Darkest Dungeon-Like Iratus: Lord of the Dead - Darkest Dungeon clone where you play the bad guy

[ChaDargo]

So how does this stack up against Darkest Dungeon? I aim to buy this once its out of EA (any idea when that's going to be?)

I also wanted to know, so I quoted the ignored question in the hopes of it being answered.

I just read this thread after being reminded of Iratus in another thread, and it's fucking disgusting if Pope Amole's story is accurate. How anyone would want to buy this shit if they believe what Pope says is beyond me.

 

[Pope Amole II]

My sole hope atm lays with Lovehammer 400k - if it'll be able to go memetic and attract a moderately big following, I'll just carpetreviewbomb the fuckers. Especially as their inept tinkering with teh balance seems to continue - now they're rewriting the system once again, lol. I wonder if the guy that has replaced me (he had zero portfolio, like, literally no gaming presence in the web) was someone's gunsel. Would've explained why a person so unqualified gets to mess with a project.

I also looked at their recent screenies and the butchering of ideas continues. So the mage floor is being done, that was always being planned. And, since I've tried to do a classical-inspired game, most of the foes were meant to be dnd specialist wizards. We've already had sorceress in the game but she was less of a sorceress and more of a conjuress. And so we'd be having the hellishly scary foes like abjurers or diviners hounding the player. But now I look at the recent screenies and all I see is korean mmo school of design with bland elemental-themed shit.

I must also wonder if they've fired the artist because, from what I see, recent character design was shit.

 

[Darth Canoli]

What would you expect from a game with RPGMaker level of combat design anyway ?
Looks like a golden turd to me, Darkest Dungeon was fun because of the ambient for a short time but making clones of it is madness.

Well, when you have no talent nor inspiration, it's either that or farming games clones ...

 

[Dickie]

Oh, hey, this is apparently coming out next Thursday (23rd). I wonder how many more good ideas they've discarded by this point.

https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/app/807120/view/2203891253378253131

 

[Infinitron]

Released:




https://af.gog.com/game/iratus_lord_of_the_dead?as=1649904300

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

NO POPE AMOLE II

NO CARE

 

[oscar]

If what this thread say is true that's a real shame, the early demo was very solid.

 

[Ismaul]

Aww shit I somehow missed the drama, was waiting for this, but now I'm flaccid.

 

[cvv]

The game was yesterday my late-night impuls buy and only NOW I read the thread? Well done me.

Meh it was like 15 bucks, I'll be happy with a few hours of fun.

 

[V_K]

The game was yesterday my late-night impuls buy and only NOW I read the thread? Well done me.

Meh it was like 15 bucks, I'll be happy with a few hours of fun.

Unless you've played the shit out of it already, you can still refund it.

 

[cvv]

The game was yesterday my late-night impuls buy and only NOW I read the thread? Well done me.

Meh it was like 15 bucks, I'll be happy with a few hours of fun.

Unless you've played the shit out of it already, you can still refund it.

Yeah, nope. That's one drawback of buying on GreenManGaming.

 

[Mortmal]

It's okay ish , but still i got some problems to adapt to the interface:

 

[Mortmal]

One thing is really sad when launching the game is the warning "this game is hardcore" , i am stomping everything with one solo vampire now pushing 2 or 3 buttons . It was quick to remove any challenge.

 

[Serious_Business]

Gave this a spin and it really ain't so bad. Potato fun man got betrayed by the dev team or something, nothing to do with his wonderful personality, I'm sure. The truth to potato man is that the only fun he has is probably found in hentai games

 

[Harthwain]

One thing is really sad when launching the game is the warning "this game is hardcore" , i am stomping everything with one solo vampire now pushing 2 or 3 buttons . It was quick to remove any challenge.

What difficulty level you're playing on?

 

[Mortmal]

One thing is really sad when launching the game is the warning "this game is hardcore" , i am stomping everything with one solo vampire now pushing 2 or 3 buttons . It was quick to remove any challenge.

What difficulty level you're playing on?

Normal has you cant use higher ones until you've beaten the game once, which i did now.

 

[Infinitron]

lol what's up Pope Amole II https://www.pcgamer.com/iratus-is-a-darkest-dungeon-clone-thats-a-lot-smarter-than-i-expected/

Iratus is a Darkest Dungeon clone that's a lot smarter than I expected
What Iratus lacks in oppressive tension, it makes up for with depth and customization.

Iratus: Lord of the Dead doesn't play coy about being a Darkest Dungeon clone. It openly admits to copying the combat system on its website, and it only took me one round of fighting to see those similarities. As in Darkest Dungeon, I send squads of soldiers into punishing battles where positioning and random luck often matter more than how much damage each character does. Try as it might, Iratus can't replicate the pervasive dread and haunting aesthetic that makes Darkest Dungeon such a gripping roguelike. I'd be more disappointed if Iratus wasn't full of cool crafting systems and ways to customize my soldiers.

