Darkest Dungeon Review

BRIEF OVERVIEW

 Rating - 7.5/10.

 Buy DD if:

• You liked the PC version OR if you are a fan of dark fantasy like Lovecraft.
• You want a rectilinear cube metal dungeon crawler.
• You like nice miniatures and/or you like to paint them.
• You have nothing against games that are not very difficult or tactically deep.
• You have a lot of money (for replayability, it is recommended to have at least 1 add-on; currently only Crimson Court can be bought).

Do not buy DD if:

• You would rather buy 3-4 good board games for the same price, even if they have fewer miniatures in total.
• You are not interested in a dungeon crawler.
• You don't care about thumbnails.
• You prefer complex decks with tactical depth.
• You don't like randomness (there are dice rolls when attacking, random dungeon exploration in corridors, random tile layout).
• You do not like the idea that you can lose due to randomness.
• You don't want to play the campaign (you can't play outside the campaign mode in DD).
• You don't have much free space on your desk.

DETAILED REVIEW

 Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game is a dungeon crawler based on the computer game of the same name. Four heroes (always four - i.e. designed for 1-4 players) go into dungeons, fight monsters, gain experience and gold, and also often die or receive terrible injuries and disorders (both in battle and while wandering around long) corridors connecting rooms filled with monsters).

 The campaign consists of 4 acts. Acts 1–3 each have three dungeons; in the first two you gain gold and experience, and in the third you fight the boss. After completing 3 bosses (that is, 9 dungeons), you are presented with the final creepy act with the most terrifying part of the Dark Dungeon. I will not spoil; let me just say that this is definitely my favorite act.

 After each trip to the dungeon, heroes can heal, recover and upgrade skills in the town of Hamlet. Each character also has their own unique skill that can be used in Hamlet. Some treat, others give supplements. supplies or some bonuses for the next campaign.

 Completing each dungeon takes 60-120 minutes, and each visit to Hamlet takes 10-30 minutes. If everyone in your group understands quickly, then the passage may take even less time (and vice versa), but since the options for each individual player, as a rule, are few, analysis paralysis is unlikely.

 It is based on 11 characters, each with its own parameters and characteristics. Many have the same skills, and some have the same roles, but they all feel different and quite close to the computer originals. There are no traditional roles (tank, healer and damager), but there are combat positions that are well known to those who played computer DD: aggressive, defensive, long-range and support. Most characters are optimal in a certain position, but some are equally good in several positions.

 Obviously, some characters tank better or heal better than others, but the effect of combat stances is more important. Most of the skills of heroes and monsters only work in certain positions, so their position is very important. Moreover, there can be only one monster and one hero in each rack.

 There are also 4 bosses in the base (except act 4), a bunch of different monsters and a lot of all kinds of content (temperament traits, items, diseases, rooms, etc. ed.). Taken together, all this provides good regrabability.

GAME PROCESS

 You spend most of the game in combat. You activate heroes (previously monsters, if you're lucky - the initiative (i.e., turn order) is determined randomly) and decide which skills to use. What's better: healing an ally or stabbing a monster? Or maybe stun him so he misses a move? Is it just a matter of buffing an ally to increase the critical hit chance?

 In combat, the player has two actions that can be spent moving, interacting with loot, changing positions, or using skills. The first and fourth are most often used. The tactic in battle is primarily to move correctly so that you can use 2 skills at once on the next turn (at least that's how I played). In complex battles, there is not enough action, so you may not even have enough time to open the desired loot chest. But you usually have time to discover them during combat. After the fight, they disappear perfectly.

 When applying experience, you roll a D10 to hit. If you roll a low enough value, you can land a critical hit. Monsters also use D10, so both sides have chances to smear and critical hits.

 Depending on the level of the character, players have a choice of 3-5 skills in battle (there are 7 skills in total, you can take 3-5 per battle), which is quite a lot. However, sometimes there will be only one or two optimal options. Some characters have clearly useful and useless skills, so if you want to always have a lot of options to choose from, choose your character and skills wisely. Which skills are available for use depends both on the position of the character and on the range of the skill: some can be used only against the enemy in the same position as the character, others - in the adjacent position, the third - in 2 positions from him. Fortunately, there are also relatively flexible skills.

