Darkest Dungeon review

In late April, the release of a role-playing game in the dark fantasy genre with elements of roguelike – Iratus: Lord of the Dead. I went through it on medium difficulty and I want to share my first impressions – about how I built a cemetery for a powerful necromancer and nightmare miners, dwarves, priests and even the witcher.

ENT game and meeting with Iratus

Role-playing games in the setting of dark fantasy are my favorites. They have magic, mysticism and familiar fairy-tale characters, but without languid elves and the philosophy of dusty old men. Evil has already happened, evil is already here. The plot of Iratus: Lord of the Dead in this sense is canonical: the once powerful necromancer who kept the whole world in fear was defeated by incredible efforts, and his remains were hidden in a coffin for a magical seal. Years later, prospector slaves discovered the crypt of Iratus, destroyed the sarcophagus – and became its new minions.

The game begins with a plot movie in which Iratus tells the story of the plight of an immortal evil. The Lord of the Dead understands that if the world is destroyed, he himself will perish, so the total extermination of everything that exists is not included in the plans of the protagonist – he just wants to establish his order. In the course of the game, we will have to lead the actions of Iratus, so it’s worth remembering: you can nightmare and kill, but sometimes you will have to create. For example, as you pass, it’s worth restoring an ancient cemetery where collected human souls are processed into building materials.

The character of Iratus is rather nasty. Perhaps the fault is a long rest in a cramped sarcophagus. When I obtained and presented the first artifact to his necromancy majesty, he declared: “This will emphasize my deathly pallor.” “Narcissus, dude and princess,” I concluded.

Iratus can actively intervene in battles with the help of spells or passively help his army conquer the world. You will decide how to do it, pumping the talents of the Lord of the Dead. In my opinion, the most useful perk in the early game is the Great Doctor, which will help to heal the squad more effectively after the battle, but there are other options in the game. You can pump four different branches of Iratus’ talents: alchemy, magic, rage, destruction. Basically, buffs and debuffs are available to the necromancer, but if you gain a lot of spell power using artifacts, he will be able to inflict high damage on enemies, and minions will only be a means to replenish mana.

Minimal Random Gameplay

The tutorial in the game is very detailed. If you carefully read all the recommendations, then there will be no problems with the development of Iratus. I even think that it is too detailed – the developers literally lead you by the hand. The accidents that took place in Darkest Dungeon, the closest gameplay to the game, are practically absent here – it is not clear what we are being carefully prepared for. It’s hard to say whether detailed guidance is needed in a roguelike-like title. I would like more freedom, and then Iratus: Lord of the Dead would seem more complicated.

As the rooms went through in Darkest Dungeon, my characters stumbled across interactive elements all the time: traps, statues, stacks of books, sarcophagi, antique chests of drawers and much more. To open them with less risk, you could sacrifice some item from the inventory like holy water, a torch, and so on. The player was not told what specific result this could lead to and the better to sacrifice – everything happened on a hunch. In Iratus: Lord of the Dead, our brainless minions do not have the right to vote, and Iratus apparently knows too much, so interactivities are found only in rooms clearly marked on the map. The result of the selection in them is always contained in advance in the answer, if you hover over the question with the mouse. Why – it’s not clear to me.

The map in the game is available immediately, which allows you to plan your trip in advance. It is difficult to say whether this is plus or minus: on the one hand, it gives a strategic advantage, on the other – it kills the element of chance. You will always know if you are waiting for a battle with an elite squad or ordinary hard workers, and expose the fighters according to the complexity of the battle.

With the release of the game, five levels became available: mines, gnome tunnels, mercenary barracks, catacombs, and a cathedral. You must pass them sequentially, in each subsequent location, the opponents will become stronger.

At the first level, you have to fight against the miner-slaves. It’s a shame, because I assumed that I would play for the dark side against the valiant knights, good bearded doctors and funny bards. At first, the bulk of the opponents is not much different from the undead externally, so you cannot feel like the lord of darkness, the maximum is the lord of the basement.

There is a randomness in the “action” – these are mostly misses and perks related to insanity, familiar to everyone from Darkest Dungeon. Only now can we frighten enemies, after which they can put on their pants and run away, attack an ally or get a minus to the characteristics … or be inspired and give us even more power. You can try this model of warfare for completeness of role-playing experience, because at an average level of difficulty it is not necessary to play through influencing the minds of enemies. You can handle the old-fashioned method by tapping the forehead with a sword.

