Daniel (@dungeondive) returns to Darklight: Memento Mori for the formal verdict and lands on modern classic — it does almost everything he looks for in a dungeon crawl: random dungeons, non-combat encounters, persistent characters, settlement and journey phases, real loot variety, and a striking aesthetic.
His framing: this game is 80% Warhammer Quest + 20% Souls-born and unapologetically the anti-Gloomhaven, the anti-Mage Knight — it rejects perfect information, embraces randomness, dice checking and cruelty to the player. Hero design is the standout: the Revenant’s bloodborne-style regain pool, the Necromancer’s three sheets of summons, the Exorcist’s faith economy each play meaningfully different. Two modes of play coexist (a 10-chapter narrative Act 1 in the quest book, and a random objective-room mode with 30+ side quests), plus a journey deck that can — and on Daniel’s group session, did — be deadlier than the dungeon itself.
Negatives are real but bounded: scalability suffers solo with one hero (boss HP doesn’t scale down enough), longevity worries given finite card decks, and the rulebook scatters its information without an index. He notes designer Mauro is highly responsive on BoardGameGeek with errata and tweaks.
Daniel calls this an A+ modern crawl with caveats around scaling and longevity. Does “80% Warhammer Quest, 20% Dark Souls” sound like something missing from your shelf, or are derivatives starting to crowd the genre?