Darkest Dungeon is for a certain kind of person. Oh, sure, you have to like the kind of turn-based tactical action, the intricate party management, the idea that you are doing incredible harm to your people by even sending them into battle. But you also have to enjoy writing like this…and this is just from, like, the opening cutscene of Darkest Dungeon 2. “RUIN HAS FOUND YOU AT LAST! THE EPHEMERAL EQUATION IS UNBALANCED! THE WORLD IS A WASTELAND OF FAILURES PAST!” Do you like gothic atmosphere? Words like BITUMINOUS when “dark” would’ve done? For me, I just got laid off. You have the very last light of hope? Well, friend, I got no job and nothing but time. Darkest Dungeon is back. Let’s fuckin’ go.
Darkest Dungeon 2
Developer: Red Hook Studios
Price: $40 USD
Platform: PC, PS4, Xbox One
MonsterVine was supplied with PC code for review
When you’re making a sequel, there’s always a choice: Do you do what you did in the first one but try and make it better? Or do you try and do something different? Darkest Dungeon 2 goes…ROAD TRIP, GOTH BITCHES! Which is an interesting choice, stylistically speaking. Instead of meticulously building your base and cultivating various teams of broken warriors, you have a pretty steady cast of characters and work on upgrading them, your stagecoach, and what your little rolling crew already has.
So what if…Darkest Dungeon but more like…Slay the Spire or some of those Roguelites where it’s more about exploring the map and making decisions and building up the crew you already have than base building and team building with random weirdos and management? So what if it was Darkest Dungeon but not actually Darkest Dungeon much at all? WHOOOOA.
At the same time: the atmosphere and writing are the same. And the relentless love of, shall we say, the ballkicking is the same. If everyone dies, you pretty much have to start fresh. Only some upgrades stay unlocked. The battles frequently feel more like puzzles with one correct answer and many, many wrong answers than “battles.” The stress system, with heroes losing their minds, returns, and it’s just as infuriating as it was in the original.
And there’s even a new system called the affinity system to show how well the squad gets along, which may mean swapping people in and out when they get mad but also means they get bonuses when they work well together, which means there actually is some team management but it’s more people skills with deeply traumatized weirdos so just like real life management, basically.
But the combat is still really satisfying when you figure it out and when all the synergies work and when you get the team working together, especially since the monsters are even grosser and weirder and you are definitely fighting some evil darkness this time. The combat system is also less prone to XCOM-style infuriating whiffs, so there’s plenty of infuriating, but also slightly less infuriating mechanics at work. And still plenty of THOU HAS DONE FUCKED UP NOW writing, it is still EXTREMELY GOTH, of course, that hasn’t changed a mote.
So if you don’t mind the fact that it’s not Darkest Dungeon But More and it’s Darkest Dungeon But Different…it’s worth caveating that the first 10 hours are so are basically just punching you in the face over and over again and normally I don’t put up with that at all before going “okay yeah but then it gets good” but I am an unemployed goth degenerate, so what else am I gonna do?
The Final Word
More Of The Same But Totally Different
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
