Darkest Dungeon® II

My main gripe with this games is that it doesn't respect you, the player, or your time. DD1 was hard, even unfair, had moments of "haha, x3 crit + bleed + gonorrhea" but it respected you. Let me put an example, you enter a boss for the first time? - It's the apprentice version, you can learn it's mechanics/gimmick. - Even if your party is unnoptimal against said boss, you'll win as long as you play decently and are prepared. - You didn't prepare or got unlucky in the run? It's fine, you can retreat. - Your punishment? Your heroes get a week of vacation to process how hard their cheeks got clapped. - You get into another run inmediatelly with another party, no biggie. DD2? You enter a Lair for the first time: - You get waves of enemies before the boss even shows up. So you can get tenderized properly beforehand. - You better open the wiki beforehand, or the gimmicks YOU CAN'T KNOW ABOUT PRIOR are going to destroy you. - Retreat? Not an option once you accept going into the boss (even if you knew nothing about it) that's it. - Your comp is good? Game doesn't care, almost every boss is a DPS race that invalidates anything that isn't "hitting very hard" - Reward? A randomly rolled t…

Bit of a weird game here. Not as good as the original. Darkest Dungeon 2 is praised for it's combat and its depth, but I think something else ruins it. The game never rewards you for anything, and almost constantly is punishing you and trying to kill you. It becomes a massive chore, and it's simply not fun. No "feels good" moments anywhere in this game. Constant negative aura, and not in a fun way.

Hates the players so much they can't win no matter what they do or try. Darkest 1 was fun but fair, this is just torture porn disguised as gameplay and it literally breaks my heart to no recommend. Because these edgelords forgot that games are meant to be fun lol.

The game takes a different approach compared to the first one, and I think it works much better. In the first game, managing all the characters could feel like too much, and it started to get boring after a while. This one feels more like doing runs, which makes it much more fun. I also really enjoyed learning about the characters’ backgrounds. The bosses are well designed and challenging, and I really liked how the different Lights change the way the game plays. However, the Light and boss choices are placed in really strange locations. One is at the beginning of the game and the other is at the end of the first region. Once you choose them, you can’t change them, and if you forget to pick up the Light, you can’t go back and get it later. I really don’t understand why this is designed this way. Just let us choose everything at the beginning in one place and be done with it.

In itself DD2 is a genuinely good turn-based tactics game with fantastic art direction, voice acting, and music. A lot of the negative reviews compare DD2 to the first game and complain that they are too different. Growing up with franchises that drastically switched genres or mechanics—like Fallout 2 to Fallout 3 or GTA 2 to GTA 3—I have zero problems with that. DD2 and DD1 share the same world and story, so it earns its place as a sequel.

Peak rogue-lite experience and immersive in-game fight.