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.