Before sending a squad into battle, you must specify its serial number. Each time, the system cares whether you made a mistake with the choice. Even if in the second squad you have a “disabled person” of the first level, and you go to battle with the final boss. It would be worth adding the function of sending a detachment to the battle by default, unless otherwise indicated.

Cemetery Construction and Undead Training

In Iratus: Lord of the Dead, we have two main activities – equipping the cemetery where our Lord Necromancer lives, and cleaning the rooms on the way to conquering the world. The cemetery provides various bonuses like additional materials for crafting units, healing and experience boosters. They act passively at the beginning or end of the battle. It’s not necessary to pump a cemetery at an average level of difficulty, I built all the buildings “just to be”, and as a result I didn’t even upgrade.

The undead we are playing for is suddenly peppy. Skeletons are cut very hard – most likely, a detachment of bone companions alone is quite capable of completing the game. I put the Bride of Iratus in a distant position – this is a classic archer who has little health and protection, but damage is in abundance.

Characters in Iratus: Lord of the Dead can be renamed. Darkest Dungeon had a similar option, and it was more justified by the gameplay: heroes often died, and losing a character with a name was a shame.

The death of units in Iratus has never become a problem for me. Firstly, they really died rarely and only from critical damage – that is, by the will of randomness. Secondly, after the death of the opponents, brains that could be used as fuel to increase the intelligence of our army fell into my inventory. As soon as the Bride of Iratus died, I immediately created a brand new beauty, which sometimes turned out to be stronger than the previous one. No pumping from scratch, like in Darkest Dungeon.

There are no problems with additional items and artifacts on medium difficulty either: the inventory is bursting with cool objects, and the characters have only two slots in it. Perhaps with increasing complexity there will be a shortage, but how to know about this for sure if the hardcore mode opens only after a 12-hour pass? And where did all the garbage taken from the fisted gnomes eventually go?

The most interesting and fun unit seemed to me zombies. He has a large cannon, from which he naughty as it should – with an ultimate, he can carry a very dense enemy to the grave. One of the abilities of a zombie gives him the opportunity to hit an area, the upgrade is also interesting for her: you can decide whether physical or magical damage will eventually fly to the enemy. It is a pity that this does not matter much. Yes, the characteristics of the opponents vary, but the average complexity allows you to not notice the resists, so the balance of the type of damage is also not worth attention.

Upgrading undead sometimes lags. A plus sign that reports on available skill points may remain in the unit’s profile even after distribution. This distracts and forces you to double-check several times whether you upgraded everything.

Unexpected references and deletion of save at the end of the game

There is a humonarian in the game – this is a bestiary on the contrary. Iratus keeps records of opponents encountered along the way. Data is collected randomly, not every fighter gets a description card.

More than others, I liked the boss of the third act. Fans of fantasy settings can easily find out to whom the developers of Iratus: Lord of the Dead made a reference. The mercenary regularly smeared the blade with potion, and his magic suspiciously resembled witch signs. All that was needed was to add the phrase: “Infect!” To him.

You can also talk about phrases separately. The undead are very talkative: the use of an ultimate, critical damage or a normal attack did not remain without sparkling comments. They probably should have been funny, but sometimes from phrases like “M-my perfect body!” I caught Spanish shame.

The biggest problem of the game that I discovered at the end and upset to the core: after the final credits, the system simply deletes your save. Yes, new characters and the next level of difficulty will be revealed to you, and the progress of the humonarius will be left, but the save game will sink into oblivion. Most likely, we are shown that Iratus did not succeed again – he “deleted” the human world and himself at the same time. But why so literally?

In general, I rather liked the game, but, alas, I could not inflame frantic love for it. It is worth it to spend about 12 hours on an average difficulty level. More hardcore mode is initially blocked, so do not expect to burst from his feet and show who is Dad in the “bagels.” The need to first try out the simple version discourages the desire to play on the complex, and especially on the ultra-sophisticated one. The battles in Iratus are not so interesting as to return to them again and again. This is a one-way game – after that it will remain either fans of the genre, or those who wholeheartedly fell in love with the silly and pompous Iratus. To put all the dots on the “ё”, I will say this: Darkest Dungeon is more interesting.