Again, we're reviewing monsters, so whenever posssible I'll try to avoid using too much gameplay terms.
Global: The Cultists, Brigands & Insects
Cultist Brawler: What does "global" mean? Well, at any given in-game week, you get a couple of parts of the four primary areas open at one time -- the weald, the ruins, the cove and the warrens (plus two more with DLC's installed), and the enemies you face (and thus, the resistances and weaknesses they have) differ from place to place. But some enemies show up basically everywhere, as sort of generic, simple enemies that tend to just fill up the random encounters table list. Cultist Brawler is basically a pretty generic enemy, wearing a metal skull-mask that spreads out in this weird sun-like ring evocative of the game's Madness mechanic symbol. Oh, he's also shirtless and has two big-ass Wolverine claws strapped on each arm, allowing them to inflict Bleed, a damage-over-time status. There are three variants (Cultist Brawler, Cultist Champion, Cultist Gladiator), depending on the level of the difficulty of the current dungeon run you're in, but essentially it's just the stats that change aroud. They're neat, but clearly meant to not be super intricate, just being one of the many, many mindless fanatics that serve the formless horrors from beyond time and space that is oh-so-common in these cosmic horror stories.
Cultist Acolyte: Cultist Brawlers tend to be acccompanied by their female compatriots, Cultist Acolytes (a.k.a. Enchantresses and Witches on higher levels), which are basically the same design, only fit to a slender female form with vertical boob-covering straps. You can serve Yog-Sothoth, the deity of a thousand names, but by jove Yog-Sothoth demands proper work etiquette! Unlike the Brawlers, the Acolytes inflict stress damage, which is a completely different stat that the game tracks, something that'll build up very quickly if you leave it alone, and can drive your characters insane and start hurting themselves. Without going too deep into the specific mechanics of how madness builds up and the effects it causes, let's just say I've had TPK's caused less by powerful bosses but because of stress damage.
Madman: Oh, these motherfuckers. The Madmen (higher-level versions are called Frothing and Raving Madmen) are lunatics driven insane by the whispers of the elder ones, and can't physically hurt you, but their doomsaying will basically fuck up the stress meter of your entire party something fierce, and is basically the priority target in any given encounter. The artwork is pretty great, communicating pretty well with that tortured face that's equal parts scary and scared, the pose and constant shivering he does in=game, and the broken straitjacket he has dangling off his arms. Probably escaped from Arkham Asylum, too! Fits amazingly well into this whole Lovecraftian theme for sure.
Brigand Cutthroat & Brigand Fusilier: And the starter bad guys, sort of, are the bandits. Who are just, well, assholes who set up shop in this here small town of Hamlet, I guess. They have a marginally larger presence in the Weald, where one of the bosses is actually an elite Bandit boss, but most of the time you just meet these two. There's some backstory about how they were mercenaries turned into bandits or some shit? Eh. They're neat, but ultimately kind of banal since they're functional reskins of other human enemies -- the Cutthroats are the melee fighters, the Fusiliers shoot from range.
Brigand Bloodletter: The Bloodletter is a big, big boy (sprites copied from the wiki are not to scale) holding a massive four-pronged whip, and since positioning plays a huge role in this game, Bloodletter and some other 'elite' minions are unique in that they are so big they take up multiple slots. He's of course a lot more interesting than his lesser brethren, but he's still ultimately just a big bandit boy.
Brigand Raider & Brigand Hunter: These are the "elite" forces of the Brigands, and only show up in the special Vvulf boss fight missions. The Raider has gotten a bunch of cool shoulder spikes and a cool holey mask compared to the peasant Cutthroats, while the Hunter lookss particularly spiffy with that wolf-pelt hoodie. Such a relatively simple accessory in a fantasy setting, but always effective!
(Really don't have much to say about the Brigands)
Maggot: Almost done with the global enemies that can show up everywhere, and a pretty weak one that shows up almost everywhere (except I think the Cove) are the Maggots. Which are less maggots, but more mutated mockeries of maggots with massive centipede-legs and a very scrunched-up body... which, fair enough, practically everything in Hamlet is corrupted and twisted by the eldritch Cthulhu magic permeating the lands. Fits very well into the gritty, grimy theme, and while weak, these little shits can sometimes just inflict your heroes with debilitating diseases which can really suck.
Also, the Maggot is also the first enemy that's considered a "Beast". These races are important because some skills and items do bonus damage to different racces.
