Game Review: Darkest Dungeon

You would think that Darkest Dungeon would be the perfect game for me. And it is--this isn't a bad review, so don't think I'm tipping my hand early--but while I leaped on the kickstarter the instant I learned about it, I withdrew my pledge when they added in a backer-exclusive class. I'm fine with kickstarter-exclusive cosmetics or silly, non-gameplay-affecting content, but the idea of a mechanical benefit to kickstarter supports sat badly enough with me that I was willing to forgo playing the game entirely. Then I played other games, and it faded from my consciousness.

Until 2016, when ping816 suddenly bought it as a present for me. And then I learned that the kickstarter had suffered from unclear communication and the backer class was the Musketeer, a cosmetic skin over the top of the Arbalest with all the same mechanics, so I needn't have been so suspicious in the first place. Well, live and learn.

And then I was playing Baldur's Gate II and the Legend of Zelda games, but last November, now that I was finally all the way up to Breath of the Wild, I loaded it up. The screen went black, and then I was greeted with the opening cinematic:

Ruin has come to our family.

You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor. I lived all my years in that ancient rumor shadowed manor, fattened by decadence and luxury, and yet I began to tire of... conventional extravagance...

Hell. Yes.

Women and men, soldiers and outlaws...fools, and corpses. All will find their way to us now that the road is clear.

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Also, if you want to hear what I sound like / a bit of RP, I did a Facebook thread where I chronicled my progress through this game, and I recorded the last update from the Heir after I beat the game. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.