Since I am a massive XCOM fan I assumed I would absolutely love Darkest Dungeon and for the first few hours I did.

The combat seemed deep and varied. There are so many character classes such that I have not used them all let alone try all possible permutations of a four adventurer party. Managing your hamlet is just as stressful as combat when deciding where to spend your hard earned resources. I opted to boost the strength of my party by focusing on the guild and blacksmith but every so often I had to throw some resources to help my adventures recover from all the horrors they had seen.

It felt like I had a rich game that I was going to lose myself in for days.

But after those first few hours I realized that I felt I wasn't making any real progress. Sure I had a few adventures at level two but I wasn't really making enough money to actually upgrade their skills and equipment. I also never seemed to be sending out the same party composition more than once. The stress would be too great or some malady was would afflict an adventure and they would have to miss a week of adventuring while I spent some gold healing them up. The caravan never really seemed to bring me much variety (could I please have more than one Arbalst?) so it forced me to put together so many patchwork party compositions because I just didn't have the ones I wanted to try. Also, every time I came back from a quest I didn't really have enough money to do any major upgrades to my characters such that I felt I was ready for the next challenge.

It was at this time that I had realized I had already entered the grind of the game. I had only been doing lvl 1 short quests (either complete every room battle or explore 90% of rooms) and I was already at a point where I felt like I needed to grind for hours to make enough progress to even attempt the first boss of the game.

But OK this is a hardcore game right? Maybe I'm just playing it wrong. I set myself a goal of attempting one of the first bosses, the Swine Prince, and I picked out a party that I thought would work well and aimed to get them to level two with level one skills and armor (since my guild or blacksmith was not upgraded enough to get everything to level two). I grinded for four more hours and got exactly what I wanted and equiped my party with the best trinkets I had, provisioned them to the gills and out I went. I explored the dungeon and didn't even need to camp before I scouted the boss's lair. It was at this point where things went completely sideways. I managed to kill the boss but I lost three of my four party members. All of that time and energy was gone without much to show for it. All the gold I got for beating the boss was essentially a moot point because I would need to spend it all again to upgrade new adventurers to have that same level of skill and equipment. With respect to the boss battle I felt like I could have retreated and gone back to the hamlet with my spoils. But I would have to spend a lot of gold to reduce the stress and afflictions they had acrued on the quest so it feels like it would have been a moot point.

But again this is a hardcore game! I just gotta git gud! I mean I made progress right? Killing one of those first bosses means something does it not? Let's pick out a second boss and try again. So I picked out the Wizened Hag, put together a team, grinded for two hours to get them where they needed to be (some this time had level two armor because I finally got enough freakin' deeds) and set out into the dungeon. It went every much like the first where I got to the boss without needing to camp and I made my attempt. This time only two of my four adventurers died, although the other two came back with such high stress that they won't ever been quite the same.

And so I am back again to where I was before I decided it was time to attempt my first boss. I have a stable of adventurers that are in no shape to make any attempt on the next boss let alone an attempt at a level three dungeon. None of my healers are above level zero since they've all died so I'll need to grind them up again. But I could do it. I could pick a boss, pick a party composition, grind 2-4 more hours doing the level one dungeons and make another attempt. Odds are I'll lose some adventurers again but thats a point of the game. How does a player deal with such great loss? To me though the grind is just far too obvious that it makes it much easier to just put down the mouse and keyboard and walk away. Its far too clear that I'll have to just grind the same dungeons over and over again, kill the same creatures and then go into another boss battle completely blind where I am likely to come away with some heavy losses. And after I kill all four of the starting bosses I'll be essentially in the same position as I was before with the exception of my hamlet being a little more upgraded. But at that point I'll have to do all of this over again for level three dungeons and I think that I need something else to pull me throught his grind.

Since I am a massive XCOM fan I assumed I would absolutely love Darkest Dungeon and for the first few hours I did. The combat seemed deep and varied. There are so many character classes such that I have not used them all let alone try all possible permutations of a four adventurer party. Managing your hamlet is just as stressful as combat when deciding where to spend your hard earned resources. I opted to boost the strength of my party by focusing on the guild and blacksmith but every so often I had to throw some resources to help my adventures recover from all the horrors they had seen. It felt like I had a rich game that I was going to lose myself in for days. But after those first few hours I realized that I felt I wasn't making any real progress. Sure I had a few adventures at level two but I wasn't really making enough money to actually upgrade their skills and equipment. I also never seemed to be sending out the same party composition more than once. The stress would be too great or some malady was would afflict an adventure and they would have to miss a week of adventuring while I spent some gold healing them up. The caravan never really seemed to bring me much variety (could I please have more than one Arbalst?) so it forced me to put together so many patchwork party compositions because I just didn't have the ones I wanted to try. Also, every time I came back from a quest I didn't really have enough money to do any major upgrades to my characters such that I felt I was ready for the next challenge. It was at this time that I had realized I had already entered the grind of the game. I had only been doing lvl 1 short quests (either complete every room battle or explore 90% of rooms) and I was already at a point where I felt like I needed to grind for hours to make enough progress to even attempt the first boss of the game. But OK this is a hardcore game right? Maybe I'm just playing it wrong. I set myself a goal of attempting one of the first bosses, the Swine Prince, and I picked out a party that I thought would work well and aimed to get them to level two with level one skills and armor (since my guild or blacksmith was not upgraded enough to get everything to level two). I grinded for four more hours and got exactly what I wanted and equiped my party with the best trinkets I had, provisioned them to the gills and out I went. I explored the dungeon and didn't even need to camp before I scouted the boss's lair. It was at this point where things went completely sideways. I managed to kill the boss but I lost three of my four party members. All of that time and energy was gone without much to show for it. All the gold I got for beating the boss was essentially a moot point because I would need to spend it all again to upgrade new adventurers to have that same level of skill and equipment. With respect to the boss battle I felt like I could have retreated and gone back to the hamlet with my spoils. But I would have to spend a lot of gold to reduce the stress and afflictions they had acrued on the quest so it feels like it would have been a moot point. But again this is a hardcore game! I just gotta git gud! I mean I made progress right? Killing one of those first bosses means something does it not? Let's pick out a second boss and try again. So I picked out the Wizened Hag, put together a team, grinded for two hours to get them where they needed to be (some this time had level two armor because I finally got enough freakin' deeds) and set out into the dungeon. It went every much like the first where I got to the boss without needing to camp and I made my attempt. This time only two of my four adventurers died, although the other two came back with such high stress that they won't ever been quite the same. And so I am back again to where I was before I decided it was time to attempt my first boss. I have a stable of adventurers that are in no shape to make any attempt on the next boss let alone an attempt at a level three dungeon. None of my healers are above level zero since they've all died so I'll need to grind them up again. But I could do it. I could pick a boss, pick a party composition, grind 2-4 more hours doing the level one dungeons and make another attempt. Odds are I'll lose some adventurers again but thats a point of the game. How does a player deal with such great loss? To me though the grind is just far too obvious that it makes it much easier to just put down the mouse and keyboard and walk away. Its far too clear that I'll have to just grind the same dungeons over and over again, kill the same creatures and then go into another boss battle completely blind where I am likely to come away with some heavy losses. And after I kill all four of the starting bosses I'll be essentially in the same position as I was before with the exception of my hamlet being a little more upgraded. But at that point I'll have to do all of this over again for level three dungeons and I think that I need something else to pull me throught his grind.