Darkest Dungeon 2 Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Summary: Tense, atmospheric and foreboding. Darkest Dungeon 2 is a Lovecraftian RPG that's worth hitching a ride for.

4.3

Road to Hell

Darkest Dungeon 2 is about making the best of a bad situation, about Hope in the face of despair, and how the light at the end of the tunnel is probably a train hurtling towards you.

An uncompromising Lovecraftian road trip to the gates of hell, DD2 presents a more immediate version of the slow-burn presented by the original Darkest Dungeon, while maintaining the same overwhelming sense of dread as it slowly ratchets the tension to unbearable levels.

Much like its predecessor, it’s an uncompromising and gloomy game, but whereas Darkest Dungeon saw you plumb the seemingly bottomless depths in search of ancient relics and forbidden knowledge, its sequel deals with the after-effects of the destruction wrought by the player’s actions in the previous game and instead presents a race against time to set the world right against overwhelming odds.

Mechanically this results in Darkest Dungeon 2 feeling more streamlined and stripped back than the original. In Darkest Dungeon you spent just as much time preparing, caring for, and recruiting more willing adventurers for your next run into the darker corners of the sprawling estate. In Darkest Dungeon 2 you don’t have time for that, the world is on the brink of armageddon and the only way to save it is to get to the mountain looming in the distance as soon as possible.

It is a game of trial and error, of doing a little better each time, and slowly overcoming the odds through careful consideration, quick thinking, and dumb luck.

After a scholar unwittingly unleashes a tide of eldritch horrors upon the land with the help of an ancient and powerful relic called The Iron Crown, you have been tasked with setting things right by setting off on an expedition with four heroes in tow to transport the Light of Hope to the darkest dungeon in the mountains in hopes of banishing the literal and metaphorical darkness from this twisted land for good.

The setup may be fairly basic, but Darkest Dungeon 2 makes up for it by dripping with atmosphere. Wayne June returns as the narrator and his deep, slightly sinister tones match the desperate, melancholic tone of the game perfectly as he slowly advances the main plot and the backstories of the lost souls you’ve dragged along for the ride with each new attempt and minor victory.

The first thing you’ll notice when you start your adventure in Darkest Dungeon 2 is just how big a departure the gameplay is from the original. Almost all of the management systems that made up the original have been stripped away and replaced with a core gameplay loop that has more in common with SlayThe Spire than its predecessor.

Each run sees you pick four characters from an unlockable roster of would-be heroes before you hit the road, thundering down the highways and byways of a series of areas on your way to your final confrontation at the heart of the mountain.

You have a modicum of control over the carriage choosing your next destination every time there’s a fork in the road adding an element of strategy to proceedings. Do you try and play it safe, keeping close to the field hospitals, survivor camps, and item caches while trying your best to avoid as many fights as possible, or do you slam into every roadblock and dive into every monster nest you can find to toughen up your party and grab some handy trinkets, items, and artifacts that may end up being the difference between making it to the mountain or dying in a ditch just outside Insmouth.

As you rattle along on your way to the next harrowing battle your party heals, chats and either becomes a united front against the darkness or a bickering mess depending on how they are handling the stress of the journey, made even more stressful by the need to maintain the coach’s wheels and armor or you’ll get ambushed by the slide of the road by eldritch horrors while your crew tries to repair a broken axel.

One thing that does carry over from the original though is the delightfully tense turn-based battles that see your party of four square off against up to four enemies.

It’s a devious game of buffs, debuffs, and finding the right time to strike, with victory depending on finding the best ways to create synergy between your group and turning it into a well-oiled machine dishing combos and bolstering each other while desperately defending against groups of enemies that pack one hell of a punch.

Not only do you need to keep your party healthy, but help them to remain calm as well because if their stress levels are pushed to the brink they will likely have a Meltdown that damages their relationship with their other party members and saps about 90% of their health.

Every fight is a grueling affair, the boss fights are even worse ( and compulsory on the later levels). As the game progresses it ceases to be a case of if someone in your party dies, but when. This can have massive knock-on effects for the rest of the voyage and whether you want to continue after the next rest at an inn.

Losing your healer early doors is devastating because healing items are rare, and every turn taken healing is a turn you’re not attacking and when the monstrous hordes put you on the back foot you may as well hope for a swift death because your chances of turning things around are slim..

It’s basically, Lovecraft’s Oregon Trail. Anything that can go wrong will, and if the cosmic horrors don’t kill you, the creeping sense of dread, and tensions between your small party will.

Darkest Dungeon is a game of little victories and doing a little better each time, these victories are represented by the amount of candles you can swipe on each run and take back to your safe haven where they’re used to expand and improve your adventurer’s stats, improve your carriage and finances, and unlock more powerful artifacts and items that will then turn up at inns, shops and as battle rewards in future runs.

Pass or fail you always receive some candles which means it always feels like you’re making some progress. Even with a hardy party of veterans you can still make the wrong move and get wiped out by an old fisherwoman, but at least you know you’ll be better prepared for the next run, and give you a little more breathing room.

Your success doesn’t merely depend on how physically resilient your party is though, but how well they work together. This doesn’t just mean using skills that complement each other, but making sure they get along. Each member has a relationship score with every other member of the party, get it nice and high and they’ll form a bond that sees them back each other up in combat, gain boosts by using certain attacks, and push back foes a lot easier. If they fall out though, woe betide you as they’ll start to bicker and get stressed out by the actions of their compatriates, and in Darkest Dungeon, Stress is the real killer.

Death comes easy in Darkest Dungeon and “pulling yourself out of the Mire” as the narrator bellows mid-fight does sometimes feel like slogging through mud as the difficulty often outpaces your progress leading to the game slowing to an atritious grind towards the mid point, it does get easier though towards the end.

Darkest Dungeon 2 is as beautiful as the original was, with a gorgeous art style that falls somewhere between a woodcut from an 18th-century chapbook and a modern-day comic book, using thick black lines and exaggerated features to convey the heroic and the macabre, that fit the pulpy old world style and bleak tone perfectly.

Characters are diverse and superbly realised and the rogues gallery of eldritch nightmares and twisted cultists you face are as grotesque as they are captivating.

This is all pulled together with an excellent score coupled, with perfectly pitched narration that helps to draw you even further into the world of Darkest Dungeon.

If there’s one complaint I have about Darkest Dungeon 2, on Switch at least, it’s that it crashes, a lot. Every couple of hours I found the game would error out with no word or warning. Thankfully, it’s not the end of the world because it frequently saves and I’ve never lost any progress, but it’s still irritating.

Final Thoughts

Red Hook could have given us more of the same for Darkest Dungeon 2 and most fans would have been happy. Instead, they did something far braver and created a sequel that feels both contiguous and antithetical to the original.

It’s a tough, but rewarding game, where death comes easily and a way out of a dire spot is never easy to find. That being said It’s also oddly hopeful in its ultimate outlook that eventually you’ll get there if you just keep trying, keep pushing, and that’s a feeling worth pursuing and a message we could all do with hearing sometimes.

About the Author

Gareth Newnham

Darkest Dungeon 2 Review