Whispers of the Eyeless Review

Darkest Dungeon really set the tone for roguelike strategy RPGs and basically helped lay the foundations for what would eventually become the cornerstone of the genre. Many games try to emulate its vibe and mechanics, often failing to measure up to it, either by being too alike or too different. 

Rarely do games get to stand out and shine here, although the ones that effectively branch out do seem to have the most success. Games, like Slay the Spire and even the likes of Hades, can be defined as being similar games while probably not drawing too much from games like Darkest Dungeon.

Now, enter Whispers of the Eyeless, a unique CRPG with an extremely stylized dungeon mechanic and some interesting cult-management stuff going on along the side.  Created by the same people who made one of the more successful overhaul mods for the Total War: Warhammer series.

In this 2D dungeon crawler, you lead a cult of the hopeless and dejected against what looks to be a failure of a regime. You are the prophet, and you have to lead your flock to the path of the old gods. To do this, you must delve deep into dungeons, fight horrors, and manifest powers given to you by the gold gods. You also have to build up your cult, develop your temple, and recruit new followers.

The gameplay for Whispers of the Eyeless can be split into three parts, the Dungeon Crawl, the Exploration, and the Base Management. The main content seems to go in that order, where you go around crawling either actual dungeons or districts of the city itself. Here, you collect resources, complete objectives, recruit followers, and get yourself experience and boons from the old gods. You use all of that to build up your cult and spread your tendrils deeper into the city.

A lot of the dungeon-crawling parts in Whispers of the Eyeless feel like a CYOA game from the 2000s. This is not a bad thing in any way, as irrelevant to the bouts of nostalgia it may give, it is really charming how it is worked out, with a lot of depth found within it.

You have your health, Sanity, and loot as your main resources in the dungeon-crawling section. Health is pretty self-explanatory, and Sanity is what you use to manifest the powers given to you by the Old Gods. It is effectively a Mana meter, and once it goes down to 0, using any Blessings and godly powers will result in them hurting your health instead. Loot, on the other hand, is more of a modifier that affects what items, blessings, or other resources you may find in the dungeons.

Dungeons themselves come in two forms, the overworld boroughs, where you roam freely on a map and interact with different locations; these could have various events, fights, modifiers, loot, or a few other special things. In Whispers of the Eyeless, you can move around specific paths to get to these, with the ultimate objective of leaving the borough. This usually requires you to fight an enemy. 

During fighting, you have a turn-based battle where you select your attacks and passives and go up against the enemy's attacks and passives. During this, you may use gifts or blessings for various advantages or just rely on your gear and abilities to win the fight. Winning these fights gives you a bonus or some other loot.

Naturally, with games like these, a lot of synergy can be achieved, and lots of playstyles can be done. A lot of it depends on your gifts and blessings, so those are the main tools for your customization of character. You'll also have a special meter that ticks up per turn, at the end of which you'll get to either auto-use a special attack or proc some sort of bonus.

Beware, however, as in Whispers of the Eyeless, you can and will fail at times, and the Gods do not look favorably on any sort of failure. And each failure during your 'Tales,' what the game calls your dungeon-delving, will linger on and affect your campaign.

In the 'Sanctuary,' the home of your cult in Whispers of the Eyeless, you will have to ensure your cult's survival, managing through resources and politics, all the while looking to expand. There's really a lot to do here, so much so that you'll sometimes feel overwhelmed.

Whispers of the Eyeless does something nice, with a lot of the mechanics being slowly unlocked or built as structures and parts of the Sanctuary, giving you some respite before truly delving into the madness. You will get events where you basically side with one of the factions of the cult, giving you some bonuses and negatives based on your choice. You will get to specialize the skills of your prophet in your Chambers, increasing either Strength, Wisdom, or Cunning. 

