![]() There is no way to dodge the attack, or pick an alternative option in order to continue the fight, the player must make sacrifices. The final enemy of the game has an attack called “Come Unto Your Maker.” When used, the fight pauses, and the player must choose a hero to be sentenced to death. In the final battle, this is taken to its logical conclusion. It makes them complicit in sentencing their subjects to death. The game does not only make the player endure such losses. To make matters worse, the player must choose which of the survivors of the mission is to nonetheless be sentenced to a horrid death. In the case of the titular Darkest Dungeon, leaving requires one of the heroes to give their life holding back the horde of eldritch horrors that lay within there is not a choice or a gamble to evade the necessity. The cost of retreat may outweigh the loss of one hero in a world as dark as this one, caution is but a delusion. ![]() The player must become thick-skinned in sentencing their favorite characters to their doom. The game does not reward empathy it is very blatant that characters can and will die no matter their skill level. ![]() After which, the player may dismiss the survivors, leaving them with only the traumas of their brief encounters as compensation for their effort. Even if some may die, only one needs to be alive to haul the gains back. In fact, a viable strategy involves hiring volunteers who submit themselves to the efforts to cleanse the area, sending them in to collect as much treasure as they can carry, only to have them flee rather than fight. When aiding them and providing treatment for their issues, both physical and psychological, ceases to be cost-effective, they are to be dismissed and replaced with able-bodied and stable adventurers, after which the cycle may easily be repeated. They argue that the player is made a ruthless sort of robber baron, utilizing heroes until they become ill enough that they are no longer valuable. In a now unavailable review for the game, critic Jim Stephanie Sterling connects the defensive playstyle to capitalist behavior. Any hero who completes a mission in the Darkest Dungeon will refuse to ever enter it again due to the unspeakable horrors it contains within. They may simply develop a fear of an area that will make them refuse to enter. They may develop kleptomania, stealing treasure that you need to fund expeditions as well as care for the other heroes. For example, a hero may cope with the intense trauma by developing a phobia of a creature that then limits their ability to fight it. A hero’s experiences lead them to develop habits and traits. These trials are only the beginning of the deep systems that separate Darkest Dungeon from the crowd. These qualities impact both their fighting ability and the rest of the party after all, who wants to deal with a doomsayer in a matter of life and death? Or an adventurer willing to take another life to save their own? Other times, and far more commonly, they crumble under the stress, reverting to infantile insults, cowardice, or intense narcissism. Sometimes, they overcome these limitations, resurging in confidence or willpower and reinvigorating their teammates with their endurance. Heroes are often intensely psychologically tested by the horrors of their battles. Darkest Dungeon intermingles a health system with a sanity system that emphasizes the fickle nature of the human psyche. However, death is not the worst option for characters. It is a game as much about luck as it is strategy a perfect run can be sent into chaos with a single bad bout of luck, that creates a domino effect for the rest of the party. Only the strongest endure the battles levied against them and even then, sometimes even the fittest are damned to failure. In Darkest Dungeon, survival of the fittest is in full play. Serving as the commander of adventurers who seek glory or redemption, you guide them into the corrupted lands to strengthen them from the cruel battles inside the titular locale. In the game, you play as a faceless inheritor of a grand estate long scarred by greed and cruelty, upon which an excavation has uncovered terrible forces that threaten humanity as a whole. Half Lovecraftian horror, half cruel Dungeons and Dragons, Darkest Dungeon is a strategic RPG that emphasizes the traumas of being a hero. Darkest Dungeon accepts those realities with a cold, almost sarcastic air. They neglect the struggle with near constant mortality, the intense stress of struggling against a foe, the isolation from living a life inconceivable to the common man. So many pieces of media ignore the brutality of such a life, instead emphasizing the heroism or glory that it entails. Please note that this post will contain some large spoilers for Darkest Dungeon.
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