 Battles take up most of the game time. Between battles, there is an exploration phase: the heroes wander through the corridors of the dungeon, roll dice and get some effects. Periodically as you explore, you'll come across rooms full of monsters, and that's when the battle begins. The dungeon is represented by a separate field on which room tiles are randomly laid out (depending on the current mission), and exploration is simply moving a group token/miniature from one room to another. Usually you have a choice in which order you go through the dungeons, but sometimes you just go straight ahead.

 Dungeon exploration is very atmospheric in my opinion. This is a fairly quick process, especially considering the mechanics of intelligence, which in 90% of cases are mandatory to use. During exploration, each player gets a stress unit (more on that below), then you reveal all the nearby rooms. Also, you'll only roll 1 research die on your next research instead of 2. Since (depending on the current act) you almost always get at least 1 stress and some damage on the die roll, scouting is simply necessary. And it's boring. Not all rooms have monsters, but in the ones without monsters, negative effects await you, so it makes sense to spend most of your time fighting.

 Now about stress. In addition to health, you also have a stress score. It's basically a second HP strip. Stress accumulates during exploration, from some monster abilities, when receiving a critical hit due to the features of some dungeon rooms, and even from some hero abilities. If you accumulate 10 stress points, you must make a resolve check by rolling a D10. If you somehow avoid it or throw out 1-2, you get a serious buff, if you throw out 3+, you get psychosis - a serious debuff. If you accumulate 20 stress points, you die of a heart attack.

 It should be noted that the stress counters are made simply terribly. They should not be considered properly, but the level of stress is marked with an ordinary token, which can easily be accidentally moved to the wrong position. I recommend marking your stress level with a separate die or tokens from some other board (the brain-shaped tokens from Arkham Horror are the same).

 In addition to death from a heart attack, characters can also die after receiving the fourth negative character trait (most often in the process of research) or when health reaches zero.

 However, what is unusual, at zero health the character does not die instantly, but reaches the so-called the threshold of death. As a reward/penalty, you get an extra die to roll every time you take damage. When the skull is thrown, the character finally dies. It is possible to acquire a new character in Hamlet after the party returns from the dungeon, if of course there are adventurers in town willing to join the party. If you can't get 4 characters, you lose the campaign and have to start over.

 You will also lose the campaign if all 4 characters die in the dungeon, which is unlikely, but possible with extreme bad luck.

 I won't go into much detail about Hamlet's phase. It takes only 10-15 minutes. Players spend the gold they find in the dungeon to heal stress and damage, as well as all kinds of bonuses for the next dungeon trip. Even in Hamlet, you can improve skills and level up characters. By the way, there is an important bug in the game: the location "Guild" allows you to increase the level of a character or skill by 1, and not to increase a skill or character of level 1 to level 2 (otherwise you would not be able to level above level 2).

EXPERIENCE FROM THE GAME

APPEARANCE AND QUALITY OF COMPONENTS

• + Gorgeous thumbnails. If you like to paint them, then it's even ++ for you.
• - Unfortunately, the game does not have the red enemy miniatures promised at the start of the Kickstarter campaign. It's a pity that it didn't work out. I would be happy to paint them.
• + The quality of other components ranges from decent to excellent.
• - Cards in protectors do not fit into boxes. Sad, but expected. You will have to make your organizer from cardboard and electrical tape, as usual.

PRINTS AND RULES

• - The game has a lot of typographical errors, including on the cards and on the playing field.
• - There is no description of many possible situations in the rule book, which forces people to ask "stupid" questions in Discord and Facebook. Not that dumb actually, as the rulebook only explains the basics of gameplay.

FAN

• + The game is fan-made. Destroying monsters is especially nice. Players cringe when critically hit, and cheer loudly when critically hit.
• + It is interesting to choose skills, as well as to think of skill combinations of different characters.

LEVEL-UPS AND LOOT

• + Playing RPG-like games, including dungeon crawlers, is fun in many ways because of tons of cool loot. Darkest Dungeon is somewhat different from its counterparts in this respect. There is not much loot here, only jewelry is available from items. They give a one-time bonus and then roll over. You will have to apply their negative effect on yourself to flip back and get the bonus again. Not at all similar to the objects in other torture houses known to me. I like it.
• +I also like that level 3 decorations are very powerful and greatly enliven the gameplay.
• * In Hamlet, you can spend experience points or skill leveling (each character has 7) or leveling up the hero (from 1 to 3). This adds interesting solutions to the game and diversifies builds.
• * True, the level-up mechanics are quite primitive (although close to the computer original), so don't expect a sprawling skill tree or a bunch of upgrades to choose from.
• * Fans of games with a lot of loot may not like DD.

