A little disclaimer is that I've never played the newer ones, because I simply didn't have the time, but I have seen gameplay videos out there. I'm going to talk the most about the Crimson Court DLC, the DLC that I actually played... and one that I genuinely really do love the most out of most of the game's enemies.
CRIMSON COURT
Gatekeeper: I love the Crimson Court. Essentially, with the installation of this DLC, you unlock a brand-new segment of the estate, the titular crimson courtyard... and because it's a posh party and all, you can't enter unless you have an invitation. And you can only get these invitations by randomly meeting these Gatekeepers that spawn in other parts of the game, carrying a little writ you must take. I'm not sure if this is true to any actual vampire myths -- there are so many vampire myths I genuinely can't tell.
And if you can't tell, Crimson Courtyard's main enemies are... mosquito-men! But they aren't just mosquito-men, no. They're mosquito-men vampires, and it's honestly such a genius association that I'm surprised I didn't see more of mosquito-themed vampires. Hematophagic bats are such a small proportion of actual bats, and we don't really associate bats with blood-sucking outside of vampires... but mosquitoes? They suck blood and spread diseases and look so gross. And making them into these wacky aristocratic vampires is honestly just such a hilarious thing to do! Absolutely love the set of very human bloodstained teeth underneath that pointy mosquito stinger-nose, too.
Supplicant: The most basic enemies that's equivalent to the Bone Rabble or the Pelagic Groupers would be the Supplicant. It's a simple enemy, mostly relying on brute attacks and the odd blight effect or two, but otherwise is pretty simple to fight. Whereas a vast majority of the vampire-men in the Crimson Courtyard are mosquito-men, or at least have a better integration with their arthropod halves, the Supplicant is tied to a blood-sucking tick which... yeah, the poor Supplicant looks less like an insect-man monster, and more like a big, giant tick with a vertical mouth just chomped a poor dude's head off and is now piloting the rest of his body, giving a whole new meaning to "parasite". It's not a brand-new trope, and we've seen this in many other sci-fi settings, but I do like it! The idea that these tick monsters are of a lesser caste compared to the other vampires in the courtyard is also an interesting one.
Which, of course, is totally what the Supplicant is, because when it attacks, the massive tick creature opens its mouth and reveals the desiccated skull of its human host-puppet. A pretty cool and creepy monster, and honestly, I do like that they're drawing from other blood-sucking insectoids to help bulk up the vampiric hordes. You got to have your thralls, right?
Manservant: So most enemies in the Crimson Court have a 'super mode'. Most of the mosquito enemies have an attack called "The Thirst", where they stab a member of your party with their blood-thirsty proboscis, and upon doing so, they mutate into a more insectoid "Blood-lust" form. And also going The Thirst has a chance of infecting your party members with the vampiric curse. Sadly, this doesn't mean that you can play as the mosquito-monsters, which is a huge disappointment, but just drives your party members really crazy.
The Manservant is probably another basic showcase of the mosquito vampires, all of whom belong in the new "Bloodsucker" category. It is interesting how the game describes their two forms, noting that everyone in the courtyard has been transformed by the curse, but they go around pretending to be sophisticated attendants and going through the motions of a proper party, but if they get a taste of blood they permanently metamorphosize. In the Manservant's case, his butt-abdomen grows large and engorged, he grows wings and his fangs expand, and his two human legs are replaced with four buggy legs. Pretty spooky!
Also, the Manservant attacks with a butcher knife, and also shows off the lump of human meat under its tray as attacks. The Manservant, in battle, acts like an annoying support character, constantly defending its allies or unleashing stun and bleed effects.
Sycophant: The Sycophants show up everywhere in the Courtyard, and they are... giant mosquitoes that alternate between delivering The Thirst and turning your characters into infected, or launching barbs from its abdomen, which is honestly something that's more associated with tarantula spiders than mosquitoes, but these are giant vampiric mosquitoes, so I can't be too pedantic with this. Like the Manservant, the Sycophant has a "thirsty" and "bloodlust" form. I do like that despite looking like a beast, the Sycophant is as dangerous and as likely to inflict the horrible vampiric Crimson Curse on your troops as the more humanoid vampires.
I do like how it's a neat little subversion that these little non-threatening mosquitoes that honestly look like they belong in the same category as the maggots and spiders and ghoul-dogs in other areas turn out to be a higher class of monster than the humanoid Supplicant. Are the Sycophants just transformed mosquito vampires, then, like a classic vampire in bat form? Or are these larval mosquito-vampires?