Webber & Spitter: Giant spiders! Design-wise, I do love just how neatly distinct these two spider variants look next to each other even though they just changed a little details here and there. The Spitter has spikes on its abdomen and longer, closed-together fangs; while the Webber has massive armoured, pointy front legs, and fangs that are splayed outwards. Both are giant spiders that you really don't want to meet while wandering around, and they always appear in swarms and just launch poison and stunning webs at a single person in your party, and I've came to respect these fragile beasts that can easily one-shot one of your party members in a single turn.
Ruins: The Skeletons
Bone Rabble: And we have skeletons! Some of the weaker skeletons like Bone Rabble here might show up in other dungeons, but for the most part, the skeletons form the primary enemy in the Ruins segment of the map, which are the sprawling catacombs beneath your ancestral manor. Bone Rabble's the weakest of the bunch, only able to attack and is frankly pretty fragile. He's your typical skeleton/zombie footsoldier! This is our first
Bone Courtier: Hee hee, the Courtier's sprite always amuses me. They're just little skeleton boys dressed up in noblemen's outfits, holding a goblet of wine and a knife. They're functionally similar to the Cultist Acolyte, making your characters increase their Stress level, but he does so by... splishing wine on your character in an attack called "Tempting Goblet". Oh, no, spilt wine! Clearly it causes as much stress as the word of the ancient ones! Easily my favourite skeleton enemy in the game by a huge margin.
Bone Arbalist, Bone Defender & Bone Spearman: These are sort of the next-tier Undead enemies, and I'm grouping them all together. While the Rabble is clearly pathetic and the Courtier looks deceptively comedic, these are the more badass skeleton troopers. Not something we haven't seen a million times in other RPG settings, but still, pretty cool to have traditional mooks in addition to the more unique ones.
The Arbalist is a ranged warrior, and a mirror to the playable Arbalist class. It means crossbowman, if you don't know. It hits pretty hard, but only if it's at the back of the group, so you can really fuck an Arbalist's day up by using a class that can swap around positions. The Defender is a heavily-armoured one with an axe and a shield, and it can "protect" other skeleton dudes (basically buffing their defenses, and jumping in the way of attacks), which is really annoying! The Spearmen are only found in the higher-leveled dungeons, and are essentially just actually scary versions of the Bone Rabble. They're all neat.
Bone Captain: Only showing up in tthe higher-tier dungeons are the Bone Captains, which are under versions of the Brigand Bloodletter, taking up multiple spots. Unlike the Bloodletter, which is just a damage sponge, Bone Captain can actually threaten you with his big-ass mace that attacks your entire party and has a chance to stun. Throw in the nonsense that the Defenders and Courtiers can do, and the Bone Captain can just stun-lock huge chunks of your party, which is going to be annoying if a couple are near death or near madness. Cool design for a skeleton "elite mook" of sorts.
Bone Bearer: Oh man, this dick! The Bone Bearer looks as comical as the Courtier, with his stupid grin and his helmet that makes him look like he has a single big Mike Wazowski style eyeball. And he's just holding a huge standard! How hard can he be? Clearly the scary Captains and Spearmen and Arbalists are the actual threat, right? Well, the Bone Bearers are actually easily the most powerful and troublesome of the skeleton boys, because in addition to buffing every single ally on its side (and god forbid this fucker spawns with a Defender), if you manage to kill any of its allies, the Bone Bearer will just blow on his stupid trumpet and restore the corpses back to life or unlife with a single blow of his horn. I learned the hard way that this little shit is the priority target, and it's honestly a pretty fun design all around!
Ghoul: While Lovecraft might be remembered most for his giant octopus-faced gods, a significant amount of his work does involve some traditional horror, among them ghouls. And... well, this emancipated, hulking giant undead cannibal definitely fits with Lovecraftian ghouls, more or less. Really fun detail with the bloodstained giant claws and skull-teeth, and I'm definitely a huge fan of how he looks. It's a pretty fun giant undead monster, and is a pretty fun stronger enemy to face off against. Like some of the stronger skeleton dudes, Ghouls also only show up in medium and hard Ruins dungeons.
Gargoyle: Gargoyles are one of the more common undead-affiliated enemies in RPGs, and I honestly think that they show up in the (stronger) Ruins maps just to throw in a bunch of additional different-looking monsters. And... these Gargoyles are basically what you'd expect from an RPG Gargoyle, a giant stone demon monster with bat wings, massive claws, demon tail... Ido like the goat-skull face thing going on, but design-wise and gameplay-wise, Gargoyles are neat but unremarkable.
