My rant review and (common) tips to better enjoy DD.

[Eel]

So, this isn't gonna be an avg review. Rather, it's a review to clear some things up and to give some tips on how to make this game more enjoyable, after giving a little rant on the negatives. (I posted this in the forums because it's too long for a regular review.)

So, first things first.

1) What's all this weird ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ controversy I heard about (Ex: Jim Sterling pulling his EA recommendation)
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Now I bought this game early access, but I wasn't too involved in the drama. Supposidely, on the surface, it just seems to be a major disconnect between two crowds of consummers, and one of them not getting what they wanted.

One crowd thought the game was overly grindy which, combined with the very unfair RNG and hard stats for even a trash mob fight in level 5 Champions dungeons (end game), made the game a bloody nightmare and a chore. It was too hard or at least unfair given the rogue-lite element combined with the grind.

The other crowd was made up of elites who found various exploits and cheap strategies (team comps, cheap tactics, certain chars being universally op and better) and could run circles round the game and back and demanded more challenges. They thought it wasn't hard enough.

This game is a deep work of passion and the devs were (and still are) right there having discuissons and actually taking the feedback and adding those new elements into the game. Perhaps abit too much.

The controversy, starting around the corpse and heart attack updates, was basically this. Some people's advice was taken over others, and those neglected people have now set out to spam negative reviews and vote down all the positives. Hence the mass of 0/12 helpful ratings on alot of the reviews here. On the other hand, there is accusations that there are positive review bots, so there are two conspiracies and I advise you to do your own research.

That is not to say they didn't have valid points. They very much had valid criticism of the game and that's why they have stuck around for this long (the neg reviews); a good bit of their upset still holds true. DD, seeking to appeal to these people and the casual crowd, brought in the option to configure and turn off features of the game people didn't like. However, these updates are actually pretty logical and have a good reason behind them, not just pandering and favoritism to certain fans.

To clarify, let's go over some of the infamous options and changes and why they were added.

For example: Hellion. As you may notice, quite a few of hellions abilities have this weird -20% dmg debuff, which makes you wonder why don't they just revamp it instead of having it oddly clunkly (in my opinion anyway). The reason for this debuff is that originally she never had it.

The hellion had good mid range health (like the bounty hunter), high crit, high damage, and could hit pretty much every position.

There was absolutely no reason not to have hellion in every comp and back then damage really was king (and is king for early-mid game for the most part). Imagine just spamming that Breakthrough aoe, a solid damage on 3 positions. She was very much an op champ and abused. Hence the debuff, to make the game harder and less exploitable.

Another ex: Combat delay penalities. This is one of the first exploits the elites discovered. Basically, kill all enemies except one weak one, stun the ♥♥♥♥ out of it every turn (not hard, stun resist buffs weren't a thing), and spam heal your team until you were good, cause you sure as hell couldn't do it without a camp outside combat except for spamming food (which is also why you get a full status today). Therefore, combat delay penalities, stun resist buffs, and non-spammable food eating.

In EA, camps lasted until the next camp, making it pretty much common sense to camp in the first room and get your buffs up. You can't camp in the first room now and the buffs only last for 4 battles.

Heart attacks: Back then, stress only went to 100 and gave the virtue or madness thing and that's it. Some of the madness states (I think abusive or something like that) weren't even all that bad (except for the non-skippable dialogue), and gave damage bonuses.

No torch runs were seen as far more profitable and even more easy to do than full torch as though it gave monsters dmg buffs and increased stress, stress wasn't all that unmanagable and high damage and crit was king so the benefits tilted it over. So, in order to make no torch runns less abusable and actually tense and hard, they made heart attacks (this is my guess, not a fact).

High prot and dodge stats came in to make debuffs and dots viable and necessary.

Corpses. Before corpses, although it was advisable to pick position-flexible champs like the grave digger, one could just basically have a meat grinder in the front with a buffed up crusader or leper or hellion. Focus the second position, and the back row loses some of it's ability as it get's closer to the front. No reason to really do pulls or anything like that. Now position flexibility is a must and adds another layer of difficutly and tactical thinking to team comps. Plus, if you ever get caught in a sitation where your own second position is destroyed, then your back row doesn't immediatly become useless if you only gave them back position abilities. It's not all bad, see.

