Darkest Dungeon II Review (WolfSage)
The Good:
-Decent graphics.
-Interesting enemy designs.
-Wayne June.
The Bad:
-Much less enjoyable gameplay.
-3D designs likely to make mods more difficult or not blend as well as they did for the original.
-Art style is not nearly as interesting or stylishly unique as the first game.
-You don't get to keep your heroes around and grow attached to them, as you did in the first game.
-Game has had no time on Steam for the users and community who made the first game successful to have input on its development during Early Access.
The Ugly:
This game, at its core, is more of a spin-off than a proper sequel. The Hamlet and the slow building of your heroes and your resources have been traded in for a more Slay The Spire styled game based around repetitive runs performed over and over again. There are new unlocks between runs but there is no more keeping teams of heroes around, dealing with the menagerie of positive and negative quirks they develop. There is only the grind - run after run after run, turning a game you could pour hundreds of hours into a campaign into one where you can start and end your journey with a hero in one play session.
There are a few good ideas in the game that are absolutely ruined by this choice. The relationship system between heroes, for example, expands on the attachment that players developed to their characters in the first game, and the imagined relationships between teams of characters one could have after they've spent days or weeks culling eldritch abominations together. But because your heroes are gone at the end of a run, this holds almost no weight. It's an artificially created relationship system to replace an organic and natural one that developed out of the love players had for the game and their characters.
While it's too early to say, I sincerely worry that the switch to 3D is both inferior and will result in a big downgrade in number and quality of mods. The first game's 2D art style was dramatic and unique, but also relatively easy for modders to match when making new character classes. Being 3D won't stop modders, but I have doubts that we'll see the same number and quality of character mods coming out for this game. There will likely be less, and they won't blend into the game's art style as easily as the original's.
Overall it seems the devs put entirely too much effort into making something new, and not making something better. Judging by their choice of putting the Early Access period on Epic Games, taking their bribe for exclusivity, they weren't particularly interested in what the community wanted to play as much as what they wanted to design - else they would have put the game on Steam for early access, as they did for the first game, rewarding the community that loved and promoted and helped make the first title successful. Instead they changed the art styling that was so cool from the first game, changed the gameplay that people loved, went to a store that many won't touch, and took a bribe to keep the game away from the community that made the first a success - I suspect because they were (correctly) worried that this game would not be as popular as the first.