Darkest Dungeon II review

The anguish of death in Darkest Dungeon II is a cruel mistress. Just when you think you’re getting somewhere, surviving from one fight to the next and getting familiar with how you take on a run, one of your heroes gets obliterated and your entire party falls like a stack of cards in a tornado shortly after. It’s a punishing journey where pain consumes you and pushes you to do better, and despite all of your failings, there are glimmers of hope provided by the candles you use to upgrade and unlock new characters for the next expedition in your rickety old stagecoach.

For the first few hours, you feel as though you’re making no progress. The overbearing dread made worse by the over-the-top gloom provided by the narrator gets too much. The amount of information thrown at you from the start and all of the icons and variables take a long time to get used to, and failing after a route you choose to travel leads to an ambush you weren’t expecting is enough to turn away many players who weren’t expecting such a steep learning and difficulty curve. Yet despite these early woes, Darkest Dungeon II becomes so much more.

It is more a reimagining that a sequel to 2016’s Darkest Dungeon. You must choose branching paths where your four heroes must travel towards an ominous mountain in the distance. While surviving battle is hard on its own, you’re threatened by the fire and rotting flesh that surrounds you, and by the evil and the cruelty that threatens to consume you physically and mentally. Your party is at a loss from the start, but the risk and reward of choosing your destiny gives a constant dangling carrot in a world that welcomes death and destruction by the bucketload.

Each path you take has opportunities to uncover important items and trinkets, but you can also encounter bumps in the road that lead to dangerous fights. You can move your coach left or right and slow it down, but each route feels different from the last. There are times when you’ll encounter groups of survivors where you can choose to help them or rob them, but your choices can effect the relationship of the group. After each mini-adventure, you’ll arrive at an inn where you can recover from your journey and take stock of the items you’ve picked up along the way.

When you do engage in battle, there’s a mix of skill and luck that leads to thrilling and euphoric victories or crushing and frustrating losses. Learning which attacks work best is part of the rare joy Darkest Dungeon II offers, but over time you’ll understand when to attack from distance, when to buff or heal an ally, or when to deliver that deadly blow. One of the biggest frustrations comes when you’ve been playing for a few hours only to be sent right back to the start of the game. Sure, you can upgrade to do better the next time, but when one mistake can be costly, it seriously ruins your mood.

Darkest Dungeon II isn’t to be played when you just want to jump in and feel a considerable amount of success at a steady pace. What you get from Red Hook’s title is a dangerous and punishing RPG where victory isn’t found as frequently as you like. Saying that, the gameplay loop becomes incredibly satisfying when certain systems start to click, and getting through a dungeon where you can progress after a victory for more rewards or escape gives you such an amazing feeling if you push forward and succeed. I love to hate and hate to love this game.

The thing I like most about Darkest Dungeon II, though, is the characters. Every run can see them build relationships with each other, but one wrong decision can mess everything up and see you butting heads. I was fascinated by how these situations occurred, and they help to ruin a run or make it successful. When you connect with another and pull off combos that can do serious damage, you’re given the rewards you deeply deserve for your perseverance. Dealing with stress levels, something continued from the original, is back, and when you’re teetering on a breakdown, the stress in your own mind is tested.

Another thing I couldn’t get enough of was the visuals. The thick penned outline aesthetic with dark reds and blacks add to the layers of dread you journey through. The hellish Lovecraftian world consistently absorbed me in its world, and despite it being heavy-going, Wayne June does a stellar job with its narration. Despite struggling for hours and failing more times than I’d like to count, Darkest Dungeon II is deeply fulfilling, giving you plenty of tools to succeed, but also pulling the rug from underneath you at a moments notice. You’ll face stunning highs and miserable lows, but there’s always a reason to have one more run.