Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court Critic Reviews

A blood soaked, stylish-beyond-reckoning testament to the art and alchemy of flawless video game design. The Crimson Court provides a substantial addition to one of the greatest, most obsessive tests of gaming character ever created. Indispensable.

With The Crimson Court, I feel like Red Hook is taking us even deeper into Lovecraftian parentage, not just in expanding its supernatural mythos and pantheons, but also by delving deeper into the sense of tragedy, the sorrow of fragile mortality that must be a part of all horror.

All the additions to the base game, from the new hero, to the ultra creepy Mosquito Vampires, are glorious, and in the end, add a fantastic amount of good content to an already great game. Ten dollars earns you an easy 30+ hours re-exploring the Ancestor’s Homestead, and while I am loathe to make value calls, this one is so easy that not making it feels wrong. If you have not picked this up yet, stop wasting time. The Countess calls…

The new character class (sadly only one, but it’s just one of numerous additions introduced in The Crimson Court) is definitely worth your money and the DLC as a whole is fantastic.

The Crimson Court is a welcome addition to Darkest Dungeon, a neat sidecar to be enjoyed alongside the core experience. The aesthetic of the infiltration and destruction of a hedonistic high-society is handled perfectly, and only the extreme dedication toward ensuring you have a stressful, ride-the-razor experience detracts from the Lovecraftian journey.

If you’re new to the dungeon or it's been a long time since you ventured into its depths, do yourself a favor and get your sea legs ready before wading into the bloody pools of The Crimson Court. If you’re an experienced delver looking for a new challenge, then by all means, step into the moonlight and find out what the night has in store for you.

Highly recommended, but only if you feel in harmony with the Philosopher's philosophy.

The Crimson Court offers a dense, well-made addition that enriches an already excellent title with fresh content, playability and balanced difficulty. The bloodthirsty monsters, the masochist hero, the giant epic dungeon, and the pile of new difficulties to keep all chars alive and sane are well worth the price.

The Crimson Court pumps Darkest Dungeon full of disturbing blood-sucking enemies, a challenging new class, and a marathon-style new area that forces you to think differently about how to sustain your team over a long run. While there’s definitely enough new content in The Crimson Court to come back to Darkest Dungeon for, it’s more the kind of DLC that mixes things up for a new replay than an essential upgrade you should install from the beginning.

While I do love how seamlessly the new content has been integrated into the game, it might need a bit of balancing before it becomes truly fun and engaging to play. As it stands, The Crimson Court feels too much like an unfair beginner’s trap which continues to punish players with devastating consequences that you can’t plan for.

Torchlight is one of the things you've grown used to in DD, but in the Crimson Court, it's more-or-less replaced with a new system that causes stress over time, among other things. Sure, some of these other things can be interesting strategically, particularly when you have a load of vampires in your party, but ultimately, it's just another smack in the face. Once the Crimson Court opens, freaky fly things come out and into Hamlet, reducing the effectiveness of your stress reducing buildings. Another slap. So it's the final feature that I think is the saving grace for Crimson Court - the ability to select which of the features of the game you want to be applied. If all of this added bullying isn't to your taste, you can just get the new districts and the new character, for instance, so it's not an 'all-or-nothing' affair, and it's this level of customisation that I feel saves Crimson Court from being perhaps just one vampiric bite too far.

I’m conflicted. Conceptually, The Crimson Court is very much my cup of blood, but the execution, particularly when it comes to the first mission and the curse, sometimes feels off. That said, Red Hook has clearly been taking feedback seriously, and changes have already been made to make things a little less punishing.

Randomness keeps Darkest Dungeon's signature grind in a holding pattern, but new content breathes life into the whole experience.