You will get to equip items, switch between gifts and specials, and finally have followers accompany you on your tales. You will also get to renovate parts of the Sanctuary and consecrate them in the name of the Old Gods. Doing so unlocks various buffs and activates a mechanic or two. Doing so requires Relics. However, relics won't be the only resources you'll have to worry about.

You'll need to collect gold, supplies, secrets, and the aforementioned relics to truly expand your cult, as these are needed in various processes of building or equipping followers.  And again, you have so much depth here; I can go on, talking about the absurd number of mechanics involved, from the Faith and Notoriety mechanic to the shops and exchange structures.

You'll really have your hands full, but with time, you'll be able to turn your disheveled old ruin into a true Sanctum for the Old Gods. Running a cult isn't easy, however. You'll have to deal with internal conflict, raids from the city, demands from your cultists, and many, many more things.

The game does not shy away from its drawing of Darkest Dungeon but still definitely stands as its own thing. This is particularly because of lore and story. You are, ultimately, trying to destroy a city and build a cult, no matter how altruistic your vision may seem.

Your choices are important and matter, as do how you handle things. Sometimes, these get overwhelming, and that might just be a part of the fun of it. The Management aspect has great foundations, though, as the cult mechanic is genuinely fun to play around with.

The combat, on the other hand, feels a bit slow, with a lot of it being like that due to the grind and animation speed. Ultimately, most of your fights are just 'who can hit the hardest,' or at least that is how it was for me.

The campaign in Whispers of the Eyeless itself is rather short and pretty repetitive. However, there are some other factors that make it more enjoyable than it ought to be. The game right now has two modes, with a third one slated to be released. 

Among the campaign, you'll also find that there isn't too much content in each of the 'maps.' Within that, you will also find that there aren't any bosses, and the amount of enemies will make you question if you're in some sort of ghost town.

As for the enemies, some of them are pretty weird, as you'll find some that are very fine-tuned, while others are grindy or borderline unfun to fight. All of this basically translates to the game requiring a lot of tuning, especially in the case of the enemies and the balance between them and the prophet.

This also leads to an issue where the enemies you encounter need to be grinded out to the point where you overwhelm them with stats instead of winning through strategy. In Whispers of the Eyeless, you will also find that some things are just more relevant, like Sanity. See, almost everything requires Sanity, so you should probably focus on increasing and recovering Sanity to win big fights.

A lot of the game also feels very vague, with there being no real explanation behind it. You can't really learn about the mechanics other than by trial and error. The game could really use a sort of a codex. 

In Whispers of the Eyeless, the items, and blessings you receive- actually, scratch that, since you will not really get any real items, only a bunch of blessings that border on the edge of being somewhat useless to extremely useless. These blessings also do a poor job of buffing what actually needs to be buffed, which is your main stats.

At certain points, enemies will basically just steamroll you with absurd amounts of damage per turn. With that, you'll get down in a bind where you don't and can't recoup your Sanity to really use any of the gifts.

Moving onto the art style, though, the game looks phenomenal. Everything is just so stylistic that it is hard not to feel immersed. The 2D medium does a great job of meshing the art style with the gameplay, adding to the dark vibe of the setting. The UI is also extremely well done, fitting the tone, although with the number of things it shows, you might feel a bit overwhelmed, something it can probably tackle a bit better.

The music and voice acting are great as well, adding to the immersion. The voice is actually top-tier and what kept me around within the campaign. It does wonders to immerse you into the story and keep you hooked. The music and sound design, while a bit generic, aren't bad either, as they set the tone pretty well and do what they are supposed to do.

Overall, Whispers of the Eyeless seems to be a great adaptation of the Darkest Dungeon side of roguelike/roguelite RPGs. However, the game's roguelike aspects need a lot of work. Whispers of the Eyeless has great foundations, and hopefully, by the time it fully releases, all of it can be realized and implemented. The game is definitely not for everyone, though, but if you like cult-management games or just anything Darkest Dungeon, this game is for you, and it is definitely worth a try.