Fire On High: Remnant 2 Initial Impressions

As promised, we are now beginning our Remnant 2 coverage. When this game was initial annouced I was super hyped for it. It was probably the game I've been looking forward to the most this year and also a rare game when I actually bought it for full price instead of waiting for a 'Complete' edition or when it was on sale. Nope, I wanted to play Remnant 2 as soon as it was released. A lot of this stems from the fact I got the original (Remnant: From the Ashes) for free thanks to Playstation Plus but I had such a fun time playing with my fellow 7B homies Mr. J and Blythe that we all brought the DLC and played that together as well. It is rare for a game to capture all of our attention that is not a fighting game. After multiple playthroughs, we all moved on but the memory remained and when Remnant 2 was announced I announced this was going to be a day one title and Mr. J was down as well. Blythe said he'll play catch-up but he will eventually join us too. 

So the wanting game begun and I watched all the content Gunfire Games produced for the game. From trailers showing off the worlds we would be exploring to the classes aka Archetypes that were available. Ironically I think I changed which Archetype would be starting one a couple times but it was the last one revealed that sealed the deal for me. I was going to be a 'Hunter'.

The Hunter is a sharpshooter/ sniper class which caught my eye (mainly because I played too much Railgunner in Risk of Rain 2 and wanted that playstyle again). The Handler with their dog also appealed to me but when I found out you could use dual archetypes I knew I would pair the two. Now after 45 hrs so far, I've become comfortable with my choice but the fun in Remnant 2 is you are not locked into your initial Archetype and you can change it anytime. In all honesty, I feel I might switch out the Handler class for the Gunslinger as soon as I unlocked it because A) gunslingers are cool and always have a big appeal to me and B) I kind of not like watching my doggo get hurt and C) and He seems to not help as much as I hope against bosses. 

 However to get to the fun, we had to do some stuff so I need to talk about my initial problems. First, this game really pushes my Steam Deck to the limit and it sometimes struggle to stay at 30 fps even on low settings. Graphic fidelity suffers a bit too, when I initially started with no changing of settings the game looked very rough and ran worse, however after change some settings it became much better. Now it is nothing that's going to stop me from playing it but yeah, it can be rough sometimes even with optimized settings. I, however heard the game has trouble running smoothly even on the best computer rigs so it might not even by Steam Deck related and might be down to optimization. 'Lies of P' can run at very high frame rates (sometimes above 40) and feels much smoother on the Steam Deck for example. It is heartening to hear through that Gunfire Games will be working on the performance for all rigs through so this experience might improve as time goes on. 

 My second moment of doubt of my day one purchase was a rather strange input bug that seemed to disable my healing and turned it into another melee attack. This was super strange and was very frustrating because I was now playing a Souls-like game without a healing function. This input bug strangely seemed to only affect me so I eventually had to find a solution so I could play the game with the controller instead of being forced to use the built-in Steam Deck controls, mind you, the SD does have good controls it just rather awkward to hold for long play sessions. Honestly I've never used my built-in SD controls for any action game so I did not want to start with this one, especially one I had been really looking forward to playing. I however figured out that if I switched the heal for a similar button it would work as intended so now I heal with Right Bumper instead of Left Bumper and I've gotten used to it. 

 However after conquering fuzzy graphics, less then optimum frames and weird input bugs on my controller I've really got into Remnant 2 and now I'm playing it non-stop. Me and Mr. J even revisited our From the Ashes days and did some co-op as well which was very fun. The game itself is amazing and running around and shooting and rolling past dangerous attacks and the wealth of weapons, items and secrets (THE SECRETS!!) are a hard pull and I no longer regret getting in on ground floor. Some of these bosses tho, that is another story, which we may talk about in a subsequent blog.

For now, I'm enjoying the ride and ready for some more Remnant 2! 

