Monthly Archives: May 2015

Darkest Dungeon is a game that I like a lot. Well, more specifically it’s a game I like a lot of things about. It looks fantastic, it plays well, technically it has no issues, the sound is great and the gameplay systems speak to each other really well. The game is a 2D rogue like dungeon crawler where you and your team progress to complete challenges and unlock permanent upgrades (or downgrades) for both your heroes and the town you come from.

The downgrades are part of the problem. I have no issue with challenging games; in fact games on the whole are far too easy. But Darkest Dungeon’s difficulty comes from randomly generated things, or from a random number generator (RNG.) When you enter combat there’s a chance to surprise the enemy, or be surprised yourself, then with every attack there are chances to miss, hit or critical hit. It feels as though the game is constantly weighing these decisions against you in the name of “difficulty.”