about 😏😐😏.

AV

  

Crimson Red: The Crimson Court DLC Thoughts

 

Here we go! As promised previously, I'm ready to post my thoughts about Darkest Dungeon's first big DLC 'The Crimson Court'. A pretty meaty offering of new content that added new bosses, a brand new area, new interactable elements aka curios, a whole new sect of enemies and a brand new hero, the Flagellant.

Straight away, the mood of Darkest Dungeon is actually enhanced by this add-on. The new area 'The Courtyard' added its own challenges and most of enemies range from challenging to down right annoying. Previously the Weald area might have had my least favorite enemies to face but they have been eclipsed by the new class of enemies the 'Bloodsuckers'. These annoying foes are quick, have 2 forms which they change to after drinking your blood and most annoying, inflect you with an uncurbable disease (at first) called 'The Crimson Curse' that makes you a bloodsucker like them. It was a big annoyance but once you conquer the area you can actually get cure it and even funnier, some characters actually benefit from some of the buffs the Crimson Curse provides. Some heavy hitters for example with the Curse can hit even harder so its an infliction you can deal with... most of the time.

Now, if the regular enemies are annoying, imagine the pain the bosses will inflect. Most of the bosses have massive sprawling areas to explore to the point where 'The Crimson Court' is the only area where you can quit mid mission and come back. Its that long some times that you need that break. Speaking of the main bosses are all pretty good, the Baron whom loves to play hide and seek and you need to find him, the Viscount (whom I only know how to say thanks to Bridgerton lol) who eats bodies which you can poison so he can harm himself and the big bad, the Countess. Wild enough, I was able to beat all of them first try because I did my research and built strong teams to take them on but the Countess was definitely the biggest pain, especially with her ability to constantly move my team around.

Next we have 3 mini bosses, two kind of meh in terms of quality in the from of the Crocodilian whom loves to go into stealth and come back with a very damaging attack and the rather sturdy Garden Guardian, just a big tank whom is immune to status debuffs like bleed and blight which makes him even more tankier and you need to kill it multiple times to get all the Crimson Court trinkets (more on them in a bit). The final mini-boss is actually a wandering boss called the Fanatic and boy, he deserves his own paragraph.

I read someone described the Fanatic as Van Helsing from Dracula lore gone completely insane and it fits. Old guy is packed to the nines with tons of trinkets, visually and only attacks you when you have a member with the Crimson Curse. He is a souped up Hag (a boss in the main game whom kidnaps a party member and you need to save them) but he moves much faster and hits a lot harder. I prepared for him but I personally feel I still got very lucky when I beat him. Out of all the Crimson Court bosses he may have been one of the hardest and his item drop after you killed him was rather meager tho he does drop the 'Cure' for anyone with the Curse before you can cure of it permanently as mentioned before.

A lot of fan commentary call The Crimson Court a bit too challenging and some of the enemies a bit too OP. Whilst I do agree it definitely is a set up in terms of difficulty and constantly seeing your team inflicted with The Crimson Curse was annoying and before you beat the Countess the 'infection' level means these enemies spill over to other areas which is also annoying, I do not think it ever made me not want to continue with the challenge. Maybe it was because I tackled the area super late and after I've levelled up a lot of really strong characters. However the DLC does have a 'Mixed' rating on Steam which is surprising cause all the other DLCs have mostly positive reception. Some folks even say after doing it, they disable it which is kind of wild because you paid for this and you don't want to use it to its full potential.

The Courtyard is also unique in how you no longer rely on torches but the game is in a perpetual challenging state called 'Bloodlight' which increases stress and bleed (yay when 90% of your enemies love to bleed you) and that up the challenge too especially if you play in high torch like I do (and I don't think I'll ever stop). I guess for some folks this extra challenge on top of a already very up-hill battle may have been too much.

