Darkest Dungeon - Hands-on @ Examiner

Bryan Edge-Salois of the Examiner published a new hands-on preview for Darkest Dungeon, and he calls the game a very bright spot in gaming for 2015.

Darkest Dungeon certainly teaches you the value of lowered expectations. Forget killing-all-the-evil-and-saving-the-kingdom happy endings. In Darkest Dungeon, you’ll learn to love surviving with a 50% sanity ratio, although as the game progresses you may have to go even lower.

Thankfully, you can continue to expand your roster of characters and mount short ‘Skirmish’ expeditions to earn money and loot, which is used to fund supplies for each foray as well as upgrade the town and your heroes. You can’t completely screw yourself out of the ability to continue the game, although you can certainly suffer setbacks, and (permanently) lose beloved characters.

The war is long, and you must be practical—if a bit clinical—in your choices. There is no room for idealism here. You will order more than a few heroes to their deaths and others to an asylum in a very Machiavellian fashion.