The big twist with Iratus, which launched out of Steam Early Access last week, is that I'm not the hero trying to save the world. I'm the villain trying to destroy it. Instead of diving deeper into dungeons, I start at the deepest level and work my way up, summoning armies of zombies, skeletons, and demons as I cleave through whatever do-gooders stand in my way. It's a neat inversion that changes some of the fundamental concepts of Darkest Dungeon. Instead of my heroes losing sanity and coping with a growing list of crippling defects, for example, I'm the one breaking the morale and resolve of my enemies.

This twist robs Iratus' combat of the tension that I found so exciting in Darkest Dungeon. My skeleton warriors and banshee mages don't have a sanity meter to manage, so I'm just trying to keep them alive rather than keep them alive and healthy. My enemies now face critical breaking points where they can either snap and acquire a negative defect, like a tendency to attack their allies or flee from combat, or a positive one that makes them harder to kill.

Those critical moments where I drain an enemy of the last of its sanity and it rallies and becomes even stronger are just as dangerous, but I miss that mounting unease as a foray into a dungeon turns into a disaster. Without that added depth to the wellbeing of my units, I don't feel nearly as attached to them when they inevitably die. It's a very different kind of experience than Darkest Dungeon, even though so much is similar. Another big change is that I don't have to commit my party to exploring a dungeon, rationing out resources and planning for worst-case scenarios. I have access to all of Iratus' crafting, healing, and customization features between each fight, so exploration is less of a war of attrition.

This tradeoff won't appeal to everyone, but Iratus compensates by doubling down on ways to customize and grow your units. Instead of hiring new recruits from a random assortment, I craft monsters using materials gathered from my slain enemies. These parts come in different rarities, giving me a lot of control over how powerful my creations are. I can even turn some of these parts into useful equipment for my troops. Tired of enemies dragging my weaker wraiths to the frontlines, I equipped one with legcuffs that prevent it from moving.

This pairs really nicely with Iratus' vast skill system. Like Darkest Dungeon, each unit type has different abilities available depending on their position in the party. But Iratus' feels much more complex. As characters gain levels, they earn points that increase their basic stats, but they occasionally also earn ability points that augment one of their skills in an interesting way.

Take my cannon-wielding zombie, for example. His Buckshot ability does modest damage to the first two units in the enemy party, but I can spend an ability point to make Buckshot either deal that damage to the entire party or ignore a single enemy's armor. Each of Iratus' 18 units has six abilities that can be modified like this, so there are tons of awesome ways to theorycraft the perfect squad.

Though I miss the masochistic dread of Darkest Dungeon's combat, it's satisfying to discover all the ways these systems can be exploited to gain an edge in battles. Iratus, the titular necromancer, doesn't fight directly, but artifacts I equip to him provide some lovely benefits to my troops, and I can spend his mana to cast different spells, like ones that reposition allies or do some extra damage to enemies. Having all these tools at my disposal definitely makes Iratus feel a bit easier (or at least less oppressive), but I don't mind because having more control over my units opens up some neat strategies.

As an example, the Wraith has a powerful ultimate ability that deals heavy sanity damage to the entire enemy party and randomly shuffles them around. Pair that with the Bride of Iratus' Overwatch ability, which deals big damage every time an enemy moves, and I have one hell of a nasty one-two punch. Likewise, I love using my Wraith's Ghostly Veil spell to make my Skeleton exceptionally hard to hit just after I've used the Skeleton's Astounding Fortitude to goad enemies into attacking it more often. These little synergies between units are common and a lot of fun to discover.

I'm only a few hours into my first campaign, but I'm enjoying Iratus a lot more than I thought I would. I miss the intensity of juggling my party's mental and physical health, and, compared to Darkest Dungeons' gorgeous hand-painted aesthetic, Iratus' art sometimes looks a little goofy and cheap. But unlocking new units and discovering all the ways they complement each other is really fun.

 

[Thac0]

Bought this before coming across this thread, same camp as you CVV

The game itself is good. Very derivative of DD, but very flavourfull aswell. Using brains to transfer XP is a nice mechanic that manages to combine the expendability of your units with growth. Oh a zombie died? Who gives a fuck, make a new one and stuff a high level brain in. There is still a lot of good mechanics and fun combos in there, hard to tell for me wether it is because or despite of Pope Amole IIs absence. Build diversity is present, but the game definitly stretches its welcome with difficulty levels unlocking on complete like this is Diablo and absolutely massive dungeon sizes. Stress is useless as a main mechanic in the release build due to some encounters butchering you for going hard on it (Golems, Berserkers) It still makes for a good backup tactic tho.

