The Dingiest Cellar.

The Dingiest Cellar.

If Miyazaki is promoting his latest poster child that is Dark Souls III while DS1 and DS2 teeter around the edges of the media attention with new life, with Bloodborne sullenly sitting in the corner atop a pile of Play(withasubscriptionalwaysonline)Station 4's; Then Darkest Dungeon is the title across the street vigorously stroking themselves to Gothic Tentacle Murder Porn, while still recovering from their Early Access-ism. A torn and faded Kickstarter poster haunting them of their crowdfunded start. The title occasionally breaking down to remember it's venerable house on the top of the moor.

Indeed, Darkest Dungeon Souls is the latest and probably greatest of the edgy cool kidz who call themselves Roguelike, or Roguelite, which to put simply, is they indulge in the highly addictive drug called Fentany- Permadeath. Though in light of recent updates, the Hamlet now can decide on behalf of a portly gentlemen with a habit of yelling and ringing a bell to break out the local necromancer to bring back a few dead heroes of yours just so they can all die again. But given the rarity of such an event and the fact that everyone likes to drop dead without a two weeks notice it's a welcome addition to what can be considered one of the most stressful games I've ever played.

The introduction is simple enough, take the old road to the Hamlet, a quaint little village, and a beacon of safety(?) within the corrupted wilderness that has beset the family land. Through this somewhat faint premise of a story I was introduced to turn based combat system that reminded me of something out of a Dungeons and Dragons handbook, except that it's not top down and there's all this nice dark line art instead of chip dust and literal elbow grease filling the creases of a leather mat spattered with dry erase that no longer erases. Initiative and all that jazz and resistances and whatnot, banish the unholy etc... Like a slow motion history of all medieval role playing up to 2016. But then the actual role playing came in and gave me a sharp slap on the back of the head and barked at me to respect it. And when my heroes began to claim that the Light compelled them to pass their turn and contract a chronic case of the runs I did indeed, respect it. In fact so much to the point where my stress healer decided having a heart attack after landing a critical heal was the greatest contribution they could make to their fellow foolish adventurers.

My entire party went up in flames. Stress flames. Stress flames that bursts hearts. One last “hero” of mine gave a startled “I SAW IT ALL COMING” and promptly didn't die since they had RNGesus keeping an eye on them and slammed straight into what the game calls death's door. The place where you're either alive or dead until you're hit by a rather tempting glass of acidic champagne that either drops your fine adventuring folk off the map or let's them fight on to suffer from intense PTSD another day. If, of course, I ever threw them at something again. And I did, because when my high level parties are stressed to hell and back and, I can't afford to treat them, then I mostly throw all the new recruits into dungeons without supplies to see if they can turn a profit with their lives.

So yes, it's a good game, but if you don't sell your soul to the devil so RNGesus will smile upon your sacrifice and sin you'll likely sink a good 10, 20, 61.2 hours into one Hamlet before realizing that after you put your highest level bastards through the final quest they-. Actually, I won't spoil it for you, and the 1.2% of people who have beaten the game (The “Beat the game” achievement is actually worth something for once) probably won't tell you either. The lore is good, and at this point it's the only reason I keep buying torches and periodically place my motley crew of idiots into stress treatment (aka buying them drinks, whores, whippings) so I can do it all again. The again being the familiar feeling of “Oh fuck me, they all might die since someone decided to skip lunch”.

In the end Ormond the Grave Robber did see it all coming and died prematurely by compulsively tripping over a rock and bleeding out. Lovely. -Triiodine.

Dingy Pals Tres.

Dingy Pals Tres.

Dark Souls III didn't like me, and initially I didn't like it. It felt a lot like the oppressive overworked middle school teacher who would yell at you to have fun on field trips. Somewhat similar to a fascist regime I thought to myself, as I romanticized my failure to grasp the games concepts. It wasn't til later on; when I was about half way through the game when I started making that a positive link. Stating that the game would kick your teeth in and fitting them back into your gums was genuinely fun. Not quite, as that's not the greatest analogy. Hours of playtime before that I refunded it. Two minutes before I overshot the Steam refund limit.

That's right, for the first two hours I couldn't muster the capabilities to defeat my mortal enemy (at the time) Iudex Gundyr. No, his halberd far too strong for my tastes, moveset too unpredictable to the new player that I was. I admit, I went in with high expectations thinking I could pick it up and power through. Now with a 64 hour gametime and only one Journey completed my original estimate is one of ego and rumors.

At the time of refund I was using a mouse and keyboard, and would later realize that this was taking a game that should be sitting up there with Half-Life 2 and it's compatriots (Sorry Half-Life, didn't like you as much) and taking it down to a level where I was essentially trying to play Starcraft 2 on the Commodor64 without a floppy disc to actually play the game. In short, it really, really, really, didn't work out well.

After much nudging and pushing and stares aimed at the 80% positive review bar I eventually took the same refunded 60$ and got the game. Again. At full price. I also decided to be really adventurous and got the Steam Controller on whim/suggestion, as all my previous experiences with X-Box and PlayStation controllers had left me with PTSD comparable to Bastion of Overwatch.

The doors to the game (and the ones right after the Iudex bonfire) opened up and all of a sudden the game wasn't so much a grind to beat a 'level', but a functional world that didn't care if you were picking up eagle shields or invading. I was just another undead wandering around killing other undead (Pretty damn rude now that I think about it). The controller did a lot, bridging the gap between my keyboard fetish and my controller PTSD to create a working, dare I say, fun, Dark Souls III experience.

But for those who (like me at the start of this endeavor) are unfamiliar with the Souls series it's not so much instant fun as the modern day shooters that fail to impress, (That, in my opinion, barely stand up to the original Halo 1 Demo and the holy land of BloodGulch). It's a rhythmic process, akin to learning how to play an instrument. You're going to fuck up, and once you accept that the world doesn't actually give a damn about you fucking up, you'll get along nicely with the plethora of surprisingly agile corpses and fauna of Lothric that inhabit it's various nooks and crannies.

Only later on did I discover the far more dynamic magical but not so magic-user friendly land of PVP. It's an interesting system to say the least. Rather than joining your buddy pals through steam or your buddy not so good pals I'd rather stab you then shake hands through a server browser you're lore bound to the world. Forced to use it's really poorly explained soapstone system that's got it's quirks but gets the job done and doesn't remove the immersion that the game so desperately strives for. The only thing that might do that would be the Estoc, but new players will figure that out pretty quickly.

But to get back on course, PVP took everything I knew about Dark Souls III and once more kicked my teeth and, but instead of telling me to have fun repeatedly learning a new area it told me to quite simply: “Git gud”. The words all those who praise the sun or otherwise take to heart when scrounging for the embers of a host.

Instead of the undead teaching me these new ways it was close friends and companions, or the ever knowledgeable land of Youtube, who through countless parry montages taught me the way of parrying (Of which I still cannot perform).

It's a mean world that you'll need to lick the boots of before understanding that those boots don't increase your hidden poise stat. The PvE is hard, and a hell of a lot easier with friends or even random summons; they can at least get you back to your souls. And the PvP is another beast entirely, something to be feared and respected. Oh, and by chance you've read this far, don't use the curved sword or the estoc. It's just rude. -Triiodine.