 AV

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

A Dance with Death: Shieldbreaker Thoughts

The Shieldbreaker; a standalone DLC character begins our dive into the 'Darkest Dungeon' DLCs. I purchased her about a week ago and I've already levelled up a couple of them, all with cool curated names like Raze, Fyre, Dezire and... Sandy. LOL yes I was going with a mostly desert theme but I could not resist the Fire and Desire one (I'M RICK JAMES BITCH). Design-wise she is very well done and potential waifu material up there with the rest of the female cast. Not surprising since she was a dancer in her previous life. Her one hand is also an interesting design choice and fits very well with her backstory.

Overall, she is a very interesting character mechanic-wise and lore wise. As mentioned she brought along her backstory which you unlock in journal entries after fighting specific snake enemies also included with the DLC in a special dream sequence battle. This is also the only way you can gain her character specific trinkets which was pretty cool as well being this is the only character that does it this way. They also drop 'Aegis Scales' which plays into her block mechanic but more on that later.

Skills-wise, she has a AOE blight attack that can hit everyone on a enemy team, by-pass stealth as well deal extra damage to mark enemies so she can synergize with people who use those skills. However she is also a 'dancer' character to in more ways then one. All her attacks move her forward or backwards in your teams formation so you got to plan for that when adding her into your teams comps.

Her main claim to fame through is her ability to 'Block' and also destroy 'Blocks' hence Shieldbreaker. Her own skill 'Serpent Sway' puts her at the front but at the same time, also guards her from any attack for 2 blocks is kind of a amazing skill on paper but I've rarely use when it mattered the most which is disappointing. I would love to tank a massive damaging hit from a giant with it but I don't think I've been able to pull it off yet. I think another reason why other then bad timing is her other skills are just too useful. Normally she already hits hard on enemies with strong protect. Nothing beats one-shoting Sea Maggots in the Cove with their 75% PROT ratings but with the right set up, trinkets and placement, she also can hit very hard on regular enemies too. With 'Darkest Dungeon' favoring offense over defense I think that might be the main reason I do not do her 'Serpent Sway' much. Funny enough, she is isn't the only one with a block skill because Shieldbreaker also brings with her a new finite consumable in 'Aegis Scales' which gives any character a chance to block any blows but just like not find the right time to use it I've rarely use 'Aegis Scales' to do what it was intended to do aka tank a massive hit and all my bosses are dead now so I can't even use it in boss battles where I believe it would shine. Maybe when I start my second campaign which I intend on doing once I get my next DLC.

Speaking of, I've been low-key waiting on a price drop or a sale before I committed to buying more DLC but I think I might just bite the bullet and get the Color of Madness DLC. I've just started some new games (more on those at the end) so I think if I do not commit to the DLC soon my playthrough will slow down and I won't get the full experience from 'Darkest Dungeon' like I want too. I already see me not playing it as much since I've fully levelled a couple Shieldbreakers and got a feel for her and now I keep getting the same quests in my extended first campaign. I'm ready for something new I believe. Overall, the Shieldbreaker brought some fresh blood to my existing campaign but I think she will truly shine when I start my new campaign.

Up next: Lies of P! Guacamelee and I've got 4 terrabytes of hard-drive space I need to occupy.

AV

 

RAVE: Darkest Dungeon

 Normally, I try to get blogs out at least once a week. However this one has been delayed mainly because I can't stop playing it enough to actual write a blog about it. It is time tho; here is my RAVE for

As always, we will begin with a brief history and what made me pick up this game. As I've explored the Roguelike genre, I heard many good things about a indie game called 'Darkest Dungeon'. I heard it was brutal, challenging and very, very unforgiving. I actual brought this game for Steam back in November 2022 and I got it for a steal of only $3.80 which now I look back on it, is amazing because of the now 180+ hours of entertainment I've got from it.

