Darkest Dungeon® II

I never really leave reviews, but I really liked the first Darkest Dungeon and its core mechanics so here goes. I wrote this as I went along the hours I spent playing the game. Bad: - The game is now a Slay the Spire kind of game. - The game now only has 'expeditions' instead of dungeons. On the surface these are 'just' (very) long dungeons, but in reality these are vastly different. There is no more item collection because all your items are gone after an expedition, overall progression is not tied to characters levelling up, gaining skills or improved stats, like in the original, but by buying non-sense effects or a chance that a certain character-specific item may appear during one of these expeditions or by spending 'mastery points' for skill upgrades that are sometimes barely an upgrade. There is no way to navigate the expedition when locked into a course so you miss everything that is not on that chosen path, which is a problem because certain encounters can end your expedition, even early on, there are no interactable objects anymore for benefits, except for those found in the 'rooms' (or locations), which only comes down to having the right guy in your party for the right benefit, which, mind you, are found at random so there is no real preparation you can do. - There is no more party or roster building that the original had. This aspect was a great tool then to mitigate some of the randomness of the game and it allowed the player to have unusual or cheesy parties. Now you may only have one of each type of hero, which are not all unlocked right away too. - Overall combat design is much more tedious than the original. Lots of enemies now cause a bleed or blight, or some seemingly random negative effect just to make it more tedious for you. Also healing skills of your characters are now locked until a character falls below a certain percentage and often have one or two round cooldowns for some dumb reason. The strength of the first game was an increasing difficulty in enemy complexity as well, which also means that the encounters are simpler on lower levels and more difficult and complex on higher levels. Very effective design choice, but that is not present here; they just throw everything at you. You own heroes also feel handicapped it seems, which, from my perspective just makes things unnecessarily tedious (now you have to rely on the 'Combo' effect a lot or you have to combine extra damage effects to be effective). They also simplified some character and ability stats, like removing the Dodge and Accuracy stats, but instead giving some, seemingly random, abilities a buff for 50% or 75% dodge chance or apply a negative effect to blind, which makes the fights even more hit or miss (which is also used by enemies of course). It is very difficult now to evaluate what value certain abilities, items and choices have because combat now relies so much on these effects. - As I said before, encounters are so slow now. I feel I had to mention it again. It was only until I used the 'Meat Grinder' party (Occultist / Jester / Highwayman / Leper) that encounters would 'feel' fast enough. - Instead of moving through a dungeon you now move around in a stagecoach, but this only really seems to serve a narrative purpose, not a gameplay one, except, by being another thing you can buy items for that are very difficult to measure and evaluate and another thing that can go wrong (wheels can break for instance). - Either you, randomly, get the items that make you win, or you just keep losing. - Now the game is some relationship simulator??? The problem with this system, I feel, is that it is completely random, while the effects can make or break an expedition, for instance two characters can become suspicious of each other, which adds negative effect every time you use a certain ability. This is highly impactful because the negative effect may simply be strong or because that one ability is integral to the character's function in your party. - Some character progression is now also locked with these randomly found shrines; these give new abilities. Sometimes this just provides some background information, but other times it gives you these horrible terrible gimmick encounters that take way too long. - Combat items must now be equipped by one character. This means you cannot bandage or use blight cure with just any character, which would be really useful since basically all enemies now apply a wide variety of different effects. - What is also terrible is that most positive effects now last a number of uses as well, instead of turns. The effect is almost always used up within one round, making it very difficult to measure the real benefit. - Enemies also seem to care much less where they are on their side. In the original game it was an effective strategy to pull ranged enemies in close (for most of them), because they may not have powerful abilities when they are in the first position. In this game they can still be a real pain even if you drag them into a position that would appear to be disadvantageous for them. - There are also no more items or effects that improve the chance to inflict a certain effect, like moving or stunning an enemy, making these effects even more hit or miss (an enemy may have a high resistance to bleeding, but there is no way to do this, unless you find 'the item'). - The game introduces 'Paths' which are meant a variant on a character's abilities, gaining some extra effects and synergies, but a lot of the times these paths don't make any sense, unless you have 'the item', which again are random, to make it work. Sometimes the path's effects even synergize with one of the character's abilities that are not even learned yet, so a lot of the time I am thinking to myself: "what is this supposed to do????". Good: - The graphical style is still pretty good and very much like the original. The world and enemy (visual) designs do feel very Darkest Dungeon. I could not get myself to complete this game.

If you are a fan of Darkest Dungeon 1, don't play this; they ruined Darkest Dungeon. Don't look for anything user friendly here, there is no quality of life and gameplay loop & meta progression are all over the place. Otherwise graphics and aesthetics are great.

If DD1 never existed and this game came out, it would be critically acclaimed and then DD 1 would be panned if it was the sequel. It's a good game, people just don't know how to handle change.