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So, original question, is the unfair and horribly difficult given all these updates that squished easy tactics and exploits. Yes and no.

Yes

RNG can still be absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ (enemy gets first turn, especially one of the huge ones like bone commander, and crits your whole team or one of your best guys to death door AND gives them a huge dot that kills them on death door instantly). Enemies in late game are hard to take down and hit hard and this applies to ALL mobs, not just bosses or rooms. Corridor battles are just as tense as rooms, and there are plenty. You can lose half your health to a trash mob of dogs. That is not standard in most rpgs.

Here's why this is bad and not just a standard old school difficulty. See, this is a rogue-like, in that if you ♥♥♥♥ up and die, your heros are gone for good and so is their loot and precious equipment that you could have used for others. Like dark souls and it's currency. Dark souls is hard, and sometimes cheekingly unfair, but we love dark souls, so why is DD ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥?

Because, unlike dark souls, this game is griiiindy as ♥♥♥♥. The rogue like nature of this game clashes heavily with the grindy rpg hr management aspect of it. The game is fantastic in the early game, where enemies are hard but fairly manageable, and you can try a variety of team comps and make good progress and you know your ♥♥♥♥ ups are fairly yours and sometimes one or two unluckies, hence all the positive reviews.

But, there is a reason why according to stats only 1.2% (roughly? Could be more now but still low) of the playerbase actually beat the game, and yet it has high praise. The game's atmosphere is amazing, the game's sound and aesthetic and design is amazing, but the jump from mid-game to late game (yellow 3/4 dungeons to red 5/6 dungeons), the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ jump to late game, omfg.

It doesn't ease you into it, I think that's it's major problem. It settles you into this set of tactics and thinking that's lazy when you move into late-game. In early-mid game, you can get off on focusing on damage, and you can have fun with the team comps, as I said. Hit late game, and suddenly no, that's not the case anymore. It's harsh, and it's hard, and it makes you revaluate everything. Suddenly you gotta focus on stuns and debuffs, suddenly the amount of viable comps are drastically shortened, because you need to be efficient, and smart. AND EVEN THEN, RNG.

Now all of that would be okay, again, if it was just a difficulty curve or whatever. Lot of people like this kind of hard stuff. That's why rogue-likes are popular.

But the grind. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grind. Get one of those unfair RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wipes in a champion dungeon, there goes 100ks of gold of invesment. There goes hours of getting your heroes up there. Hours of the same dungeon, the same gameplay, the exact same experience over and over and over. The uniqueness of the aesthetic really does wear out by the time of late game, or at least your first wipe, and now we see why so few of the players that bought this game have finished. What's the point of redoing so much work, after all the fun has worn off, other than compleitionist pride. The ending is just a cutscene you can watch on youtube after all and I don't think most people get off on hard won victories that much, I know I don't.

That, that is where the core of DD's negatives lie. It's too grindy, for what the experience gives in return. It wears out it's welcome, although that's more of a problem of setting the mood then actually overstaying it's welcome. It doesn't set you up for this. Oh sure it warns you about it like Dark Souls, it has the whole 'YOU WILL DIE' aesthetic, but not like this. In Dark Souls, even as one goes up to NG+, no matter how many souls you lose, you will always have your levels, always have your equipment, always have your basic skills to fight.

Imagine if in Dark Souls, every time you died, you lost a percentage of your levels, the lose percentage increasing as you go higher and higher in level. The level basically represent your investment. Now in that scenario I am fairly certain people would ♥♥♥♥ on Dark Souls pretty hard, even for all it's mechanical glory. That is what DD -feels- like sometimes (but it's not actually, it just makes it seem like that).

But just like Dark Souls, it is mechnically glorious.

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(Continued in post).

[Eel]

Here is why the game isn't that unfair.

No

See, this game basically is a turn-based lovecraftian rpg version of XCOM iron man mode, especially with the Long War mode with it's fatigue stuff. It's got the same core base, HR management esque gameplay, and risk assessment, and nail-bitting roll of the dice gameplay. However, it's actually less difficult than xcom, because in XCOM you have base assaults, numerous in the case of XCOM 2 or Long War. You have moments where you can lose everything if you aren't prepared or you built your base wrong, especially with your satelliate management, where you can literally lock yourself into a defeat spiral with no way out.