However due to the nature of how the game is best played with Mouse and Keyboard (M&K), I did not immediately sprung to playing it. For awhile I made an excuse it was because I did not want to play a M&K game and I had other games to play instead. However I eventually did learn to use M&K and ironically, one of the first games I learned it was with 'Iratus: Lord of the Dead', a game I've mentioned before on this blog and one of my favorite Roguelikes. 'Iratus' is heavily inspired by 'Darkest Dungeon' and now I've played both I can clearly see how much it influenced it. However I played the 'inspired by' before I actually played what inspired it. Sure, I brought 'Iratus' before 'Darkest Dungeon' and I really, really enjoyed 'Iratus'. I put in a lot of hours and beat the game twice, on the easiest and standard difficulties. I did many runs and bought all the DLC and even some of skin packs. 'Iratus' deserves its own RAVE and perhaps I'll replay it in the future and write one then but this is a 'Darkest Dungeon' blog.

So after playing the Hell out of 'Iratus' I played other games and I think my 'Risk of Rain 2' obsession kicked in not soon after and we all know how long that went for. I, however had 'Darkest Dungeon' in the back of my head. I wanted to play it and I had a couple of false starts before we finally started in earnest, about a month ago and boy oh boy, we have not looked back.

Another big deciding factor of giving 'Darkest Dungeon' a real go was me finding out it was 'old' enough to played on my desktop computer and I, no longer had to set up my Steam Deck to play it. The easier access of 'DD' on my desktop meant I could play it anytime I was on my desktop and spoiler; I am on my desktop a lot. Being able to play a M&K game on a desktop makes things so much easier and it is also why previous RAVES 'Indies' Lies'  and 'Deadbolt' also got played a lot. Surprisingly, I recently tried to play it on my Steam Deck and even through it works, the M&K made a massive difference in how much I enjoyed it. The controller options just felt limiting and I've become more a M&K person lately, strange because most of my gaming career I've always had a controller or a arcade stick in my hands. Okay, enough of the how we got here because we are here now and we are more and likely will not be going anywhere soon. I, honestly see 'Darkest Dungeon' becoming an ongoing feature on my blogs much like how 'Risk of Rain 2' was. You see, it is that addictive to me.

To quote it's Steam page, 'Darkest Dungeon' is a challenging gothic roguelike turn based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Can you keep your heroes together when all hope is lost? They are not lying to you either when they call it 'challenging'. My first couple of days with this game really took me for a ride and I deleted so many campaigns when things got too tough and I'll ran out of money and recruits to keep playing it. When I was new to the 'Stress' system, I would let highly stressed adventurers go into back to back missions and watch them fall apart and turn on their allies and sometimes, even worst, ruin a mission. I would dread the minute a 'Affliction' popped up on the screen and one of character's lost their marbles and became 'Sadistic' or 'Machoistic' or even worst 'Hopeless' and refuse to help the squad, or hurt themselves and sometimes even refused to be healed when they were about to die. Everything I heard about the game was true. This game was unforgiving and it really pushed me to the limit many times. Also just like any good Roguelikes, the deaths are final and anytime you lost an adventurer, you'll have to start from scratch with a new one. Sometimes they did not even have to die but you had to cut them loose because they came back so broken, it would not make sense to keep them cause it would take more money to heal them, money you did not have.

The rarest of the rare, an Inspired Hero!!

However, sometimes the RNG (random number generator) is on your side and instead of rolling an 'Affliction' you adventurer gets 'Inspired' and well that is one of the best feelings and every-time it actual happened I got super hyped (except the one time when one adventurer got Inspired and die on the next turn. As I said, unforgiving). Moments like that are few and far between and 90% of times it is opposite and I slowly learned that I should not let my adventurers reach their breaking points and actually invested in a bigger roster so the stressed individuals can rest whilst the younger, fresher recruits go and do the job instead.

