Darkest Dungeon II Review – There Is So Much Worse in Store (PC)

Darkest Dungeon II was released mostly without fanfare and not making a lot of noise. You’d think that that is simply the case with most of these indie and indie adjacent titles, but the reality is that the announcement and releases were handled in a cloak & dagger kind of way. Even I, as a fan of the original entry, couldn’t find a proper trailer before the actual release trailer.

You could find the Early Access trailer, trailers dedicated to some of the characters, and teasers. And while the Glimmer of Hope trailer was enough to hype me up when I first saw it, I can’t deny I even forgot the game was coming until the press releases started to roll about a month prior to release. Whether this approach could have damage the popularity of the franchise (the original did sell multiple millions of copies) is yet to be seen. The most surprising aspect of the sequel is the gameplay changes that they implemented that do take a while to get used to, but do certainly add another dimension to gameplay. 

Now, I did find myself echoing what some other voices have said about this entry. Specially at first, you can’t help but feel that this is a -strange- sequel, but either for curiosity or genuine interest, I also found that I was powerless to stop myself from entering the fray over and over again.

If you are a fan of the original Darkest Dungeon, you will inevitably compare the two and find that Red Hook Studios’ decisions, while somewhat odd, could have very well brought a much needed breath of fresh air to the experience. And in the belly of the Darkest Dungeon, a breath of fresh air can be as valuable as that small torch, and its Glimmer of Hope.

Darkest Dungeon II  is available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam for $39.99.

Story – This Road Cannot be Walked Alone

Those of you already familiar with the original Darkest Dungeon will recognize with this beat: A group of misfits and unlikely heroes that are joining forces to push back against the unnatural forces of Bandits, Cultists, Ghouls, Cosmic Horrors, terrors from the Sea and everything in between.

Darkest Dungeon II follows in the footsteps of the original entry and makes it clear from the start: While chance and luck will play an important role in the success of your party, the deck is heavily stacked against you at all times. Heroes will die, missions will fail, minds will be lost, but hope shall prevail. 

This hope will have to prove enough to bring you up the mountain to defeat the maximum evil of your quest. And it being a Roguelite, both the destination and the trip will change depending on the quest you are embarking on. But this is only the goal on the surface, the excuse, if you will. Each run presents the opportunity to learn more about the characters you are choosing for your party, and by doing so, unlocking new abilities to bring your own flavor to the strategy. You’ll meet survivors on the road and can take respite on different inns you can find along the way. The number of stretches of road you must traverse and the numbers of taverns to find are determined by the specific quest you are embarking on. 

A grim story, for a sad party

The first quest, called here “confessions” is called Denial. While in Denial, you’ll have to complete 2 full stretches of road and there is also 2 inns in which to cool off. The second is called Resentment, and while in it, the stretch of roads are now 3, the same original 2 and another, new one, with its own environment and enemy type. The final boss is also unique to each confession, and the progression continues as such. You will fail, until you learn appropriately how to take advantage of a bad situation and how to read your own fortune before it comes to pass.

Character Stories, Deepened

A very nice touch that came with this entrance is the way they’ve decided to tell you some of the stories behind the characters. To avoid major spoilers, I’ll only speak briefly of the Man-at-Arms character. in you journey, you can come across Hero Shrines, and if you decide to take their path, you can choose one of your heroes to unlock a memory. 

Delve in the past, face the future

By choosing the Man-at-Arms you learn that he was a military man when younger. This may not be a surprise, given his attire, you’d be forgiven to assuming he was in the military from the first game. But by unlocking his memories, and thus unlocking abilities, you learn that his career was far from brilliant, and that his defensive abilities that put the safety of his team member first are a testament to his personality and regrets in life.

Most characters have compelling stories such as this, although whether one or the other will resonate with you or not is a different tale. This plays into the roguelike mechanics as well, because you’ll want to continue unlocking this memories, which means starting over time and time again.

Gameplay – Recognize Your Disadvantage, and Accept It

Long time players may be glad to hear that the battles in Darkest Dungeon 2 are still pretty much identical to the original, at least when it comes the mechanics and pace. Still your party, 4 members or how ever many you brought or have left, against another enemy or group of enemies, with a maximum of 4, that go against each other in a turn-based fashion. Still the turns are determined by the speed of each character, with the fastest ones going first. You can still see who’s turn it is up in the corner and who are the next 3, so you can plan accordingly. 

Each character has their own sets of skills, resistances, and weaknesses, and you’ll have to strategize your game both in preparation stages such as right before embarking on the adventure, or in the middle sections between roads, the inns. You may remember that you used to bring your party into a dungeon and walk around and had the option to set a fire to get some rest, heal and buff up what you could with bonfire specific skills. Now, instead of walking inside a dungeon, you are in a wagon, which is now effectively a 5th character of sorts. Your wagon takes the party and they disembark when they find an encounter or are ambushed. 

Hope, while fleeting, refuses to die out

You wagon has its own mechanics and life points, in addition to carrying the torch, that brings light and hope with it, influencing each fight. Your wagon, just as your characters, can be improved over time and can also be given temporary perks and abilities. The more you play, the more of these you find, so you can experiment around with what you find more useful. 

This is one of the major changes Red Hook has brought. No longer walking from left to right in the dungeon, but instead having the wagon take you places. At first I found it odd but it very quickly grew on me once I realized how useful it was. Characters still have to deal with a life gauge and a stress gauge. Life is pretty obvious, keep it above 0 or face Death’s Door, where each subsequent hit could be the dead of the character. Stress plays into how each character gets along with each other, and once the stress gauge is full, your characters resolve will be put to the test. They will fail most of the time, but the rare occasions that they do not fail and actually pull through, it can really turn the tables. 

It’s not a party without a knife or two

You can influence to a certain extent the stress and life gauges, and their relationship with each other by using different trinkets and shuffling their abilities around and making decisions at crucial points, but in the end is mostly a game of luck, where, again, the deck is always stacked against you, is just a matter of just how heavily. Each run comes with different types of currencies for different uses, and the “candles” that do carry over from one run to the next and are definitely the most important ones, as they help you grow stronger from one attempt to the next.

The only major fault I found gameplay wise was with the tutorial. The way Red Hook decided to tutorialize was a big info dump. You encounter something new, you get an icon to the side of the screen which, once clicked, will bring you to the encyclopedia of different things to know and learn. This is a minor grievance and doesn’t detract from the overall experience, but some people find info dumps to be not that great for this purpose, and I tend to agree. 

Sound and Graphics – Gritty, Ominous, and Superb

The art in Darkest Dungeon II is thankfully just as striking as it was in its predecessor. This is one aspect were Red Hook knew they didn’t have to change a thing, as their stylized characters, enemies and environment were already quite recognizable and frankly just great. I’ve always enjoyed looking at the art in the first DD and this sequel is still going strong. I couldn’t remember much about music and sound effects in the original DD so I had to launch it for a while to refresh my memory, and I do feel the sound effects are a bit more refined in the sequel, and the music did also step up. From the moment you get to the Title Page and main menu, you are greeted with a grandiose song that sets the tone for the rest of the game. 

Great looking environments for you to traverse

Stuart Chatwood, who also composed the OST for the first game, is back for this entry, and I could not be more content with it. The OST quickly made it into my daily loop of music and it’s hard for me to say if I just appreciate the music more at this stage in my life, if the music is objectively better or the sound design team made a superb job. Or maybe even all three, but playing the game with the narrator and his deep, ominous voice, while hearing to this OST that fits like a glove and having the sound and visual effects match in the way they do is just a plain good time. 

Darkest Dungeon II was reviewed on PC with a key provided by ICO.