In DD, even with bandit incursions, which can be deflected after a few successful fights and a retreat, you keep your base. You may lose all your gold, all your heroes, but you keep your base and it's upgrades, and you can always recruit more heroes, absolutely free (unlike XCOM), and throw them away to get moola. (Suicide runs, a legitmate tactic).

DD is actually more fair than XCOM. It just, unlike XCOM, it feels too long, whereas XCOM's campaign and progression goes by pretty fast in comparison.

And just like XCOM, just like Dark Souls, it has rich, deep mechanics for one to explore and master. It has a dripping, charismatic, compelling world. A variety of character classes with varying prons and cons, giving birth to numerous team comp ideas and weird tactics. The quirk and stress system, which gives some humanity to them, perhaps more so than XCOM (and we all know those character attachment stories XCOM spawned).

Oh sure the dark fantasy bit has been done to death and C'thulu isn't that original anymore, but the execution, the sleek design, the wonderful overly purple prose of ham of the narrator.

It's still very much something one should play.


With those pros and cons said, here how to make DD much, much more enjoyable, especially if you're new.

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1) Burnout, or why you should play this like a mobile game

Due to the repetitive, grindy nature of the game, you will max your enjoyment of this game and it's aesthetic if you play only in short bursts, maybe 2-4 dungeons at a time.

Now, this seems like stupid common sense for some people here, but gamers, especially in today's market of piffy and short action packed adventures (Any shooter) or long sprawling worlds (Skyrim), are used to going in and just having a nice long gaming session, and this is absolutely horrible for DD's style. I know I certainly burnt out when I played this game in EA, and again when I came back to it at it's full release, and yet I still returned today, because something about it just so charming and compelling. It's like a work of art.

And like art, enjoyed in short bursts.

2) Do not be afraid of fiddling with the options

As logically sound as those updates were for squashing certain easy tactics and rounding out the game, it still adds abit too much to the crushing difficulty. However, I know especially in my case, some of us have this feeling that we are not playing the authentic experience if we fiddle with the config. Like we're cheating or we're wusses. Gamers love to brag about challenges they overcome and there is reason for the elitist crowds in DD, in XCOM, Dark Souls, hell, any dungeon raiding game; hell, any game period. And hearing it one starts to feel stupid when they struggle with the same challenges and wonder what the hell they're doing wrong that the DD or Dark Souls people did right to break through the brick wall (to paraphrase Yazhtee's experience with the Soul series).

So let me reassure those few who are like me: this is your time and your gameplay ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, you have a right to have fun. There is absolutely nothing wrong about making the game easier or cheating alittle. The core experience will not change if you disable some or even all of the options. The game will still be hard and you will still have a challenge, and at least you'll have far less hair pulling and frustration when those hard times come.

3) Low on money and getting tired of the grind? Torture some recruits on a suicide run.

There seems, to me, two fundamental ways to enjoy a rogue like. You either go for the rush of what is both a very lucky, but hard won, victory, getting happy from both your improved skills over time and the roll of the die for those rare awesome moments of "♥♥♥♥ YEAH, TAKE THAT". Or, you detach from the achievement-win gamer mindset and go into the experience mindset, where even a lose becomes interesting rather than infruriating.

That is to say, join the cultists and have some fun watching your characters suffer. Maybe deliberately push them over the edge, and, to make this gameplay beneficial, do this with recruits on a suicide run.

A suicide run is where you nab a fresh team, send them off with almost no provisions, and grab as much loot as possible with no care for their mental health, retreating at the lost possible moment or even winning, and then throwing those traumatised chumps into the dumpster. It sounds horrible, but it can actually be really refreshing to just accept and even revel in the death of characters, where before you were so attached and frustrated.

4) Getting a head start on good team comps: The hell-plague burger, courtesy of nerdcommando.gamestudoes community guide.

Being stumped on end game dungeons with ♥♥♥♥♥♥ team comp after ♥♥♥♥♥♥ team comp, this simple piece of advice finally clicked for me the mechanics of it all and gave me a pretty solid team comp that I can always rely upon. This simple team comp will give you insight into the essentials of late game tactics and what exactly you should be looking for when making a good comp. It might feel like cheating almost, like you're skipping an essential part of exploring and discovering the game for yourself, but remember Dark Souls? A good chunk of people needed wikis and guides to get even into that game, let alone good. Looking for help does not ruin the experience or trash your game pride.