TACTICS

• * Tactical decisions are mainly about choosing which enemies to beat and which skills to use, as well as when to heal and whether to heal at all.
• * The location of the character and the terrain, with rare exceptions, do not play a role.
• * Judicious selection of upgrades is very important, as some skills are clearly better than others.
• * In general, the game is shallow.
• - Not recommended for fans of complex deep dungeon crawlers (if such exist at all in nature).
• * However, I do not believe that the game "plays itself", as some write.
• * Most often, in a battle, each player has 1-2 options for actions (which skill to use and at whom to aim), which are clearly better than others, but there are usually 3-5 more options for actions, which, although less effective (more risky, as a rule) ) but also viable.
• + At high levels, when players have more skills, there are more options for actions. Also, the range of decisions made depends on the skills chosen for the battle.

DIFFICULTY OF THE GAME

• * Exploring dungeon corridors (via exploration cubes) is more dangerous than fighting.
• - The AI is quite good, but sometimes the monsters do nothing stupidly.
• * I think most players prefer to house monsters so they don't miss turns just because they randomly chose a melee attack when they can't reach the nearest character.
• * The difficulty of boss battles varies: some bosses are weaklings, others are serious guys.
• + The Crimson Court app feels more difficult than the base (both ordinary monsters and bosses). Admittedly, I haven't played it all the way through, so these are more like first impressions.

VARIETY

• * Variety is present in almost everything: dice rolls in combat, random monster draw, random initiative deck, random dungeon.
• * The same can be said for exploring the dungeon, because in the corridors you roll research dice.
• * Events drawn during research and items that cancel them are also random.
• * At the start of a dungeon, you can dump a bunch of bandages and food on the dice, and as you explore (again, at the discretion of the dice) it turns out that you don't need either the bandages or the food.
• * Since you're exploring dungeons between rooms and rolling a lot of dice (1-2 dice per player per exploration phase), the randomness should statistically smooth out due to the large number of rolls. However, several curios in a row can cause huge damage to your group.
• * Each item dropped gives you a negative character trait, weak bleeding or poisoning, as well as stress and sometimes disease.
• - Multiple critical hits in a row can also deal massive damage to your party. 3-4 together is practically the end of the game, regardless of the actions of the players.
• - As a rule, character deaths and/or campaign losses occur purely due to randomness: multiple activated monsters and/or critical hits in a row, bad placement of locations on the dungeon map, due to which you have to go through many research phases, bad events in Hamlet .

LAYOUT AND FIDDLING

• +The layout takes a lot of time, but if you take care of the organizer, as I did, then it will take only 10 minutes, which is not so much.
• +Many criticized DD for excessive fiddling, but in my opinion, everything is not so terrible. Dwellers with components are not very many, if compared to some "Arkham Horror" 2nd edition.
• - Sometimes it is quite difficult to remember all the effects that affect the results of the throws, especially the critical hit modifiers; skills, hero buffs, monster debuffs, items, lighting...
• - The game takes up a lot of space, it is recommended to allocate a special table for it (1.8 × 1.2 meters, although a table with a width of one meter may be enough). If you want to quickly get miniatures out of the box, you will also have to allocate a separate table for them. I put them on Kallax shelves and it worked fine, but other shelves would work.

REPLAYABILITY

• + Redrawability is high; DD has a lot of characters, monsters and bosses.
• * However, I recommend buying the add-ons: Crimson court available now, and Cove, Weald and/or Warrens when they come out.

FINAL ASSESSMENT

 6/10 - straight out of the box. Would have given it a 7/10 if it weren't for the typos and unclear rules.

 7.5/10 - after clarifying all unclear points.

MAIN PROS OF THE GAME

• +Fan. Beating monsters, arguing with friends, how best to look like, etc. is very fan-like.
• +Simply great thumbnails.

MAIN DISADVANTAGES

• -Confused rules with a lot of unclear points.
• - AI monsters are sometimes speechless dumb. This can (and should) be fixed with home rules.