I will watch his video later to see how much he got fucked. The presence of an NDA seems to imply he was fired in a normal way and still got some monies, instead of a shitty boot of the project and be done with it.

 

[overtenemy]

Figured I'd weigh in since I've posted here before.

The game is in a better state now than previously in the early access, even though it has departed even more from the Pope's original design. That may seem odd considering most everything he says is obviously true if you've played the demo, but the reality is that since the new designer is not up to the task of continuing his work it's just as well that he didn't even try.

The early builds in EA seemed tame on the normal difficulty, but were batshit insane on hard. Not in a very fun way either - there were only a couple cheese builds that could conceivably get you through the game. I found one on my own, and the 2x lich/wraith combo was posted about earlier in the thread. Determined not to have to resort to such things, I labored through the first floor several times not relying on them, but rather on using expendable but effective at low level minions to sacrifice in order to keep the more important ones alive. Was tough, but I did finally get out of the first floor, only to discover some new cheese on the second, without which I could not have won. That was the reality back then, and most minions weren't viable on Good Always Wins. This is partially because of the insane stats given to enemies. There are posts about it earlier in the thread.

Now in addition to toning down the humans somewhat, they have tossed whatever semblance of balance remaining in the old design's corpse (lel?) in the dumpster and replaced it with insanity across the board. The minions are statistically buffed in ways too innumerable to mention, but the game now also features a variety of non-craftable minion items as well as minion specific items most of which defy the standards set forth in the old items. This has resulted in most of the minions being viable, and the game playing very differently from before. Rather than having to do specific, overpowered builds in order to barely survive, the game is more now about finding and executing the most retarded shit possible at all times. I'll give one example of many.

Vampires have a feature that gives them 6 attack when an enemy goes insane. Neat, except running a dual stress/damage build isn't very ideal, making them shitty combatants at higher difficulties. Still a good support minion though. But wait! They introduced a minion specific vampire item that additionally gives them 6 luck, evasion, and accuracy under the same circumstances. Then there's an artifact that prevents enemies from becoming inspired. Then there's one of the skeleton ult upgrades that forces enemies to either become insane or inspired, except they can't become inspired. Then ADDITIONALLY there's an item that causes your minion to completely ignore blocks and wards. You put it on the skeleton of course. The result is instantly debuffing the shit out of every enemy while giving the vampire god tier stats. There's also an expendable artifact that does the same thing and removes the need for having the skeleton, and is good to use against elite encounters.

Because of shit like that Good Always Wins is no longer difficult at all, but they added a newer, harder mode with 5 gradients which as I understand it becomes nigh impossible. At any rate, I doubt if I've found even half of the silly things that can be done now. For modern Iratus think less of a tightly tuned experience and more of something akin to Master of Magic or Dominions. Not that they play the same whatsoever, but in the "what supremely imbalanced combo can I put together to squeeze out a win" sense. Seeing as how unlike those games Iratus is exclusively single player I don't even mind. It's quite fun, though perhaps not what you were hoping for or expecting if you've been following its development.

 

[Theodora]

Huh, didn't really expect DD-likes to become a thing so quickly (thinking also the likes of Deep Sky Derelicts and WARSAW). To be fair I haven't played any of them but when I look at them I think, "darn, now I wanna play Darkest Dungeons".

And I'm struggling to see what makes this any different. :/

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Huh, didn't really expect DD-likes to become a thing so quickly (thinking also the likes of Deep Sky Derelicts and WARSAW). To be fair I haven't played any of them but when I look at them I think, "darn, now I wanna play Darkest Dungeons".

And I'm struggling to see what makes this any different. :/

Iratus has better voice acting. That's about all I can come up with.

 

[Harthwain]

The early builds in EA seemed tame on the normal difficulty, but were batshit insane on hard. Not in a very fun way either - there were only a couple cheese builds that could conceivably get you through the game.

"Tame on normal difficulty"? Not in my EA experience. I'd say the game was too overtuned into being hardcore even on lower difficulties. I struggled on Normal, because game was very parts-intensive (creating minions required parts, upgrading buildings required parts and staffing building required parts, swapping minions before combat required HAVING more minions, which required parts) and enemies didn't drop enough parts to recuperate your losses, even if you weren't losing minions at all.

Huh, didn't really expect DD-likes to become a thing so quickly (thinking also the likes of Deep Sky Derelicts and WARSAW). To be fair I haven't played any of them but when I look at them I think, "darn, now I wanna play Darkest Dungeons".

And I'm struggling to see what makes this any different. :/

Here:

Now, some of you might be thinking "What makes Iratus: Lord of the Dead different from the games, like Darkest Dungeon"? Mechanically there are a number features:

1) You don't get random characters, you get random parts and make your hordes with them. What's the difference, you ask? You have alchemy table where you can do whatever you want with said parts.