So, what is the hellplague burger?

Basically, it boils down to this: You have the plague doctor, who has blight dots (dots usually, reliably hit and apply and do the same damage regardless of prot or dodge, and can stack), dot heals which are pretty okay heals on their own, and, most important, aoe stuns.

So, in late game, where you have high health, high prot, high dodge, but roughly the same stun and dot resist, this character becomes almost an essential. She is one of two characters to have an aoe stun, and, combined with the next, gives you a huge amount of breathing room and crowd control to do your thing compared to purely damage focused comps. Also, dots become a huge pain later on, and she's the only one who can heal them, other than items, and she's great for those pesky diseases in the warrens with her camp skills.

The second character, the hell in the plague, is the hellion. Now, not only does she have good medium health, high damage, high crit, a self dot heal and buff, but she has the other aoe stun, which, also, has one of the highest base stun rates (plague and other chars have something like 115% at lvl 2, bounty hunter and hellion have 135%). So, you got a good backup damage, and a high stunner, leading you to a full enemy team stunlock.

With just these two chars, you learn the great advantages of dots and stuns. Dots go over the high prots and dodges, and stuns give you far better damage mitigation than straight up healing. Come to think of it, you primarily have 4 methods of damage mitigation: Stuns, healing, debuff, prot. Only one of those four actively prevents any damage period, and that's stuns. Stuns are OP as hell. With these aoe stuns, yer golden!

The plague doc is at the 4th/back position, and the hellion is at the front/1st position, making a highly customisable burger!



In the middle you can put whatever you want, but the standard comp is two bounty hunters. Why them? Because: A) Solid dmg and hp. B) An ability that gets a dmg buff if enemy is stunned (team sync, great lesson.). C) They have a prot debuff (REALLY IMPORTANT, PROT STATS GO TO %50-75 LATE GAME) and marker (marks make certain attacks hit more dmg), D) An ability that has a dmg buff against human types (which are present in all dungeons, aka you learn that orienting yourself against enemy types is very beneficial), and D) Position altering abilities and high stun abilities themselves. This gives you a very good utility package.

The main thing missing, as you will see when hit a bad point, is: a) lack of position flexibility, as although bounty hunters are awesome in the middle and can reliably hit the first three positions AND move around 2 positions forward and back, plague doc and hellion are only good in their primarily positions and don't have good movement in getting back to them. And b) Lack of solid health and stress heals.

These can be mitigated by replacing the second BH (or both) with a char of your choosing, and so makes the comp highly adaptive to all your needs.

I know quite a few people enjoy exploring the game mechanics, and this might feel like almost giving someone a leap over said enjoyment (like a level boost almost), but you will still face challenges as this comp is good for regular mobs, but not bosses, which need special comps made just for them and their mechanics, and the boss encounters are the real prize, aren't they?

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That's all I got to say. I just really wanted to rant all that out. Thank you if you actually read all that to the end and pardon any bad grammar.

Anyway, excuse me as I go tort-ehem, hire some heroes ;).

[Muscarine]

I don't understand where this whole "don't get attached to your heroes" trend comes from.
As in you will lose many of them, i.e this game is grindy, quote :

-"But the grind. The ♥♥♥♥ing grind. Get one of those unfair RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t wipes in a champion dungeon, there goes 100ks of gold of invesment."

-"Low on money and getting tired of the grind? Torture some recruits on a suicide run. "

No, just no.
This is Red Hook taking pity on the players and not forcing a lose state on normal difficulty. So even after multiple massive failures you're still allowed to try again and save your progress.
Full party wipe is not RNG, it's one hundred percent on the player. Throwing fresh recruits into the meat grinder for coins is a recipe for boredom and proof of poor judgement.

I got around to do my NG+ run, it's week 44, i capped my roster full at "only" 20 recruits who all reached resolve 5, crucial hamlet upgrades all done, and yea, 2 casualties on a Shambler because i got greedy. Killed it though. And i'm just done with my first Vvulf encounter, got him blind, nasty, but fine if you know your tactics.
Anyways, in about a dozen more weeks i'll finish NG+, and i know i won't fail, like many others before me.

