Mistover
KRAFTON
Red Hook Studios’ Darkest Dungeon was such a trendsetting game that it became rather iconic since its inception back in beginning of 2016. Being an icon in the gaming sphere can mean that there will be loads and loads of people who you inspired to make their own version of what you basically put on the map. Iratus: Lord of the Dead and Mistover being just a couple of recent examples of this.
As many people have already pointed out, new dungeon crawler Mistover has a very similar vibe to Darkest Dungeon, but with characters that have a distinctly Etrian Odyssey look. The Etrian Odyssey series is a dungeon-crawling RPG series created by the Japanese developer and publisher, Atlus, and features anime-looking characters, which Mistover also has.
Just as with both Darkest Dungeon and Etrian Odyssey, Mistover’s setting is that of a wicked and foreboding world full of dastardly monstrosities and malevolent, behind-the-scenes connivances. It also seems to share a few of the same mechanics as these two forerunners. However, the more I realized that it has its own uniqueness to offer.
You’ll be playing a wacky band of adventurers, everything from noble paladins, to dark grim reaper types, to full-on witches. The characters are all pre-generated, so besides naming them, you can’t customize how they appear. They all look like the super-deformed chibi anime characters that you’ve probably seen before. You know, the comedically big-headed ones with the tiny bodies that look super cute and cuddly, like little stuffed dolls with over-sized eyes.
Gameplay-wise, you’ll send your little band of little buggers around to explore a randomly-generated map in search of fame and fortune.
Encounters with the game’s many enemy types can be quite lethal, which lends itself to having a rogue-like appeal since death is permanent. Therefore, during combat, each character’s positioning is crucial to their survival as you strive to optimize their individual abilities. You can hide behind certain objects so being stealthy can sometimes be a better option than engaging Mistover’s more powerful dungeon denizens.
Combat is highly strategic. While each of your party members has their own basic attacks and such, they can also utilize special abilities that can drastically alter the outcome of a battle. Timing a special attack is tension-inducing since each of them has their own risk-reward characteristics. For instance, I had a certain character who had a massively damaging attack that would leave him vulnerable for a little while afterward, so I had to carefully choose when to use it instead of rushing in willy-nilly.
Your party’s ultimate goal is to leave the said dungeon, but even that can present quite a conundrum. When I came to the end of my dungeon I came to a dilemma: Should I go back in search of more treasure? Or should I just leave with my cute little characters who are still alive and kicking?
Overall, I found Mistover to be a delightfully engaging dungeon-crawler with its own unique charm. It combines the fun, strategic combat of Darkest Dungeon with an interesting cast of characters and storyline that will probably appeal to fans of this genre.
SCORE: 79%
Mistover has some pretty nice looking graphics that make its dungeon-crawler-based gameplay truly shine. However, you want to have a pretty beefy gaming PC or gaming laptop in order to play it at a decent framerate. So, you may just want to invest in a decent gaming rig:
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