Need bones for a Skeleton? Just slam two skulls together. Want better dust to make your Banshee's stats better? Put together two dust pieces of worse quality to make one dust of finer quality. You can also craft items with the parts. It gives much more freedom to the player, while at the same keeping some of need to manage your resources.

2) Brains allow you to level up minions instantly.

You don't have to level each and every minion from scratch, so loss of a minion is not as painful as it is loss of a hero in Darkest Dungeon. There is also a building in your base that levels up your minion a bit after each battle.

3) Level ups not only increase minion's stats, they also have a potential to change how minion's skill acts.

Changing your skills can have a big impact on how you want to use your minion. It's way more significant that just making same skill a little bit stronger (like it was in Darkest Dungeon). Personally I find Iratus' take on that to be far more interesting.

4) Each minion starts with all its skills already unlocked.

In Darkest Dungeon you had to buy certain skills in order to have them and it required gold, nevermind the right level, which meant more grind in order to get that gold (and experience). This also meant that losing a hero in Darkest Dungeon meant more grind.

Did I mention grind?

5) There is no grind in Iratus: Lord of the Dead.

In Darkest Dungeon you had to do dungeons between level 1 and 3 over and over, until your party was able to take on a boss or the Darkest Dungeon itself. It was a lot to grind through, ultimately leading to me burning out due to sheer amount of time involved just to level up heroes and differences between dungeons (from 1 to 3) weren't enough to keep it interesting.

Overall Iratus is much faster to play.

Here, in Iratus, each battle takes you closer to your objective and we will be getting more bosses and more enemies (and, from what I've heard, more minions), so we shouldn't lack for variety.

6) You can have a direct control over combat thanks to Iratus' spells.

By throwing in a spell you can tip the combat in your favor. It's nice to be able to impact the field of battle more directly when it's needed.

7) There are a lot of minions (18), each with its own 6 abilities, which offers a lot of possible strategies when you combine them within a squad.

Not only you can make it your goal to unlock certain minions (although one could argue it can happen organically, simply by playing the game), these minions' schematics stay unlocked for each next run, so your options will expand with each unlocked character, even if you fail your current run.

8) The atmosphere.

The game has Iratus as its narrator, who comments on everything that's happening. I don't like that he's running around naked (or at least on the HQ screen) and there could be more lines (hopefully there will be more, who knows), but the voice itself is fitting and the voice actor who is playing him uses his voice pretty well when narrating. I also like the art direction, reminds me of Disciples.

 

[Theodora]

So tl;dr; is:

• much faster pacing
• arguably more srategic complexity to combat
  
• a more handcrafted/directed story

?

Sounds like a matter of tastes, but thanks, I'll maybe check it out after DSD or if it's on a big sale.

 

[overtenemy]

"Tame on normal difficulty"? Not in my EA experience. I'd say the game was too overtuned into being hardcore even on lower difficulties. I struggled on Normal, because game was very parts-intensive (creating minions required parts, upgrading buildings required parts and staffing building required parts, swapping minions before combat required HAVING more minions, which required parts) and enemies didn't drop enough parts to recuperate your losses, even if you weren't losing minions at all.

Alchemy I'm sure you're aware was helpful here, but the real trick was to alternate using a stress killer build and making use of blood curse. A guy has to run aware to get the vampire, sure, but he wasn't going to leave you four parts. So you'd have a bunch of level 1 vampires staffing the whole graveyard and lining up to be sacrificed when the event came up.

As for its appeal over Darkest Dungeon I'm largely in agreement with Harthwain, but I'd stress further the lack of grind and addition of a failure state. I'd love DD if only you had to do the bosses one time each, and there was a way to legitimately lose. But as we all know what happens is when you run into a problem and lose a few dudes, you end up having to grind them all the way back up from lower level missions and the fact that the upgrades cost so much means the devs very much intend the game to be this way. I find it tedious. How great it'd be if when shit hit the fan too many times, or perhaps there were a timer to limit mission grinding, you simply had to start over with a slightly different set of dudes. A little RNG here and there to spice things up. But no.

In Iratus the game is over when you've lost too many minions and your parts/brain economy can't handle the next fight. Winning is going through the floors and killing the bosses (only once per!). I find it refreshing, probably because I'm specifically a person who wanted to like DD but couldn't.

Disclosure: I'm not sure how likely you are to actually fail in the modern builds. As I said, Good Always Wins no longer seems very difficult. Maybe the new difficulty is but I can't confirm yet, haven't played enough.

 

[Jinn]

I'll maybe check it out after DSD or if it's on a big sale.

Didn't much care for it overall after about 5 hours of play. Particularly disliked the deckbuilding card-based combat.