I'm not saying this to brag. I'm not luckier than the next person, at 200 hours i've had my fair share of terrible rolls, yet none of them wiped me. Worst case scenario, retreat, that Shambler is also my only retreat within these 44 weeks. I don't even use doppleganger teams, it's too easy.
I'm saying this because there is this widespread motto that death is around every corner so just get used to spend recruits like granma's candies.
It's just plain wrong. If you play well, you quickly realize it's just not like that, and while i can appreciate people not going mad and buckle up instead, i still think it's not the right mindset, and i wish people would appreciate the game for more than just a ruthless meat grinder, which it is only to newbies, really.

[Eel]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Muscarine:

I don't understand where this whole "don't get attached to your heroes" trend comes from.
As in you will lose many of them, i.e this game is grindy, quote :

-"But the grind. The ♥♥♥♥ing grind. Get one of those unfair RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t wipes in a champion dungeon, there goes 100ks of gold of invesment."

-"Low on money and getting tired of the grind? Torture some recruits on a suicide run. "

No, just no.
This is Red Hook taking pity on the players and not forcing a lose state on normal difficulty. So even after multiple massive failures you're still allowed to try again and save your progress.
Full party wipe is not RNG, it's one hundred percent on the player. Throwing fresh recruits into the meat grinder for coins is a recipe for boredom and proof of extremely low capabilities.

I got around to do my NG+ run, it's week 44, i capped my roster full at "only" 20 recruits who all reached resolve 5, crucial hamlet upgrades all done, and yea, 2 casualties on a Shambler because i got greedy. Killed it though. And i'm just done with my first Vvulf encounter, got him blind, nasty, but fine if you know your tactics.
Anyways, in about a dozen more weeks i'll finish NG+, and i know i won't fail, like many others before me.

I'm not saying this to brag. I'm not luckier than the next person, at 200 hours i've had my fair share of terrible rolls, yet none of them wiped me. Worst case scenario, retreat, that Shambler is also my only retreat within these 44 weeks. I don't even use doppleganger teams, it's too easy.
I'm saying this because there is this widespread motto that death is around every corner so just get used to spend recruits like granma's candies.
It's just plain wrong. If you play well, you quickly realize it's just not like that, and while i can appreciate people not going mad and buckle up instead, i still think it's not the right mindset, and i wish people would appreciate the game for more than just a ruthless meat grinder, which it is only to newbies, really.

Well that why in my description of it I orient it not just as a money maker but as a kind of stress release. You're so used to getting attached to a party and then dealing with frustration and such, that letting go and just letting the damage come kinda gives a fatalistic relief.

Of course in normal play, especially at the end-game, it very much should not be a mindset in anyway, shape, or form. I didn't mean it soley as a last ditch effort coin maker, but, like I said, as a brief different way of enjoying the game for those who've reached their frustration point and are also at a low point. Enjoy the madness for a brief moment, if you were.

[tigran_petrosjan]

I played this game since early access and for months just plainly enjoyed it. But then I figured it out and it got boring. I know which team to use, which provisions to take, which tool interacts with every curio and how my tacticts are supposed to be.
And yes, it´s a grind. I have my last game at 1 death (3 crits in a row and a bleed on a hellion), everyone is at level 6, I beat the Brigant on the first try, I just need to clear 2 bosses and the darkest dungeon.
But I havent played for months, because it is boring, after you figured ít out. It is a shame, but as a long time gamer you get an eye for the mechanics; and after that you just get bored.
But still: Darkest Dungeon was for months one of the best games I ever played. I had countless enjoyable hours for 20 bucks and for that I am deeply grateful. Ty, dear guys from Red Hook!

[LaserGuy]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Muscarine:

I don't understand where this whole "don't get attached to your heroes" trend comes from.
As in you will lose many of them, i.e this game is grindy, quote :

-"But the grind. The ♥♥♥♥ing grind. Get one of those unfair RNG ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t wipes in a champion dungeon, there goes 100ks of gold of invesment."

I'm not saying this to brag. I'm not luckier than the next person, at 200 hours i've had my fair share of terrible rolls, yet none of them wiped me. Worst case scenario, retreat, that Shambler is also my only retreat within these 44 weeks. I don't even use doppleganger teams, it's too easy.
I'm saying this because there is this widespread motto that death is around every corner so just get used to spend recruits like granma's candies.
It's just plain wrong. If you play well, you quickly realize it's just not like that, and while i can appreciate people not going mad and buckle up instead, i still think it's not the right mindset, and i wish people would appreciate the game for more than just a ruthless meat grinder, which it is only to newbies, really.