Chevalier: Not all of the monsters start off fully humanoid, and the token 'big enemy' of the area, the Chevalier, could honestly serve as one of the area bosses and I doubt anyone would complain. And while it certainly does have the posh suit and the aristocratic wig of its kin, its lower body is that of a massive, multi-legged grub of some sort, like a maggot or a caterpillar, its mouth is a massive fanged affair, and it's got two massive mantis claws. The Chevalier also has the most pronounced antennae of all of the Crimson Court's enemies, too, which is something that I thought really helped in making him feel more beastly.
The lack of a proboscis-nose means that the Chevalier means that it can't spread the Crimson Curse, but it still looks pretty damn impressive nonetheless.
Esquire: Esquires should really be a rank lower than the Chevaliers if we're taking the names at face value, but I've personally found them to be more troublesome enemies than the relatively straightforward Chevaliers. The Esquires start off as pretty tall humanoids that alternate between these long-barreled guns or a rapier, with his attacks being called things like "Skewering Repartee"... but then the Esquire gets a taste of blood and mutates into the blood-thirsty form.
I really, really love just how hideous and mutated the Esquire ends up becoming, but the long, tapering insect-legs and insect proboscis translates pretty well to a more brutal version of his normal form's swordplay. He's also got a pretty awesome-looking scary fanged mouth, and follows the same "huge abdomen, four clackety legs" centaur-esque layout as the other transforming bloodsuckers. He's probably my least favourite out of the transforming ones, but that's just because the Manservant and the Courtesan both have so much more personality to them.
Courtesan: The Courtesan certainly has a massive, fancy dress. Other than her face, like the Esquire, she looks basically like a normal aristocratic lady, and her lack of weaponry certainly belies her resourcefulness. Her skills easily make her the most deadly and threatening of the non-boss enemies. In her more humanoid thirsty form, her skills just break and debuff your entire party, and she does so by essentially either singing or scolding your heroes for not exhibiting proper manners. But perhaps her most dangerous ability is to activate "Damsel in Distress", which forces an ally to 'guard' her and take all damage that would've otherwise gone her way, while also buffing said ally.
Of course, if she does get thirsty, she could very well join in the rampage herself, transforming to perhaps the most bloated mosquito monster whose abdomen is the largest of all the other basic mosquito monsters, tying in pretty well to her human form's massive dress. I'm not quite sure what that weird black-and-red bit in the center of her abdomen is, but honestly, that screeching angry face with an opened-up mouth looks pretty damn horrifying. Honestly, I'm just a pretty huge fan of all of these.
The Fanatic: Boss time! Or, well, mini-boss. You don't actually encounter the Fanatic here in the Courtyard dungeons, but he shows up in other dungeons if you enter with a member of your team infected with the Crimson Curse, ready to murder those that are infected with his gavel and holy light. The game characterizes the Fanatic as, well, someone compeletely consumed with religious fervor, being so single-minded that he'd rather burn a village's entire inhabitants at a stake at the slightest suspicion of dabbling in vampirism.
And, well... while a huge scary fanatical zealot that's ready to burn and crucify everyone in his path is unsettling, I really love the design of this dude. On first glance he looks like just a random priest-paladin-cleric bloke, but look a bit closer and you see he's basically pasted holy scrolls all over his clothes, has a ring of garlic and wooden stakes tied to one arm like a gauntlet... he's kind of uninteresting compared to the other mosquito and crystal monsters on this page, for sure, but he definitely has his charm.
Crocodilian: Apparently it's not just humans that got affected by the Crimson Curse, but the animals in the courtyard as well. One of the first mini-bosses you'll meet, the Crocodilian is a huge, mutated vampire crocodile. Which would be scary enough, but replacing a crocodile's reptilian legs with these unsettlingly tiny and out-of-place insectoid limbs is genuinely chilling. And while it's not as bizarre as the tiny bug limbs on a giant crocodile body, the fact that it sort of scrunches about seemingly like some sort of huge maggot or worm makes the Crocodilian feel extra creepy. Throw in some additional holes on the crocodile's massive hunchback, which, of course, unleashes small swarms of insects... yeah, the Crocodilian really ends up checking the box for a lot of creep factors for me personally.
And... and honestly, what a bizarre creature this is. I've killed like a couple dozen at this point after going through the Crimson Court a couple of times to kill all of the bosses, and the Crocodilian always creeps me out.