However I feel the balance is the cool stuff you also get from the Crimson Court completion. First you are given some cool trinkets that effect if you are under the Crimson Curse and gives you slight benefits, you are also given anti Bloodsucker artilleries but the biggest pulls are the Crimson Court trinket sets for each character. Each character gets at least one decent to really good trinket and some characters get two really good trinkets when combined become even better and gives you extra bonuses. I've already experience a trinket set previously thanks to the Shieldbreakers one but some CC trinkets sets are my new favorite tools. The Arbalest one for example may her a great healer and a great sniper where previously you had to pick one or the other. This set alone makes her my new favorite 4th position character. Finally the biggest appeal of the Crimson Court DLC is the brand new class/ character The Flagellant.

The blood obsessed Flagellant is one of the most unique classes in a game with a lot of cool choices. The Flagellant ability to bleed enemies but also heal himself and his team with some unique skills makes him one of the most craziest things. A healer whom you can have on the front line ALL the time. Most healers like to stick to position 3 or 4 (Vestal and Jester are both excel when they are back liners) but with the Flagellant, he can tank the hits, survive, heal himself crazy amounts, gives over time healing to others AND can punish front and back line enemies with no issues. Flagellant also is the only character who can't get a positive virtue but always get Rapturous. Now this is still a Affliction which is never fun cause sometimes he refuses to play nice and still inflict stress on his team but his power level gets ridiculous and he even has trinket sets that help fuel this 'all or nothing' playstyle. Overall he is a fun character and now I'm used to using him I think he is actually OP. Mind you he is the only hero I've buried many times in the graveyard cause his playstyle is so on the knife's edge. Some of the haters of the Crimson Court content still love the Flagellant to the point where they enable him but not the content he came with LOL.

Overall, The Crimson Court is definitely worth your time if you enjoy the base Darkest Dungeon. The new toys and enemies you get give you a whole new way to play and sure some of the enemies feel a bit OP, its all the more fun when you beat them. My only real gripe is something I believe I also have with the main game now I've played it so much. Once you kill these bosses, they and their areas are gone and you can not access it again. Even the Fanatic whom is a wandering boss like Shambler and The Thing from the Stars disappears once you beat him. After you 'conquering' the Courtyard, it becomes a regular randomly generated area like the others in the main game and once you get all the Crimson Court trinkets from the same tanky enemy mentioned above, the area becomes even less appealing because beating him now drops generic trinkets. Now I've finished all of its content, I feel less inclined to do any more in that area which is a shame because I do not mind re-doing content in the other main game areas (with the possible exception of the Weald... FUCK the Weald). So unlike the main game which I'm still playing and enjoying, I only see myself doing Courtyard quests if I have nothing else better to do. At the very least, I got some good to great trinkets, a cool new character (who probably rate in my top 10 favorite characters to play in this game) and some challenges for awhile.

Now the red blood has run cold, its time for a different color. The Color of Madness.

AV

UPDATE: The Crimson Color

 So yeah, it has been more then a week since our last blog but for awhile I had nothing to really talk about. I was excited for Lies of P but then I decided to wait till I play the whole game before really going in with my thoughts. Then I was excited for SteamWorld Dig 2, a charming Metroidvania which I got for free thanks to Amazon Gaming then I wanted to chat about Guancamelee Super Turbo Championship Edition, another Metroidvania I got for free, this time thanks to the Epic Store.

However... it finally happened. What I was wanting the most for, all the DLCs for Darkest Dungeon went on sale thanks to the Steam Summer Sale and well... I've been playing nothing but Darkest Dungeon since.

So yeah expect nice long blogs about both of the rather expansive DLCs which have now kidnapped all my free time. I'm feel kind of bad for the new games I was playing but I justify it by saying I paid for this and I've been eagerly waiting them so I had to give it all my attention.

Also speaking of Steam Summer Sales, the Souls games are on sale on Steam for the first time in forever so you know I've got to pick up one of those games too. The one I picked? It was surprisingly easy

Dark Souls Remastered on PC babyyyy!!

AV