The only saving grace is the loading screen will give you a heads-up when the Fanatic is primed to spawn in a dungeon. And sure, plenty of bosses in Darkest Dungeon require a specialized approach, but none of them just jump you in the middle of a hallway on a random mission. Unless you have a custom-tailored party for the encounter with fully upgraded gear and specific trinkets, you don’t stand a chance. It’s a DPS race where he has a head start and you have to run uphill and barefoot. He’s durable as hell, has high resistances to all status effects, and never stops attacking. Most of his attacks not only do tremendous damage and a pile of stress, but can either stun the character or move them to and fro through the lineup. There are, of course, new curios and traps to discover as you would expect, but Court missions deviate from the standard affair in much more interesting ways.Īside from immediately removing one hero from the fight, the Fanatic always surprises the party when he appears, shuffling the lineup. It’s a whole new dungeon, set of ruined opulence and corruption, complete with an “aristocracy as bloodsucking vampires” theme (a message I can get behind). The titular Crimson Court is present in the form of an all-new area to explore. There is a dark imagination at the core of The Crimson Court an admirable (if somewhat disturbing) dedication to finding new ways to twist the knife. It finds fiendishly original methods of ratcheting up the pressure as you juggle the physical and mental health of your heroes, along with the management of the Hamlet. It warps familiar mechanics in new and unexpected ways.

It takes the building blocks of the dungeon you know and stacks new, bizarre architectural tortures on top of them.

But, while all of these additions represented incremental improvements, The Crimson Court represents a sea change.

Darkest dungeon crimson court review