Darkest Dungeon II

[Ibn Sina]

Fights in DD2 take way longer than in DD1. In DD1 you can relatively clear a small dungeon in 15/30 mins if you want. This game has every fight take at least 5 mins of your time. It is so tiresome.

 

[Luka-boy]

Looking forward to the Celerity review.

 

[orcinator]

The only way to play is to install all the mods that speed everything up. There's so much time wasting garbage in the gameplay loop it's nutty.

You can do it with cheat engine speedhacks.
But speedhacks won't make the metaprogression mechanics any less cancerous.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Haven't really followed this, but seeing the general Codex opinion I wonder how it got to "very positive" on Steam.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Picked this up and after spending a bit over an hour going through the tutorial and then starting a run and wiping on the first boss it's pretty cool. The presentation's great and most things in DD1 seem to have a DD2 equivalent, but the one change that's sticking in my craw is how your party's supposed to be a multi-hour single run thing. Even that technically isn't completely dissimilar to DD1 since if you can hobble to the next inn (The major break points) you can get a replacement hero from a different unused class to fill in casualties, and they'll be at a slight disadvantage since mastery points spent on dead heroes are lost which would be the equivalent of losing a leveled hero in DD1, but still. Even with the combat seeming more tactically interesting and deep than DD1 it's a laid back game and I'm not sure it warrants the time investment compared to playing a short DD1 dungeon or two here and there. I suppose since the individual combats in DD2 are longer and have more going on it would be more like playing a single DD2 region or a few nodes worth of road.

Will say the new token system's pretty cool. Once you get through the iconography soup and start to learn what means what there is potentially more depth than I'm giving it credit for since token stacking has caught me off guard, and it's nice that it's a little more controlled than the dice rolls of DD1. There still ARE dice rolls but the tokens make some shit a little more deterministic.

And for another minor bout of bitching, mastery points aren't quite as cool or satisfying as leveling DD1 heroes. Even though DD1 leveling was just buying stat increases by higher tier skills and armor/weapons the trappings of going back to town and seeing little equipment icons getting fancier gave it more "RPG ceremony" than putting a mastery point on a skill so every skill has a regular/upgraded version. The one good point of the mastery system is it does/can add new effects to skills beyond just "More damage more accuracy more debuff chance more better" so there could be some wiggle room for a skill being shit until it's mastered which then makes it pop because it can synergize with some OTHER skill but with my new-ass I don't know what's what so I'm angry.

ALSO will say the quirks/traits seem similarly low impact as DD1, which is a bit of a problem with DD2's length. In DD1 you can quite reasonably ignore the majority of quirks/traits since they either don't matter at all or so little that they aren't worth your concern, then there are a few odd ones that are more majorly positive/negative (Like imposter syndrome where a character will just fuck off and skip a turn randomly) where you need to get that shit fixed. Haven't seen any as impactful as that in this yet and it mostly comes down to "Yeah well against these enemies you do 10% less damage" shit. On the flip side, characters have individual goals which as far as I can tell are randomized which IS kind of a nice little wrinkle. A character might want to land the killing blow on a number of a creature type, visit a certain type of location, use a certain combat item, etc etc etc. Even though I'm not a Gloomhaven fan I can recognize they probably lifted the individual character goals from that and it is a positive. If it's random, at least. If that turns out to be baked-in to the classes then it'll be weird as hell and disappointing.

All in all since I'm rambling off a cliff, game seems cool but "Long run, minimal campaign" might be a mistake and I'm fairly sure however many years ago when DD1 was in early access I was bitching about short runs and long grindy campaign. But I came to appreciate DD1 as a snack-game to play a dungeon here and there, more recently with speed mods so all the animations would run through quicker, and now that DD2's shifted gears I'm not sure if it's strong enough to support that.

 

[Larianshill]

Wait, I've thought they are keeping more heroes secret for the release, is this really it?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Wait, I've thought they are keeping more heroes secret for the release, is this really it?

The first game received a couple of heroes post release, like 4 of them. Unless they are working on some Deus Vult-themed expansion or patch, Crusader ain't coming back it seems.

