Darkest Dungeon 2

[zaxlor]

Feels like they emphasize more on story rather than gameplay this time around. Everything is currently watered down and more simple even though it follow same ish theme. Running over debri is kind of meh as a mechanic would be better if those were actually curious, less frequent ofc, where you can use your inventory to gain buffs.

Yeh I almost miss the cleptomanic moment when passing by an item box in the dungeon, or having to take pick-axes with you, but the Heroes will comment on thiings when you get to say the peasants or the non-mandatory boss fights. I had my Occultist Plague Doctor insist that I collect the items at one of the "Wizard tower" nodes, which lowered increased his Stress and pissed everyone else off. I had my self-less Highwayman also demand that we give flame to the peasants once, right before the final boss of an area. So, it's there but it's a lot less frequent and it's probably only based on which nodes you're passing, more-so than in the orginal.

Combat is great though. Almost everything is an improvement. It's less rng and more tactical. I think the rng that's there is enough.

Having everything as 100% to hit has been a great step forward. I'm not really fond of the blind mechanic, where you got a coin-flip on if you're going to hit or not and I'd kind of wish that it wasn't until your next hit, but actually until your next turn. But then it's still in early access, so we'll see. I suppose maybe one complaint could be there's no less "NO FUCKING WAY!" moments from both 1-shotting monsters and missing them, so the roller-coaster of highs and lows has been flatened out some. Personally I find that a better experience, but I can see why people would complain.

Hopefully they flesh things out a bit more when it comes to the world. I also miss being able to swap my party out depending on where I'm going and such.

It's a little bit of a pity you can't hire new recruits at the Inns you visit, but if you lose a member of your team and make it to an Inn, you'll be given a random Hero from those you've unlocked. I had just my Graverobber survive to the end and the only extra hero I had left was the Hellion, so just the two of them were in my team. I suppose the emphasis is now on the actual Hero personalitys, rather than just being this endless stream of "Lemmings" rolling up to take on the Darkest Dungeon. It makes more sense from a lore perspective - There's only one Highwayman. Only one Graverobber etc, but yeh the whole "build a party" aspect has been relegated to when you first start the journey and not between journeys.

[Kyanion]

Feels like they emphasize more on story rather than gameplay this time around. Everything is currently watered down and more simple even though it follow same ish theme. Running over debri is kind of meh as a mechanic would be better if those were actually curious, less frequent ofc, where you can use your inventory to gain buffs.

Combat is great though. Almost everything is an improvement. It's less rng and more tactical. I think the rng that's there is enough.

Hopefully they flesh things out a bit more when it comes to the world. I also miss being able to swap my party out depending on where I'm going and such.

Yeah handling the broken shopping cart as it trundles down the road is more of a chore than I like. I am already missing being able to change out my party to find teams I like playing and with having less character classes to begin with it feels not as great in multiple combats. I like some of the ideas but I feel like some of the choices were to try and be different from the first game just to say they did. What was wrong with the formula they had in the first game?

It also feels like some skills are mandatory upgrade routes such as the plague doctor's buff removing stress and I don't know how I feel about that. I would like to take other skills but the stress mechanic is such a bigger deal now with only 10 pips that even a few stress can start to cause party bickering that I feel locked into some choices.

[Fencers]

Darkest Dungeon 2 is coming to Steam.

As part of the Steam Next Fest, a free demo of Darkest Dungeon 2 is available now.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...st_Dungeon_II/

[Jastall]

The animations are really great. Loving the visuals in general, that burning city area is horrible in all the best ways.

The stagecoach part I'm less amazed by so far, controlling the thing is annoying and sometimes routes give only choices I dislike. I get it, it's part of the game to just handle bad situations, but man those cultist fights are far rougher than the others.

Also, healing and stress relief feels even more essential to a party than in the original, which is a trend I'd kind of hope they would buck. Always felt it limited party composition a smidge too much.

[Rustedsaint]

Ah bout time dd2 came to steam, I refuse to dl that other platform

[Faldric]

Also, healing and stress relief feels even more essential to a party than in the original, which is a trend I'd kind of hope they would buck. Always felt it limited party composition a smidge too much.

It is worse in DD2, e.g. there is no setup where you don't want plague doctor as your 4th slot. Even after nerfing him 3 times, he is still the best healer and best 4th slot.

[Rustedsaint]

It is worse in DD2, e.g. there is no setup where you don't want plague doctor as your 4th slot. Even after nerfing him 3 times, he is still the best healer and best 4th slot.

Preety sure plague doctor is a woman

Played through demo and definitely day one purchase for me.

[Gomelus]

Loved the demo ngl, the updated visuals with the added animations look sick af, plus the combat gameplay so far feels an upgrade. Still on the fence with the stagecoach thing, the demo didn't really let me test that much stuff.

[Jastall]

It is worse in DD2, e.g. there is no setup where you don't want plague doctor as your 4th slot. Even after nerfing him 3 times, he is still the best healer and best 4th slot.

It's a she, but yeah while the doc was really good in DD1, in this one she was by far the easiest and most powerful source of both healing and DoT removal. Add to that damage being far more permanent than in DD1 and having to stick with the same team for an entire run, there's no way you can dispense with a healer in the same way you can usually dispense with a tanky frontliner if you want to.