Yeah, my opinion is generally that outside of the first four of five weeks where you don't have the full hamlet available and have really limited supplies/heroes/trinkets, you pretty much should never get any deaths if you are playing well. Wipes? That's all on the player. There's absolutely no circumstance that a wipe can't be prevented, as far as I'm concerned (if nothing else, by retreating combat or abandoning the quest long before that point).

[Wyrtt]

RNG is beyong control. You can get a hit for 12 one turn and crit for 36 next turn. And what kind of control you can have in that situation?
Swine king boss fight can be a 3 turns breeze or a grind. Boss can hit you for 5-10 dmg of crit for 40 every turn. Its a pure luck.
Your heroes as well. You can hit for 10 dmg again and again or crit twice for 20-30 and finish boss in 2-3 turns.

Grind. Grind is lessened with introduction of town events and resourses exchange. But its still a long grind to lvl up single hero. At 3 and 5th lvl you have a hard stop as your character cant handle dungeon and needs to gear up.

Broredoom. All bosses are same so beating same boss 3 times is not fun. At 5 lvl you cant bear to do another dungeon and waste more time.

And game is still painfuly easy. Red hook barely did anything to make game harder because few casual couldnt handle game.

[Fornax The Lazy]

Reasonable rant,I'd say. Personally I'm still at early stage in game so I'm quite curious how hard will the late game be,and now I'm pretty scared :0

[LaserGuy]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Wyrtt:

RNG is beyong control. You can get a hit for 12 one turn and crit for 36 next turn. And what kind of control you can have in that situation?

You can kill the enemy, stun them, debuff them, divert their attacks to tanky characters with protects, push or pull them out of position...

Swine king boss fight can be a 3 turns breeze or a grind. Boss can hit you for 5-10 dmg of crit for 40 every turn. Its a pure luck.

It's not luck. In one circumstance, you're clearing the marks properly; in the second, you aren't. That's the opposite of luck--the attack pattern of Wilbur/Swine King is basically scripted and is the same every round.

[Kozzy]

The game is not unfair imo, I am not some hardcore, I just love the challenge this game brings, nothing seems overly slap in the face overly hard either. I like that each time I start a game up of this I am a godo deal better than the other times and I can put my new ideas/tactics to work on the next game. It is very hard and some games have kicked my butt, but I always have alot of fun, weither its me getting whooped or me doing well.

[Eel]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Kozzy - Westworld Season 1 >>>:

The game is not unfair imo, I am not some hardcore, I just love the challenge this game brings, nothing seems overly slap in the face overly hard either. I like that each time I start a game up of this I am a godo deal better than the other times and I can put my new ideas/tactics to work on the next game. It is very hard and some games have kicked my butt, but I always have alot of fun, weither its me getting whooped or me doing well.

The problem isn't that the game is hard. We love hard, we love dark souls, we love xcom iron man mode. We love rogue likes. And rogue likes, be it adventure or strategy (see Dwarf Fortress), tend to be excedingly cruel in their RNG, far more than DD.

The problem isn't that the game is grindy, jrpgs are grindy, mmorpgs are grindy. Grind is okay, we can deal with grind, many of us like it even for it's reliable progression structure (hard work and time guarantees reward).

The problem is one of presentation and length. It's like if Dark Souls NG suddenly jumped to NG+ difficulty late mid-game, somewhere around Anor Londo (Is that the right place? The one with the pretty cathedral ♥♥♥♥). You know that in NG+, you have to almost forget about blocking and armor as enemies just hit waaay too hard now. Many people got through NG using those board and sword/turtle tactics which just aren't viable in this great leap in difficulty.

Likewise, DD sets you up with this lenient mindset. It gets into a pretty reliable rhyme that becomes almost too easy once you get the patterns going. And then suddenly it punches you right in the face, and demands you pay in hours in the double digits for your mistake. Where with xcom, and dark souls, and, hell, most rogue likes period, like FTL, if something ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up happens that ruins the run seemingly, it's not long for you to jump back in and get back to where you were, and either sleek design and challenges or random generated content make up for the demand in hours back.