So for those who are playing. Am I good enough with the first game? Because nothing I've heard from this seems of any interest for me. I haven't even finished the first one. The Butcher's Circus bit was fun until Meta settled in.

 

[lukaszek]

does it mean that now you stick to one party for longer, as opposed to constantly shuffling due to injuries/stress management?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i skipped to the end of rps's review, which i can summarize in "it's more of the same, but it's worse in every aspect. you should totally buy it". i have not enough faces to palm.

Haven't really followed this, but seeing the general Codex opinion I wonder how it got to "very positive" on Steam.

normies are still jerking off to that new genshin jrpg which is *objectively* one of the worst games ever.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

So for those who are playing. Am I good enough with the first game? Because nothing I've heard from this seems of any interest for me. I haven't even finished the first one. The Butcher's Circus bit was fun until Meta settled in.

Yeah, if the first didn't float your boat then I wouldn't say the sequel likely changes it enough to lure you in. I've seen some people acting like it's a complete departure from the first which is fucking crazy since the vast majority of it is similar.

does it mean that now you stick to one party for longer, as opposed to constantly shuffling due to injuries/stress management?

Yeah, you stick to one* party for an entire run (Say 1-3 hours). Stress management is still important but every time you reach an inn (Similar to finishing a dungeon in DD1 and going back to the hamlet since it gives you access to stores and lets you level up heroes by spending mastery points) everyone gets some baseline free healing and stress loss and you can spend money on items at the inn for more healing and stress loss similar to managing that shit in the first. You get some SLIGHT passive healing while you're in your cart and traveling (And random chances of stress gain/loss, probably at least in part due to quirks and shit) because fights tend to be longer and deadlier than DD1 so you need at least a bit of healing to keep yourself topped up.

You also can have one party for EVEN LONGER because if you manage to haul some characters through a full adventure they can get some semi-permanent bonuses that last until that character dies in some future run. Not entirely sure about the details of that since I haven't won a full run yet and only read about that in a tutorial message.

*As mentioned before, if someone dies on the adventure but you still manage to reach the inn you'll get a replacement from any non-selected hero classes you have unlocked but the newbie won't have skills mastered like the dead one did, etc.

 

[toro]

I just finished the first run - Unshackled [Complete Denial] - and I've lost any desire to continue.

The game is a piece of shit. Some mechanics are obfuscated on purpose. There so many skills without synergy. Negative relationships can completly obliterate your party. Most trinkets are shit and so on. There is too much garbage in the game and I don't see a coherent design behind most mechanics.

does it mean that now you stick to one party for longer, as opposed to constantly shuffling due to injuries/stress management?

Yes. It's probably the only improvement vs DD1.

 

[The_Mask]

I just finished the first run - Unshackled [Complete Denial] - and I've lost any desire to continue.

You should post this as a review on Steam, and just refuse to elaborate any further.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

But having character be expendable is kinda fun, like X-COM. If you take that away then it's just another rpg.

 

[Alienman]

It's a shame the sequel turned out to be bad. Darkest Dungeon was a top-tier game to me, it was huge too and filled with tension on Ironman. RIP.

 

[quixotic]

But having character be expendable is kinda fun, like X-COM. If you take that away then it's just another rpg.

I love permadeath in general, but DD’s permadeath never made me care about losing a character beyond
>fuck I wasted all my time and resources on this sack of shit
Every character is essentially the same (besides their class of course), they try to make them different by giving them positive and negative traits, but most of them don’t even matter or are an active hindrance. You don’t change up your tactics or gameplan when you lose somebody, you just train up another shitter to take their place.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It's pretty annoying that you can be several points deep into the 'friendship' track and still end up with everyone getting pissed off. I carefully managed affinity and still had them become enemies and lock me out of their upgraded / effective skills. The design of the system itself is baffling-- "We're at the end of the world but I'm such a petty asshole I'm going to stab you in the back if you use your best move on any of the unspeakable horrors trying to eat my brains." Um, okay? Essentially anyone with such a temperament would be a permanent liability and never allowed on such a team in the first place. it's kind of like in PnP D&D, sometimes you would get these players who were out to ruin the night for everyone else, I always made it clear the team was under no obligation to run with an anti-social PC. So everyone kind of has an unwritten obligation to roll a PC who gets along with the group.