The Baron: The first boss, the Baron, is one of the many aristocratic lords that visited your ancestor, once upon a time, and dined in disgusting revelry in the courtyard before they were all transformed by the curse into vampiric bugmen. And design-wise, while the 'humanoid' part of the Baron isn't too much different from the Esquires and Chevaliers and the like, the insect that the Baron ends up mutating into is this giant... THING. What is that supposed to be? A tick? A louse? Some sort of mite? The fact that the giant bug-abdomen has hollow red eyes on the sides of its abdomen, and a gigantic fanged mouth on the Baron's crotch adds a whole layer of unsettling creepiness to what would otherwise just be another bug-centaur man. Also, what are those arms? They look a bit too... malleable to be regular mantis bug-scythe-claws.
The boss fight isn't particularly difficult, but it can definitely catch players unawares. The Baron, as it seems, is a huge showman, and his fight will consists of "Acts" where he spawns a bunch of gross Pulsating Eggs and hides in one of them... and the eggs disables all healing, and you have to figure out which of the eggs contain the Baron. The other eggs contain extra enemies, and he just moves back and forth and unleashes debuffs, stress and moves around among his minions while waiting for the second and third acts.
The Viscount: The second boss, the Viscount, who is another bug-centaur, this time around seemingly based on another blood-sucking insect, like a thickly-armoured flea. Like the Baron, the Viscount could've been easily been handwaved as another boring bug-centaur vampire like the others if not for his relatively unique boss fight, which has him surrounded by a bunch of bodies in different stages of being eaten strewn all about the field, and you have to decide if destroying the bodies which the Viscount will consume to buff himself is a good decision or not, or if you just forego it and risk the Viscount buffing himself to bring him from full to zero as quickly as possible.
The Viscount honestly looked pretty generic to me initially, just being a fatter bug-centaur with extra armour plates and a bunch of weird grey tumours on his stomach... but then I actually fight him, and turns out that he's got a lot of creepiness with those gray bulbs. His skill "Hungry Eyes" opens these up to reveal a bunch of nasty spherical eyeballs inside, while another skill, "Served Rare", also reveals a screaming human skull on his stomach as well as two extra little mandibles that stab forwards.
It's also pointed out to me, but the biggest body (Bloodstuffed Body, on the rightmost here) is apparently that of an Esquire or a Gatekeeper, and this bit of cannibalism throws in another layer of creepiness to the Viscount.
The Countess: The final boss of the Courtyard, the Countess was the original source of the curse of the Courtyard, being a bona-fide vampire, and not that of the insect kind. And just like many other bosses in the Darkest Dungeon's various levels, she was one of the victims of your psychotic Ancestor... except, this time around, the Coutness herself was a match for your Ancestor, actually having arrived onto the estate grounds to feed herself. The Ancestor killed her, and... the entire party degenerated into... debauchery? I think they ate her body, or something? But the encounter was what ended up altered the Ancestor to the dark blood of the Darkest Dungeon itself, and the act of drinking her blood and being on top of, y'know, the burial ground of an Elder God ended up mutating everyone in the courtyard into mosquito vampires.
The Countess's first form is... she's basically like the Courtesan, except she covers her mouth with a fan and has this massive dress that tapers off into a gigantic insect abdomen that looks like a slug or something. Like any giant queen bug monster, she also injects random parasitic eggs into your party with her "Love Letter" attack. After you deal enough damage, the Countess enters a brief "flushed" state where she gets so angry she flaps her fans and, for whatever reason, becomes insanely vulnerable to your attacks.
And then she enters her final bloodlust form, and... and it's basically the same mutated mosquito centaur form that a lot of her minions have, but it's just so grotesquely hideous with way too many legs for any insect, a giant, malformed abdomen, random eggs popping up here and there, a mouth that just melds into her giant neck-thorax thing, and that cluster of grossness on her hunch-back. It's a pretty damn fitting final boss for this insect vampire queen.
The Garden Guardian: The true final boss of the Crimson Court turns out to be the courtyard itself, because the sheer amount of blood magic that's seeped into the ground has tainted the land itself, and it's animated this broken-down statue, bleeding blood from its non-orifices, and apparently filled with "cosmic hatred". It's a neat little design, for sure, and the idea of a curse that's so foul that it animates everything around it is great (something that's also explored with the fleshy interiors of the Darkest Dungeon, as well as the crystalline monsters of the Farmstead) but it's honestly just sort-of there compared to the rest of the Crimson Court DLC. It's not bad, it's just sort of foreshadowed.
Darkest Dungeon has a couple of smaller DLC's and a bigger one, but this is getting a bit long, and, well... I haven't played through the other DLC's other than Crimson Court because I simply haven't had the time. I did read them up on the wiki and the official websites, though, so at least I'll still cover their designs and what brief glimpses of the story I could gather.