Unfortunately the negative reviews are right. I've played a will they won't they with this game for a long time and finally pulled the trigger hoping the negative sentiment was that it was different than DD1. But it's bad not because it's a bad sequel, which it is, but purely as its own product it's bad. It's not like there isn't any good in here, in fact there is a lot of good in there, and that makes it even more disappointing. There's just so many bad things intentionally added to the game that make it really tedious to play and ruin the experience. So much unnecessary features and fluff between fights that I can't understand how anyone thought it was a good idea. It is a slog to get to what you may actually enjoy, except the devs thought that slog were some of the best parts of the game. It's designed like a mobile micro transaction game that feels like its wasting your time to pay to speed things up and pad runtime, yet there is no paywall and a ton of content so it doesn't need padding. It's like you bought a really tasty sandwich, but for some reason you have to buy it in quarters and each one is wrapped in a tight wrap. So you have to spend time unwrapping each quarter bc the shop for some reason thought the unwrapping experience was just as important as the sandwich itself. They put a lot of time and effort into making sure you spend a lot of time and effort unwrapping it before you get to the sandwich you wanted. And it's even stranger because this restaurant used to know how to make a good unwrapping experience for their sandwiches until this recipe. I genuinely do not understand it and why they designed it this way. Even the positive reviews and supporters won't disagree the stagecoach, tons of menus, the length of runs, etc are unecessary, they just like it in spite of all that.

It lacks the charm of the first one with its persistent home base aspect, while solving the first one's problem with a party wipe of your best characters snowballing into the run being a lost cause. I want the charm and continuity of the first one back and hope they try other ideas for how to solve the maintainability problem. But this has been a worthwhile sequel in terms of pure gameplay, even if I'm not a fan of the meta structure.

Honestly, this game pales in comparison to the first entry in the title.... It's like they tried to make slay the spire but did it poorly.

DD2 is a game in a bit of a catch 22 situation imo. Its connection to the first game serves it plot-wise, but as a game to be played, expectations set by its predecessor have severely harmed it, and the ways in which it diverges are not easy to portray in trailers and screenshots. I would *highly* recommend watching a proper, updated review video so you can determine for yourself if this is your kind of game, regardless of your opinion on DD1. In fact, at least for me, it's hard to define much as objectively better or worse between either game, so I'm going to list off differences instead of pros and cons. 1. Like DD1, the atmosphere and aesthetic is phenomenal, and its transition to mostly 3d is remarkably seamless, the animations for which are all truly superb and incredibly satisfying. It's much more cinematic than its predecessor, with a heavier focus on story both in its main plot and for its characters, which are less like dd1's template-people and more like characters with classes, each of which has their own little story you get to play through, and can play very differently depending on which class you choose for them. Personally, I struggled to attach myself to the more player-made characters of the first game, so I very much enjoyed these more fleshed out personalities and found it easier to get sucked into the game's world. If this game's vibe seems like your thing, I cannot stress enough how well done it is. 2. Whether or not DD2 is more or less replayable than dd1 for you depends on taste. I got far more hours out of DD2's heavier rng and secondary mode, Kingdoms, but if you're not a fan of Kingdom's-type gameplay, or enjoy less randomness, you may have the opposite opinion. Likewise, though DD2 has less characters than DD1, each one has five different classes, some of which wildly alter their playstyles. Whether that's a worthwhile trade is up to you. 3. Speaking of RNG, that's probably the biggest point of contention for this game. In DD1, I felt that not looking things up enriched the experience, however punishing, but DD2 reaaally doesn't support that kind of behavior unless you're a glutton for starting over. There are main bosses that can and will wipe the floor with parties that aren't ready for their mechanics, and getting to them takes much, much longer than in DD1, as DD2 focuses more on richer—but far longer—campaigns instead of quicker treks into a myriad of levels, which can potentially feel very rewarding, but going through a 40+ minute campaign just to get demolished because of a streak of unpreventable bad RNG or a boss mechanic you hadn't googled prior simply feels bad for most, not challenging. Once you get familiar with things, properly accounting for the game's challenges and curveballs can be super rewarding, but even then and with lessened difficulty options ticked, you can still get wiped for reasons completely outside your control or foresight. If you think you'd enjoy the game if only the RNG was less punishing, mods are natively supported and as easy as clicking the ones you want. 4. Enemies. Overall, though variety can lack a bit, their individuals abilities are much more unique than in DD1 and often play off each other, demanding you adapt to different encounters. Unfortunately, not unlike the Warrens of DD1, encountering these synergistic enemies with the wrong party (which is very likely if you're new) can be incredibly punishing. I personally found quite a few more DD2 enemies to be outright annoying than in DD1, but at least their smackdown is more entertaining to watch with their great animations. A lot this probably comes off as negative, but I only say as much as a warning because most of the bad reviews seem to come from (understandably) misplaced expectations, so I must sign this off with another recommendation to watch a video review and come to your own conclusion. I adore this game, but it definitely wasn't meant to appeal to everyone.

I do not understand how the same team can make one of the best roguelites of all time and then follow it up with complete slop. ♥♥♥♥ combat, ♥♥♥♥ progression, ♥♥♥♥ events, even the art style has been downgraded. ♥♥♥♥ this game.

If you enjoyed DD 1 and are looking for more, don't come here. I loved DD1, having a central base to upgrade and sending groups out on missions from there. That is all gone here. They removed all of the permanency from DD1 and turned it into a slay-the-spire like game instead.

They should have just stuck with the formula from the first game. While the concept here is more rogue-like, it loses a ton of what made the first DD great. I don't recommend it for fans of the first game. It's just far too different.