The fact you pretty much can't beat any of the end of zone enemies without a full team of fully happy dudes means there's little point in "making the most of a bad situation". if you get any bad results, just restart.

 

[Ivan]

Celerity

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Looks like another general good protip is aggressively use combat items and inn items. Fair few inn items will give a bonus of some sort until you reach the NEXT inn which is quite a duration, and combat items are both cheap and plentiful so popping them often isn't such a big deal. Especially since enemies in DD2 look to apply damage over time a lot more so antivenom/bandages/fireshit are great. Just had another run get fucked since I poked a shambler altar which I shouldn't have done it since I thought "Hey, that's a shambler altar" so I don't know what the fuck I expected. Did kill it but it whacked half the party and I was still a few nodes from reaching the exit so even if I avoided the boss for the region I doubt I would've made it through the cultist fight, maybe not even any randoms.

Feeling a little conflicted on some enemies having death resistance too, usually not MUCH of a deal but I've had a few awful roll streaks. Just like I lost 5 75% chances in a row on the highwayman's background mission and the guards kept slapping his ass even with a bunch of mega-dodge. On one hand, cool when tokens mean you can get shit like mega-dodge. On the other hand, Nuffle will still kick the door open and molest your dice. Probably less of an issue once you know what's going on and can plan accordingly and it does show up in some skills like the highwayman's knife attack having an extra chance to break through death resistance rather than applying bleed.

 

[Sarathiour]

There is no way that the crusader is added later on, crusader in DD1 is a beginner friendly characters as it core : it's a solid front liner with half his skill dedicated to hitting the first while he's in the front row itself, and the other half are extra trick whose intended purpose is to assist a deficit in the party strength : extra healing, stress heal or mobility.
If the add him they would need to revamp completely his toolkit, which I don't see happen because how clueless the general gamedesign is.

Seriously, who thought that adding bonus to the next run in the form of gacha roll was a good idea ?

 

[J1M]

Game is peak "designed for streamers".

 

[BrotherFrank]

Only way I had fun in DD1 is with a fuckton of mods.

By the sounds of it, DD2 is even worst. I swear, this franchise is carried entirely by its visuals and the narrator.

 

[The_Mask]

First review on Steam says:

IMPORTANT NOTE

If you already own DD1, don't make the same mistake I did - buy the Iron Crown bundle and get DD2 for £25.

Steam support unfortunately won't refund the difference.

 

[KVVRR]

Perhaps it's because I've been playing for a few months now in a pirated beta build, but I don't get the complains about the relationship system being too unforgiving. Once you know how it works, and maybe after unlocking a quarter of the inn items, keeping everyone happy becomes trivial 95% of the time. Just watch out for stress on the road, don't have people above 5, and when in the Inn check for relationship status between heroes - then have the two pairs with the lowest amount use inn items that give positive relationship bonuses. That's really it, if you wanna go harder equip cart/pets items that affect positive relationship chance and watch out for quirks that affect it.

Really the game has a lot of it affect the relationships between heroes but at the end of the day the player can pretty much control every aspect of it and they only 3eally need to check for stress anyways. Just yesterday I had a full party with maxed affinities beat the shit out of the arc 4 boss, they even have an archivement for reaching the mountain in that state.

 

[Sarathiour]

The issue is probably that you have to grind quite a bit to get there, my first is just me waiting for when the rng will decide to suddenly shank me having any input on it. Granted, this also happened in DD, except you're only loosing a 40 min and a characters at most, and most of them are entirely disposable, except maybe lvl 4+ healer, as it can bottleneck your progress if you start loosing too many of them.

 

[toro]

Looks like another general good protip is aggressively use combat items and inn items.

So and so.

You need some money to heal retarded quirks at hospital.