SNAKES
Pliskin & Rattler: The snakes are all part of the hallucination mechanic tied to the smaller DLC tied around a new playable class, the Shieldbreaker. As far as I gather, the Shieldbreaker has a chance of basically getting a PTSD-induced nightmare, which would manifest in an encounter against these snakes. Which... I haven't played the Shieldbreaker DLC myself, but I guess it's similar to a lot of those 'dreams-made-manifest' bits from Lovecraftian horror?
The "Pliskin" enemy (a 100% reference to Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake) is a massive, angry cobra with a pretty neat green-and-black colour scheme, while the Rattler is a huge, angry brown-and-gray rattlesnake. Neither are super impressive, but they definitely are neat snake monsters!
Adder: The Adder is a pretty cool stronger variant of the other snakes, which is a snake bursting out of a shed skin. Which is always a completely natural behaviour of snakes, of course, but one that unsettles us humans so much. Initially, I thought that the head on the left side is just the remnants of the skin -- like the snake's shedding the dull green skin and becoming the metallic shade, but apparently the Adder's a two-headed snake, with one head completely molting. Pretty neat monster! The wiki tells me that the molting head attacks mainly with its fangs, while the non-molting head can sprout paralyzing quills all over its back, which is not an ability you normally associate with snakes. Pretty neat!
THE COLOR OF MADNESS
The second huge DLC for Darkest Dungeon takes direct inspiration from the H.P. Lovecraft piece "The Color From Out of Space", where a meteorite crashes near a farm and unleashes beings beyond human comprehension. While in the Lovecraft piece it causes more... mind-addling effects and a colour beyond human comprehension, Darkest Dungeon's "Color of Madness" instead has its own aesthetic, being visually themed on rocks and crystals.
Which definitely ties into the rocky space meteor thing, but also... not as neatly different as vampire mosquitoes and fungal zombies, y'know? The story is at least neat, with the game telling us that the only reason the corruption from space hasn't reached the other parts of the estate is because of certain Enchanted Stone Slabs, and the fact that it's less just space rocks, but also weird time-manipulation. The stars in the sky aren't right, and your troops and minions sort of go through time and fight the enemies with differing effects and whatnot, and it can sort of act a bit like a survival mode? I haven't personally played through this DLC myself, but it sounds neat!
Farmhand: The unfortunate creatures in the Farmstead are transformed into a brand-new enemy type called a "Husk", and in the Farmhand's case, he's a Husk/Human. I do like how these transformed Husks are essentially mindlessly going through what they would've once done in life, with the Farmhand's attacks implying that it's just this mindless thing just going through the same motions it once did in life. Love the little detail of the cracked 'stone' on its face. Kind of a simple design, but we do need simple designs as the first enemies in a new aesthetic.
Foreman: Far more mutated than the Farmhands, the Foremen are Husk/Human, but look more like... rock elementals or something. I do like the neat visual of the arms being just shards of stone that float near where the arms are supposed to be, while he doesn't really have legs anymore. The whip's a nice bit, and apparently the Foreman will 'whip' the Farmhands into action. Pretty neat, if, again, not super-spectacular.
Scarecrow: You can never go wrong with a good scarecrow-themed monster, and you really can't have a farm-themed level without having a scarecrow-themed monster. This one's pretty creepy, and is a complete Husk, which means that the corruption of the thing from out of space is able to infect more than just humans and beasts. I do like that instead of straw, the Scarecrow is now filled with crystals, and some of its attacks involve its burlap head ripping apart to have giant chunks of crystals just out. It's got a bunch of neat creepy branch-finger claws that extend in some attacks, and I do like the little hangman's noose. Very Batman-esque.
Plow Horse: What is it, really, about horse skeletons that's so scary? Is it the shape of their skull? Whatever it may be, I do like the Plow Horse. It's the 'big enemy' of the Farmstead, taking up multiple slots, and... and it's neat! It's a zombie horse without hooves, glowing eyes and crystals jutting out of its back. It's just that, y'know, it feels a bit mundane, so to speak, compared to the Swinetaurs and giant crab-men and giant polyp beholders and centipede-noblemen-vampire that this game has.
It's all right, but I guess that's what made me not like the Color of Madness aesthetic as much. Things are just kind of... samey? It's just a corpse of something with crystals jutting out of it, which... it's cool with the Scarecrow and some of the bosses, but looking at how neat the animations are and just how different the bug monsters are for the Crimson Court, I can't help but feel like they didn't put as much effort into designing the enemies for the second DLC.
