Finally got around to playing this. Yes, I waited specifically for it to come to Vita, because I just like playing this kind of game on there more. Anyway, pretty much everything they say about this game is true.

It is punishingly difficult beyond all reason, and it is ridiculously, without the slightest bit of exaggeration, absolutely unfair. This isn’t like your usual roguelike game, where after you get some practice and get in the rhythm of things, you get used to the high difficulty and begin to make steady progress. No, this game is literally designed to beat you down and make you fail at almost every step you take.

It’s not just the vicious enemies working against you, it’s the traps, and the need to maintain your light level, and the need to maintain your hunger level, and the many debilitating status effects, and the “chests” that will do terrible things to you if you don’t use the right items on them first, and the limited inventory space that keeps you from bringing enough supplies AND being able to carry all the loot you find.

And there’s your stress levels to worry about, and the erratic character behavior caused by too much stress, and diseases, and negative traits, and the permanent, and this game really means it when it says permanent, deaths of your characters, no matter how much time, effort, and money you put into them.

Let’s see, there’s also the fact that your guys won’t go into level 0-2 dungeons once they reach level 3, or level 3-4 dungeons once they hit level 5, which means you get to have a ton of fun if you want to clear out all those level 3-4 bosses when your guys have levelled up and won’t go back and there’s no one left to go to 3-4 areas, so yep, you have to build up some more guys from scratch just to do that.

You’re going to need them anyway, because SURPRISE, when you’re finally ready to go into the final set of dungeons (literally called the darkest dungeons), if you send a team in and they succeed, they will then refuse to ever go back in again! So you need AT LEAST 16 separate level 6 (the max level) characters to win, and you better believe they’re all going to need to be completely upgraded, which will cost you a ridiculous amount of money and town upgrades.

I probably put close to 100 hours into this game to beat every boss and fully complete it, and even then I had to use exploits to get that done. Yes, I’m a filthy “cheater” for once (you can just make copies of your save and reload them if things go badly for you). Sorry. I don’t have the time or patience to play this game “properly”. It would probably take about 3-4 times as long to beat this game without the save exploit. Actually, it would take much, much less time, because I would have ragequit waaaaaay back in the early days. I can’t even imagine spending a week or so getting a team of 4 up to level 6 and spending the massive amounts it takes to get them fully upgraded and then losing them all in an instant because a fucking invisible dice roll didn’t go your way one single time. Fuck that. I’m not even close to patient or masochistic enough to deal with that bullshit. FUN GAME THOUGH. GREAT TIMES. ARGHDSAHGHDSFSDHFDA.