The Necromancer: Deal with a certain type of dungeon enough times, and one of two Bosses will eventually show his (or her) ugly head, and your party will have to go through the dungeon and hunt down the boss at the end. You'll have to clear each boss three times, once for each type of difficulty. In the case of the Ruins, the first boss you'll meet is the Necromancer, who is... a pretty standard-looking enemy for an undead-themed dungeon. He's just a dude wrapped from head to toe in robes, holding a scroll, having a neat-but-not-spectacular getup of a metal-rimmed hole on his hood and a spiky metal leash. Each boss has a three-part story told to us by the disembodied voice of our ancestor, and, without fail, the 'easy' version of the Boss would talk up how horrible these monsters are (or are just generic buildup), while the 'medium' and 'hard' versions will slowly reveal that our Ancestor has a hand in the creation of the most powerful of the monsters that roam the land of Hamlet. In the Necromancer's case, they are a cabal of guests that the Ancestor brought back to question their knowledge of necromancy... and then proceed to murder them in their sleep and bring them back as, well, these Necromancers.
And then it attacks, and it shows off this disgusting amalgamation of tentacles, bones and a skull fashioned together into some bizarre facsimile of a claw. He's honestly pretty tame compared to some of the body horror that other bosses in Darkest Dungeon have, but it's still pretty neat. The fact that the Necromancer is a fusion of "Unholy" and "Eldritch", a type that tended to be reserved for the genuinely horrifying Cthulhu monsters. The Necromancer's attacks are simple, dealing damage and stress... but also, true to his name, summoning skeleton minions while also jumping backwards to hide under his wall of new enemies. On lower difficulties, Bone Rabbles are probably just more annoying than anything, but on higher difficulties, the fact that the Necromancer can just summon Bone Captains and Bone Spearmen and that bastard flag-carrying Bone Bearer... yeah.
The Prophet: The other boss in the Ruins also looks pretty humanoid, albeit pretty damn corrupted and also clearly undead. The Prophet is this hunched-backed dude with blindfolds and broken shackles on his arms... and then you see that the crazy sod's bouncing a pair of eyeballs around on his freed arm. Where the Necromancer is sort of like the big boss daddy of the skeletons, the Prophet is functionally a more powerful version of the Madmen. The backstory behind this dude is that he's a well-meaning prophet that talked shit about our Ancestor and threatened to reveal his plans, but any method of execution -- stockades, knives (you can still see those jutting out of his back!) and drowning did not kill the Prophet, and he returned again and again. Honestly, this would've probably been a heroic thing to do... but our bastard Ancestor ended up driving the Prophet insane by simply showing him the Not-Shub-Niggurath Elder Thing that he keeps underneath, driving him so mad he clawed out his own eyes.
The backstory is neat, even if the design is honestly pretty benign. The Prophet himself has a somewhat unique fight where he's going to always stand at the back of a row of broken pews (which takes time to destroy, so you better have brought yourself a class that can hit the fourth row) while he just shouts random prophecies about a certain location, and at the end of the turn, rubble will fall down from the ceiling onto where he prophesied. Also, sometimes he just vomits his disgusting hobo spit at you. Probably my least-favourite boss out of the eight regular area bosses.
Global Bosses/Mini-Bosses:
Brigand Vvulf: We have four areas in total, plus the final Darkest Dungeon itself, but there are a couple of specific bosses and/or minibosses that appear to menace you in events. Brigand Vvulf here is the leader of the brigands that plague Hamlet, and he's a big burly man with a wolf hoodie and a big bloody tower-shield. Oh, and a barrel of bombs. He's only available on a randomly-generated event called "Wolves at the Door", where he will randomly destroy some of the buildings you've upgraded if left unchecked. Vvulf's sort of annoying to fight, honestly, thanks to the mechanics that I will not get into too much detail here. It's a neat little 'world event' that makes the bad guys seem a bit more proactive, but Vvulf himself is such a pain to deal with.