[Kumorii]

I got it on steam. And it's good and looks great. I still struggle with the fact it's just one run. No change with heroes except bounty hunter. The runs aren't that varied, most of them feels the same. Even if the combat is great and deeper than DD1 I think it still has the problem that you won't switch it up for almost an entire run.

Trinkets is main rng in the game that will alter your playstyle. As well as the rng on perks and traits at the choice of heroes.

I think changing the format was a bad choice imo. The game is great on its on but for me the change from DD1 is sour.

Will certainly play it from time to time and do not regret my purchase.

[Kyanion]

Yeah I hate being locked into the same party for a whole run, don’t like the caravan aspect much either. I played it through a few runs in beta but if little has changed from then til now I’d just rather play DD1

[Fencers]

Fully Available on Steam now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...st_Dungeon_II/

[PACOX]

$30 for one of my most played games on Steam? Easy buy.

Only waited this long to purchase it because EGS has terrible mod support compared to Steam Workshop.

[Jastall]

This isn't for the faint of heart lol. I won't claim to be that good at Darkest Dungeon but I replayed and completed the first game on the default difficulty not that long ago and have some early access experience and the sequel is pretty brutal. I got to the boss of the first confession on my first try but then it kicked my ass, then I got unlucky/greedy in subsequent runs and managed to wipe twice more. I dunno how a new or new-ish player stands much of a chance when the first boss is this powerful, and the ones you fight on the road are also magnitudes worse than stuff like the Necromancer or Hag from game 1.

Yes, I know it's a roguelite and you're not supposed to beat it first try. But the first confession is supposed to have training wheels on and it's still far harder than most of DD1.

[Tziva]

I never beat the first game, although I have 100+ hours in it. I think I only even tried to do the final bit one time, but I really did enjoy the game. IIRC mostly I spent my time leveling the town and collecting/leveling dudes, but it's been years now since I touched it.

I've heard mixed things about the sequel in general, so seems like a bit of a gamble either way, but anyone have any feedback specifically for the case of someone who was too garbage to beat the first one. Harder? Easier? Just different?

EDIT: okay look the person above me posted almost the exact same time as I did, so I swear I'm not as bad at reading as this looks.

[Snowfunk]

DD1 is one my all time favorite games. Mods gave that game such an insane mileage.
Hundreds of hours well spent.

I'll get around to trying the sequel at some point, but I'm no rush.

I wanted more of the same, not this thing, would much rather have gotten another expansion dlc for DD1.

[Daedius]

Fully Available on Steam now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1...st_Dungeon_II/

Aw sweet, was passing the time playing Pillars of Eternity 2.

[Jastall]

I never beat the first game, although I have 100+ hours in it. I think I only even tried to do the final bit one time, but I really did enjoy the game. IIRC mostly I spent my time leveling the town and collecting/leveling dudes, but it's been years now since I touched it.

I've heard mixed things about the sequel in general, so seems like a bit of a gamble either way, but anyone have any feedback specifically for the case of someone who was too garbage to beat the first one. Harder? Easier? Just different?

EDIT: okay look the person above me posted almost the exact same time as I did, so I swear I'm not as bad at reading as this looks.

I would say it's harder, at least the early stages most definitely are. Early in DD1 you fight weak enemies that don't inflict status effects and casualties, when they happen, hardly matter as replacing level 1 or 2 heroes is easy. In this one your party is set for the run, there's some ways around a dead hero but in most cases it means you have far lesser chances against harder encounters or the boss of the run so might as well try to get to the next inn and call it quits there.

Similarly, early bosses in the first game hardly have debilitating mechanics at all, they mostly just have more HP and damage than normal monsters with maybe a gimmick. While here the Lair bosses are easily the equivalent of later-game ones in DD1, and the boss of the first confession (out of 5) will demolish an unprepared party no questions asked by unleashing devastating attacks, stuns, and randomly locking you out of using melee, ranged, heal or stress heal skills every turn.

And the RNG can screw you just as much as in DD1. I finishing fighting a medium-difficulty encounter with most of my party having pretty big flame dots, which are usually cleansed when you finish the fight... except having the Flagellant around apparently causes a powerful miniboss to randomly spawn after an encounter. Which means those heavy dots hammered me at the same time as the boss's powerful attacks so I wiped.

I'm still having fun despite it all but damn, it feels like they really expect you to already be a DD1 veteran and I'm not certain that's such a great idea myself.

[Fencers]

DD2 is much more difficult than DD1 vanilla, in my opinion.

The number of enemy interactions revolving around debuffs is more severe an impact in progression in DD2. Debuffs (& buffs) also use new iconography that takes some getting used to as its mostly a visual presentation.

I have had DD2 since EGS beta. Almost 2 years now. I made it to the mountain and beat that boss successfully only a handful of times.

This game is hard AF.

[Soulflayer]

Hi,

I have been playing since the EA of the game. I really like many things of it in the same way I dislike a lot of them. Yes is more difficult, and a bit more reliant in the combo of some skills. I tried the last confession and oh boy.

The problem I see is that all the buffs you get from the candles are not enough. Trinkets make a huge difference, but sometimes you just dont get lucky enough to find those who are better for your comp makin' the run boring af.

And the runs. To dam long. I would like to be able to speed up the game in some combats or the traveling.

It needs some more time in the oven, but is not a bad game at all.