I am going to leave this article a fair amount shorter than I probably would put into a First Impressions article, but I feel like there is only so much I can say about a year old game that has already won a number of awards on a lot of the systems it has been released on.
First off, I started Darkest Dungeons: Ancestral Edition three separate times. The first was shortly after first receiving the game, then I put it down while I tried to finish Battle Chasers, and Thimbleweed Park. The second time was because I felt that after over a months absence I should start over as I had put fewer than 30 minutes into the game. The third time I started because I did not fully understand the control and button mapping, and made an error sending out a small group instead of the full contingent of four companions that I had in my roster. Since then, I have made a couple of mistakes, not using items when I though I was, using the correct item at the wrong time which lead to three of my characters dying from their own individual heart attacks and one survivor needing two weeks of mental recovery in the abbey before I even considered sending her out again.
If you are asking yourself, why bother. I will put it to you like this. The writing in this game is pretty amazing. It is heavily inspired by H.P. Lovecraft (minus the antisemitic and overt racism) and there are times when a game tries to capture a period piece involving eldritch and cosmic horrors, but they just do not get the dialogue correct. It just sounds too contemporary. It is like someone read the Wikipedia page for the Cthulhu mythos, felt that the story should take place in the 1930s, but has no grasp on what books, stories, or dialogue sounded like. Even the game Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which got a lot right, still had journal entries and spoken dialogue sounding like something out of 2006.
Darkest Dungeon on the other hand, nailed the atmosphere of Lovecraft and the sound of words (as opposed to me cannot seem to write well enough). Granted it is not a perfect match for 1930s weird fiction, but damn it is wonderfully written. The opening intro reads as follows:
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. Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune, on swarthy workmen, and sturdy shovels. At last, in the salt soaked crags beneath the lowest foundations, we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil. Our every step unsettled the ancient earth, but we were in a realm of death and madness. In the end, I alone fled, laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity. Until consciousness failed me.
You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial. It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright, and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows. . .of the Darkest Dungeon.
If that text at all intrigued you, I recommend (highly recommend) watching the opening cinematic.
I have never heard of the voice actor Wayne June, who speaks the part of your ancestor and makes frequent comments and narrations during the game, but his voice is perfectly suited to the script that was written for the game. If the above introduction has at all interested you, I also highly recommend watching the cinematic that begins the game once you start your file.
Now, on top of all of that is a lot of game mechanics that I feel I am still working out. Be it five hours in finally figuring out how to find out the names of items and what they do before I buy them, and I think so far this is my biggest complaint for the Nintendo Switch port of Darkest Dungeon, that and the text can be tiny at times. The button mapping is not always as intuitive as I would have liked and there are times when if feels more natural to play it as a touch screen game, but some of the windows when playing in hand-held-mode are just too small for my yeti sized fingers trying to scroll or zoom in/out with two fingers.
And that is where I will leave it for today, which is more than I had originally planned on writing. The writing, voice acting, and atmosphere of the game is amazing, but the button mapping could use a bit of work. There is a decent chance that there will be a First Impressions Part II before the end of the year.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Too Late I Heard The Howling
Now, on top of all of that is a lot of game mechanics that I feel I am still working out. Be it five hours in finally figuring out how to find out the names of items and what they do before I buy them, and I think so far this is my biggest complaint for the Nintendo Switch port of Darkest Dungeon, that and the text can be tiny at times. The button mapping is not always as intuitive as I would have liked and there are times when if feels more natural to play it as a touch screen game, but some of the windows when playing in hand-held-mode are just too small for my yeti sized fingers trying to scroll or zoom in/out with two fingers.
And that is where I will leave it for today, which is more than I had originally planned on writing. The writing, voice acting, and atmosphere of the game is amazing, but the button mapping could use a bit of work. There is a decent chance that there will be a First Impressions Part II before the end of the year.
~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Too Late I Heard The Howling
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