The Shrieker: Far cooler, though, is the mutated giant raven called the Shrieker, who ostensibly lives on the tallest tree in the Weald. And while clearly based on the raven, he's got so much tumour growns on his body that he looks like a psychotic dinosaur-dragon-demon creature more than a raven. That cluster of eyeballs on tumourous flesh on his face, and that gigantic mass of sinews and bulges on its hunched back... yeah, a pretty damn cool design! While Vvulf destroys your buildings, the Shrieker steals a bunch of your items. Categorized as an "Eldritch/Beast" creature, the Shrieker himself is a pretty nasty boss fight that actually has a little secret component that the game never tells you about.
You see, the Shrieker spawns with his nest, and the giant monster bird himself is immensely overpowered, able to unleash insane amounts of debuffs, and can dodge an ungodly amount of your attacks to it. What you have to do is to actually destroy his nest (itself a pretty durable thing) while surviving and trying to heal off the damage the Shrieker does, and it'll basically fly away, pissed off that you destroyed his nest... unless you want some pretty badass passive effects, which your characters get after killing the Shrieker itself. Pretty fun monster design, and pretty neat little mechanic as well.
Shambler: Oh, the Shambler's pretty cool! The Darkest Dungeon game steers clear of actually including any of Lovecraft's more mainstream designs like Cthulhu and giant octopus monsters of any sort, but the one possible exception to this might be the Shambler... and even then, it's more of a combination of the Dimensional Shambler (in concept and name) and the Shoggoth (in appearance), plus a sprinkle of the Tindalos Hounds. The Shambler itself, unlike Vvulf and the Shrieker, can quite literally appear anywhere as long as the light is at zero (ah, yes, light is another thing to keep track of while dungeon-dwelling), or if you are up to a challenge and offer a sacrifice at the randomly-spawning Shambler Altars.And the Shambler's a pretty great giant Lovecraftian monster! It's a massive blob with a fuck-ton of spikes on its back, a couple of giant octopi tentacles that act both as limbs and as a 'beard', pink eyeballs, these nasty little bone jaws nestled within a maw of flesh. Plus a bunch of star-shaped nipple-sucker things only available when it rears its body up while defending... and, of course, it can summon little Shambler Tentacles, which burst out of the ground like sick, disgusting polyp-mushrooms, itself being an adorable-yet-creepy tube that ends in tentacles surrounded by rings of eyes. Oh, and it's got little arm-stalks with their own little beaks.
The Shambler itself is a tough-but-not-impossible fight as long as you bring a party that can deal with its intense shuffling act, and the real danger comes from the fact that you're going to still have the rest of the dungeon to go through after killing it. It's also a pretty much optional (although it's definitely recommended to kill him a couple of times, since the items he drops are pretty rad), unlike...
The Collector: unlike this twit! Hands-down my favourite design from all of Darkest Dungeon, and also easily the most annoying dirtbag. The Collector can spawn anywhere, any time, in any dungeon, quite literally sometimes catching you unawares. And I really, really love his design, so it's a bizarre conflict of hating him for being one of the most irritating enemies in the game, and loving him for the awesomeness of his design and the relatively fun boss fight, all things considered.
The Collector's default design isn't elaborate but pretty cool, a tall, cloaked skeletal figure with a skull wreathed in Ghost Rider style flame, and also trapped within a cage. But it's clear, very quickly, why he's called "The Collector" when he opens his robes to show that his entire body is filled with screaming, moaning faces of the dead... including some very recognizable faces! Indeed, the Collector's trick is going to spawn a combination of three floating head-and-spine wraiths, which are "Collected" versions of some of your heroes -- the Highwayman, the Man-At-Arms and the Vestal. And all three are pretty annoying, with the Highwayman able to deal fast, hard damage; the Man-At-Arms able to protect the others; while the Vestal can heal. All the while, the Collector himself hangs out from behind and keeps fucking up your party by showing off his collection and ramping up your party's stress factor.Still, the design is pretty damn badass, and I really do love the fact that unlike any other boss or enemy in the game, the Collector never gets a proper story or even an explanation about him. A fellow Elder God? The amalgamation of failed adventurers? Something else? He's Human/Eldritch (not Unholy, despite being a skeleton boy), which raises more questions than it answers. Definitely a great, great fit into the style of horror of Darkest Dungeon, it's became the game's unofficial "face" for good reason, and it's a great, bombastic monster design to leave off our very first Darkest Dungeon "Reviewing Monsters" feature. A good chunk of what we saw here are admittedly pretty mundane RPG stuff, but I promise these are easily the least interesting of the monsters, and when we get to the Weald and Cove, there will be some pretty fun, monstrous designs!
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