DD doesn't have that excuse. It's the exact same gamplay at all 3 stages of the game, with no real variation except in artificial difficulty. The prots rise, the dodge rises, the attack dmg and crits rise, ect. It not doesn't lead you properly into end-game, it doesn't really reward for your hard time investment. Once you've played mid game, and go into late game, get fairly fair, and then fall hard, the only thing to look forward to is the exact same experience.

It's similar to how Sunless Sea, another cthulu roguelike, fails as a roguelike because dying means having to read the exact same bloody beginner stories and grind for currency and admiral reports just to get back to where you were before so you can explore new content.

That's one of the fundamentals of rogue likes: either they're very short or very varied (and both are a godsend and classics). DD is neither, yet retains the difficulty of the rogue like. That is the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Edit: Yes, the game is much easier now than it was before. You got the antiquarian to severly reduce gold grind. You got item currency exchange to reduce the building upgrade grind, you can sell trinkets, you can get higher levelled adventurers in your couches. You can fairly ignore Brigand invasions with throw aways (unless youre in NG+). Still, still, despite all that, the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ feeling is there.

On top of that, the game isn't even satisfying for these elite raider types above either. It's too ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for the casual gamer, i.e. the gamer who plays Skyrim, who got only through NG Dark Souls and not more, who plays LFR and Normal mode dungeons in WoW. And it's too easy for the hardcore raiders, who are very analytical and can deconstruct and defeat repetitive, simple, arteficial mechanics pretty quick.

The game is a gem or piece of art with infuriating padding. If this was three times as short (aka what if it was only the late game style of play and level), and had that NG+ difficulty setting from the get go, and let players very much know that and force them into hard tactics right from the tutorial, you'd have an absolute masterpiece and timeless classic. As it stands, it's an awesome piece of work that has that glimmer of perfection just a few tiny, but oh so long, inches away.

[leyu.]

I dont understand what is the deal with all that "oh my god rng" and "grind" stuff. Played ~100 hours, finished the game with ~15-20 casualties and NEVER got any grinding problem. I always had enough money for gear, skills consumables. Yeah, sometimes I need to do few "grind" runs for extra financial safety but it wasnt so boring etc. like in any mmorpg. I agree that rng can screw you up anyway but for 100 hours I had LESS THAN 5 times of that, yeah it is really HUGE problem in this game Kappa. To summarize: player should use his\her godd amn fk ing BRAIN and prepare carefully and manage resources, THAT IS THE POINT, instead of bit ching about "how hard and grindy" this game is.

[foxhound438]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Little Boy Blue:

The other crowd was made up of elites who found various exploits and cheap strategies




It doesn't ease you into it, I think that's it's major problem. It settles you into this set of tactics and thinking that's lazy when you move into late-game. In early-mid game, you can get off on focusing on damage, and you can have fun with the team comps, as I said. Hit late game, and suddenly no, that's not the case anymore. It's harsh, and it's hard, and it makes you revaluate everything. Suddenly you gotta focus on stuns and debuffs, suddenly the amount of viable comps are drastically shortened, because you need to be efficient, and smart. AND EVEN THEN, RNG.

I'll agree to the point that the game can get grindy if you lose someone crucial, but....

1) cheap strats, maybe (I certainly remember the days of highwayman OP) but an "exploit" is usually a term reserved for abuse of game mechanics not operating properly- think, if there's a glitch in a game to where you can jump on a box somewhere and fall through the map, and thus win easier- that was never the case, it was poor initial design weeded out through the advice of the people saying "nerf these heroes, they're too easy to break".

2) I just finished the game and the entire time I used damage heavy strats. Finding the right trinkets is sometimes a bit hard, but I don't feel that certain strategies became mandatory. Moreover, I never had "set teams", even in champ dungeons I'd maybe have one or two classes that I'd try to bring if I could for each area, but never felt that I couldn't succeed without having some exact team comp.

[Eel]

As I repeat later on, it isn't the grind necessarily. As I point out, other beloved rogue-likes like Dark Souls and XCOM can even be considered harder and grindier than DD, DD actually has alot of give-aways in comparisons to those two. The problem is the presentation of the grind in the long term (gameplay becomes far too repetitive and monotonous, both whether you know all the strategies or not, hence why I recommend playing in short bursts to fully enjoy it, rather than burn out on a game session), and in the short term how late-game is introduced to the player.