Crystalline Aberration: A unique mechanic in the Farmstead is that dead bodies left behind and not cleared will transform into these Crystalline Aberrations, which will then explode and inflict a lot of stress and horror damage on your party. It's definitely a fun mechanic, but visually the Crystalline Aberration really looks relatively identical to the other enemies on this DLC. Which, I suppose, is the whole point -- the thing from space is trying to make everything look like it.
Sleeper's Herald & Sleeper's Dream: A pair of enemies that are basically just floating crystals encased with rock fragments, like a cracked egg. They don't really attack you, but the Sleeper's Herald will apparently inflict debuffs on your party and "bend reality" and cause attacks to miss and whatnot. Where the Herald fucks with space, the Dream fucks with time, and basically teleports your party to "another time", which is another room in the dungeon. It's... it's neat, I guess.
The Thing From The Stars: Something that is part of a random mini-boss pool (which consists of any of the lesser bosses from the vanilla game) is the Thing From The Stars here, and, wow. I've seen a lot of "abominations stitched together from bodies", but this is just such a hideous mockery. Like, it's vaguely bipedal, but it's clearly not proportioned like a human at all. It has this contorted, hideous human face on top, sure, but its "arms" are upside-down horse hooves, it's got a gigantic horse skull with a crystal blade for a mouth jutting out of its hunchback, it's got entrails hanging down its body, and its legs are half-cobbled-together masses of bones and human corpses.It's just such a hideous abomination, and its attack animations really show just how hideous this thing is, with it attacking most of the time with just gazing at your party and inflicting a fuck-ton of stress, and some attacks showing parts of its anatomy that's pretty damn creepy, like a huge anemone-maggot thing out of its mouth. I don't think we actually get any real explanation about this thing beyond the fact that it's one of the corrupted things created by the Sleeper, which makes it pretty neatly extra-creepy. It can, I think, cross the border and actually wander around into the other areas of the game, while it continues to keen and attempt to "return" to the stars.
The Miller: The Miller is one of the first guaranteed bosses in the Farmstead, and... and he's kinda obvious? He's sort of like the Farmhands or the Scarecrows, but with a slightly different design, with the beard and the floating ribcage and the scythe that sort of floats together and everything. It's not a bad design and certainly an imposing one, but he's just... kinda there? As a boss, I gather, he mostly relies on summoning troops, including the unique Frozen Farmhand which will 'guard' him and cause debuffs all over your party by just wailing.
I do like the little story that we have about him, though, from what I could piece together from the wiki. He's a luckless farmer whose only sin was to have horrid harvest, and because own land next to your nasty Ancestor, he asked for help... but the Ancestor instead took his land, then used him as a conduit to summon the eldritch comet, and now the comet's taken away his humanity and all his workers... and his lover, Mildred, who is an interactible object you apparently meet briefly before the boss fight, and you can take the locket from her petrified, frozen body, and essentially use it to distract and send the Miller into a mourning keen while your minions bash him to death.
The Fracture: The Fracture's more of the first phase of a fight, and after all of the other crystal monsters you've meet, the final boss is... a gigantic crystal monolith jutting out of a rock. With tentacles within, because of course. Is... is this our second Cthulhu-esque tentacle-y Elder God style enemy after the Shambler? Huh.
The Fracture itself doesn't attack directly, but it essentially seeds smaller "Aberrations", each with different effects, and allows them to 'grow up' from a Focus Point to Unfinished Aberrations to Finished Aberrations. Not the most creative-looking boss, perhaps, but a neat little way to incorporate the "always encroaching, always consuming" monster into a game mechanic.
The Sleeper: And after you defeat the Fracture, its TRUE form emerges, and this is the true form of the comet. Of course, as always, it's your Ancestor that ended up summoning this eldritch being, using the Miller and his land as a conduit to summon this being from the stars, and I do like how it's a gigantic being of crystal with a single eyeball within... but when it "stirs", it unleashes a maw of creepy-looking tentacles. I'm not sure what it's even supposed to be. Are the rocks and crystals part of its anatomy, like a tortoise? Is it trapped within the crystal? Are the crystals and the octopus-eyeball creature symbiotic of sorts?
I don't think the Sleeper himself is all that impressive, to be honest. It's certainly different, for sure, but it's also sort of just... there? And from what I can tell, this stage of the battle isn't super complex. It is pretty neat, though, for them to go a slightly different flavour of unnatural aberration, moving away from body horror to utilizing crystals in order to showcase a different sort of unnatural mutation. It's just that... well, we probably could've used one or two more lesser enemies, I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment