¡Recently, Abandoned; Games!

Completely agree about Darkest Dungeon - if it wasn't for the ridiculous RNG I'd have absolutely loved it.

Scared I'm getting close to putting down Metroid Dread after loving it for the first five hours, all down to the EMMIs.

They're not exactly difficult and they were fun the first few times but it doesn't feel like they fit with the game at all and they completely ruin the flow if you get caught a couple of times.

The RNG in Darkest Dungeon is perfectly manageable, I've finished campaigns multiple times with no mercenary deaths aside from the required ones. Like with most roguelike games, it's all about knowing what to expect and how to manage risk (and when to cut your losses and retreat like a coward)

If people want specific advice about it, I'll be happy to provide. It really is an amazing game, and it would be a shame to miss out on that because you bounce off the difficulty.

I mean, it's meant to be a game about despair and terrible things happening to you. Literally the first thing the game tells you is "Darkest Dungeon is about making the most of a bad situation".

So it's not an RPG where you're supposed to get attached to your characters. It's more like a management game where you're an HR rep for a cutthroat adventurer's guild. If a mission is going badly, you can retreat, keep all your stuff, and just fire anyone who's gone insane. There's no time limit or game over condition unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty (which you shouldn't)

It's cool if you don't like that sort of thing, people like different things and that is ok. But as you say, everything about the game is intentional. Like with XCOM, the question isn't "how do I do everything perfectly", it's "how do I prepare, how do I mitigate the effects of luck, and how do I respond and adapt when luck does not go my way".

Maybe you don't like elements of luck or RNG in your games. That's fine! But to me that makes them *immensely* compelling, with the knowledge that things could go sour at any minute and that I can scrape through anyway.

I also struggled but can vouch for molaram's help. Although I have to say I got to the very last dungeon and got unlucky with a direction I went and lost everyone.

Didn't have the will to build up another team to go again. So always pains me I was one short of beating it.

Yeah feel I need closure haha, aside from that I bloody loved it.

I'm sure this is the case but unfortunately what you have described doesn't sound like fun IMO. And the RNG issue isn't just about perma-death: I played roughly five hours and only lost three characters; I figured pretty quickly how to keep my party in tact. My issue is that the RNG very rarely goes in your favour, and tends to punish the player even when they are doing well.

But the game design is a much bigger problem than the RNG; the upgrade system, the stress system (the biggest offender), dungeon layout, enemy behaviour, inventory management, etc are all full of flaws. I've played plenty of games with perma-death: both Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics handled the rogue-like system much better and encouraged and rewarded player progression. And FFT is a harder game that Darkest Dungeon, to boot.

Isn't Darkest Dungeon meant to be more about the journey than the end goal? At least that's what a friend was telling me. Like the game isn't meant to go your way and you're not even expected to beat it.

I think people kind of overstate how punishing it is. Yes, you can lose people, but for the most part it doesn't really matter. There's always more characters to hire, and you can slowly build up your town so that your recruits start at a higher level, with better equipment.

And by the time you get mercs that you've invested money into upgrading, it becomes much harder to kill them.

But anyway, it's genuinely fine if people still don't like it. Different people like different things! I guess I just think people often expect DD to be a game that's different to the one it's trying to be.

I think it's important to understand that Darkest Dungeon does not really have a failstate. The party is dispensable, it's the hamlet that is the real indicator of your progress, and you can always recover from there.

That said, I agree that leveling up again after a party wipe is just too much effort after a while. I love the game, but I've never finished it, either. An optional savepoint before you enter a dungeon would basically have fixed 99% of the problems people have with the game.

It's definitely worth it even if you never finish it. It's stylish, and deep, and cool, and intense, and pretty unique in so many respects. A terrific game.

If you get the Ancestral Edition (which you should), it's probably best to start out on Radiant difficulty, with the Courtyard DLC area disabled (but keep the districts and extra classes).

The Courtyard is great, but it adds complications to the main game that you probably don't want when you're just starting out.

Cheers, folks! I'll keep the tips in mind. I guess my backlog is growing again.

Assuming the same game as the Xbox version, you are a Pair of lightweights I really enjoyed this game (just checked and completed it 10 years ago!) anyway it is with heavy heart that I am abandoning The Witcher 2* (xbox bakpat) I have got mid way through chapter 2 an although I have enjoyed most of it I just can't "do" the map or quest markers anymore. It has the most unintuitive map since or alongside DD: DA. I simply can not find the catacombs. Even before that I am getting stuck several times trying to navigate the world.
I did look on line and at least i am far from the only one who hates the Map on Witcher 2. I do think I will watch the end on YT at some point, if I can be arsed! 

Cosmopolitan and drhcnip get your own back boys...I "wimped" out of Witcher 2

don't remember an issue with the witcher 2 map, but then i cant remember yesterday so that's no real indicator...i remember really enjoying the game, though (and reminds me i still need to play the witcher 3 dlc stuff)

i can't remember an awful lot about venetica but seem to remember i got bored very quickly and took advantage of either a high trade-in price or a returns policy...