Speaking of adventurers, it time to talk about the very colorful cast of characters you can use. Each one brings its own playstyle and nuances to the field. Be it, the Vestal whom can heal your whole team and swing a mean mace when she needs too. Or would you prefer to use the tank Man at Arms who specializes in taking hits, screaming folks into submission and setting up comeback ripostes or go completely off the rails and use the Jester whom is great for relieving stress but when the time comes, swings with the best of them. The games base roster of 15 (16 if you count the palate swap Musketeer whom shares all the skills with the Arbalest with her own twist) and each character comes with their own quirks and character lines. The Bounty Hunter is grim and focused on collecting his booty whilst the Highway Man is super cocky when things go his way. Each member has really endeared themselves to me and I can honestly say I do not have a 'favorite' character yet. At first I really did not like the Antiquarian because she had nothing but support skills and a very weak attack but I realize the purpose of a Antiquarian is helping you get more loot and I can honestly say I am only doing better now money-wise because I learned how to use her. Also early in my time with the game, I did not understand how strong the Occultist was because he kept healing adventurers for 1-2 hit points and bleeding them and how his playstyle seem too much of a mixed bag. Now the Occultist can slot into any team because of his amazing bag of tricks. Having a healer on the front lines and still able to hit with the best of them is just chef kiss. Each character has a diverse skill set too and you can mix and match them according to your team's composition. Some really work but everyone does have their preferred spot and you'll figure it out as you keep playing the game. Honestly, that and being able to personalize each adventurer and even naming them and choosing a specific color for them has made losses all the more sad when they succumb to the evils of this world.

If you get this reference, we can be best of friends.

The game even warns you, not every hero will survive and you are bound to fail some missions and abandon others. This is the nature of 'Darkest Dungeon'. This game is so unforgiving that you can successful complete a mission, with full health and low or zero stress and the game still decides to give your adventurer the 'Black Plague' disease (which screws with your stats and make you even more susceptible to more diseases... yay) with no warning. On top of that, it might give you a real life quirk like Kleptomania and cause you adventurer to random steal loot for themselves and not share with the squad. Such is the perils of dungeon diving in this world. Then you find something sending them to treatment centers to get rid of said disease or negative quirks but you can also lock in positive ones you have picked up as well. Never have I've played a game which almost gleefully likes to set you up for fail but for some strange reason because I am who I am, the guy who likes to die (in video games) and loves a challenge I keep playing it and even funnier, enjoying it.

However enjoying it I am. I just hit a 170 hrs and beaten the final boss and I haven't even started on the DLCs (which I still need to purchase). I am enjoying the base game (mind you with some very needed Quality of Life mods like Faster Walking and Expanded Inventory) and then there is so much more I can explore. The afore-mentioned DLCs including one that is heavily inspired by H.P Lovecraft's 'The Color From Space' and the big one, 'The Crimson Court' which adds a lot more bosses, a new class and VAMPIRES!!

Maybe its the RPG elements without all the extra fluff that comes with RPGs (walking to and from places, having to find McGuffins to open locked doors, the hunt for stronger, better weapons). Maybe its the addictive hook of leveling up a squad of killers and finding new synergies with them and finding innovative set-ups like twin Crusaders who constantly swap position with each other so they can both access their very OP Holy Lance move. Maybe its the cool narrator who always has something to say or maybe its beating the odds even tho it is stacked heavily against you. I also love the setting being a fan of Lovecraftian themes and gothic fantasy in general. Hell, maybe its the town management of keeping a home base (in this case your Hamlet/ Estate) up and running and your army in top shape which I never realized I can do. Traditionally I've ignore a lot of base building games but in Darkest Dungeon, all this micro-managing is part and parcel of the experience and I've grown to enjoy that too.

Every thing in this game, hits all the right spots for me and I feel its honestly why I need to do this long RAVE about it. Despite it beating me down so many times, I still get back up and hit 'Embark' and prepare a new squad. As promised, this is the beginning, we will probably be back with our 2 cents on the DLC's adventurers, the Flagellant and the Shield Breaker and of course review the DLCs. If you enjoy a challenging turn based game that asks you a lot but rewards you as well, you will not regret diving into this 'Darkest Dungeon'.

AV