izigame.me

I know there are like a trillion reviews, and no one will ever see this, but I feel the need to leave a review for DD2 considering how big of a fan I was of DD1. I think that statement is also probably a good clue as to why he people who are unhappy with this game are unhappy with it: DD2 shouldn't have been called Darkest Dungeon II, because its not really a sequel. It should have been called Darkest Dungeon: Trail of Despair or something edgey and bleak, because while it is definitely in the darkest dungeon universe, it is not a spiritual successor, and feels like a mediocre spinoff. Calling it Darkest Dungeon II sets up expectations that the game fails to meet spectacularly. Almost every aspect that was good about DD1 (except for the narration and tone) has been stripped from the game and replaced with a shallower, shinier version of itself.
The Carriage:
Perhaps the most damning way that Darkest Dugeon II differs from Darkest Dungeon I is that they got rid of the goddamn dungeon. You do not own a hamlet, you do not manage a roster of heroes, there is no continuity, there are not interesting dungeons, quests, or supply requisitions. The roster is fixed (each hero has a Name, no longer are there randomly generated or unique heroes. Every Highwayman is Dismas), the hamlet has been replaced with a weird shrine that is mostly just there to collect your meta progression bucks (the only resource that persists between runs) in exchange for 5% more bleed resist, literally all management aspects are gone (fresh heroes every run, no consequences to your in-run actions other than meta progression bucks), and honestly the strategy gameplay is just fucking boring now. There is no more tense creeping through a dungeon, gambling on interactables, lowering your torch for increased loot. Instead we just pick left or right on a slay-the-spire map, do some fights, and then have some multiple choice events. Also, as a side note, runs are way too long. A dungeon in DD1 was great because it was an intense, often stressful, but bite-sized experience, rarely taking more than 40-60 minutes once you were grooving. Runs in DD1 are slow, easily twice that length, and there is no element of pushing your luck for extra rewards. They are as long as they are, routing, risk management, and desired session length be damned.
Meta-Progression:
Speaking of meta-progression bucks, lets talk about why and how they suck. You do a run, you get some candles, you come back to the shrine to spend those candles on unlocks, those being new relics, new heroes, and upgrades to your heroes. The only progress outside of candles is shrines, which are nodes you can visit during a quest to permanently unlock a skill for one of your heroes. This is... slow. Very slow. And tedious. And means that most players will just never get to see most of their heroes skills. It also means you are locked into the terrible starting kits for most of your crew. Speaking of...
Combat:
The base party consists of four familiar heroes, all of whom have had their kits changes for the worse. They feel clunkier, less unique, and their skill sets are simultaneously bloated and restrictive. By this I mean that now character have 5 skills and an item to use (instead of 4), but which skills you get to pick from is more tightly constrained. It also feels like there are *far* more status effects, both beneficial and harmful, but I'm not convinced that's a good thing. Almost every skill applies a status effect, or interacts with a status effect, which has the unfortunate effect of making almost every skill feel unimpactful by itself, and also contributes to the combats clunkiness and difficulty-to-parse nature.
Difficulty:
The game isn't toothless, but its difficulty is far more tedious now. Sanity is still around, but its much less meaningful. I lost my first run after clearing 2.5 zones (so probably 15-20 fights, some boss fights), and I never once had a character break. I can't even comment on how they changes despair/heroic sanity breaks because despite letting multiple characters ping pong off deaths door, no one ever broke. Characters did a lot of pingponging off of deaths door as well, which I don't know if that's actually changed, or if it just felt more exhausting when combined with all of the other changes, but by the time I lost I was actively trying to get my last character killed just to move things along and it took a while. Combined with the rather plentiful healing between fights, it definitely feels easier. I honestly think the reason I lost is that almost all of the meta progression is power creep, and I just didn't have anything unlocked. I'm not sure you're supposed to be able to win without a lot of grinding first.
RNG:
Darkest Dungeon 1 was a game that frequently tempted you to roll the dice, and then when you rolled snake eyes it would knife you in the kidney and mock you. Thats why we loved it, it was about pushing your luck and dealing with the terrible consequences of your actions. Didn't want to spend money on that extra shovel? Well I hope you're ready to body your team's sanity by digging out a tunnel by hand etc etc. Darkest Dungeon 2 is a game that rolls the dice for you, and then when the results are terrible it doses you with just enough poison that you are inconvenienced to the point that you wish you had just been knifed. By that I mean instead of altars and interactables, you just get shot from the side of the screen while moving with little/no input, and layered on top is the new relationship system which is is t*errible*. It mostly just randomly introduces long-term dysfunction into your team, in a way you have little/no control over. This was honestly the only reason I lost afaik, since i went from being constantly full health to losing serious resources in every single fight. Maybe I just rolled absolutely terribly, but everyone hated eachother for no apparent reason, and almost every time someone used a skill, another person on the team would be afflicted with a debilitating debuff. Having a party where the tank blinds the damage dealer every time he blocks, and 3/4 of the damage dealers attacks inflict +50% damage or daze on his own party is immensely unfun.
The Visuals:
Idk looked better 2D if were being real. This one is just up to taste, and while it doesn't look bad, it is in no as way striking as the first game was. If anything, having to actually do 3D animations for these characters took away some of the pulpy satisfaction. Abilities don't feel quite as punch when you have to animate the characters continuously.
Conclusion:
It feels a bit like how Pokemon Legends Arceus was still a pokemon game, and *almost* a main-line pokemon game, but also was decidedly not a main-line pokemon game. It has systems chopped off or simplified, and it changed the way players interacted with the world. However PLA used that freedom to do cool and interesting new things. Darkest Dungeon II feels like a spin-off, but instead of being a spinoff that trades the depth of its source material to make room for innovation, it just sanded off the edges, took away most of the interesting parts of the original game, and the result is, candidly, forgettable in almost every aspect other than how much of a let-down it was.