Darkest Dungeon II

[Poseidon00]

Yeah this sounds extremely fucking gay.

 

[whydoibother]

They are bringing the ancestor again because they are fresh out of ideas of where to take the series. They shot themselves in the foot with the ending of the first game, but it made sense, it was an indie game that was made by 2 people, and they had no idea it could reach that level of appeal. Who wants to bet that the ending of this one would be either "nothing matters" or another "cyclical history" bullshit?

What are you people talking about? The ending didn't in any way make it so the ancestor shouldn't be in the sequel. And the narration is a big part of the presentation of the first game. Sounds like a really dumb thing to complain about, to be honest.

We'll see how removed accuracy + road trip + other changes give them a different formula. The game hinges on how ambitious they are about creating an altered gameplay loop, rather than what they do with the story, and how successful they are on that front. You'd think they'd talk a lot more about all new classes, abilities, enemies, encounter elements (environmental?), and they didn't do enough of that.

They fell for the memes, a lot of people raging and complaining about RNG, when that was a core component of the game. Removing accuracy and other random factors, they will make the game dull and routine. If you can fall into a rhythm and have a strategy that works the same every time, its not fun to play. Rolling some stupid dance and having to do damage control is fun. And the screenshots show unlockable skills and shit like that, the game is just going to be much more normie in its mechanics. Or maybe I am just grumpy, we'll see.

 

[Tigranes]

They are bringing the ancestor again because they are fresh out of ideas of where to take the series. They shot themselves in the foot with the ending of the first game, but it made sense, it was an indie game that was made by 2 people, and they had no idea it could reach that level of appeal. Who wants to bet that the ending of this one would be either "nothing matters" or another "cyclical history" bullshit?

What are you people talking about? The ending didn't in any way make it so the ancestor shouldn't be in the sequel. And the narration is a big part of the presentation of the first game. Sounds like a really dumb thing to complain about, to be honest.

We'll see how removed accuracy + road trip + other changes give them a different formula. The game hinges on how ambitious they are about creating an altered gameplay loop, rather than what they do with the story, and how successful they are on that front. You'd think they'd talk a lot more about all new classes, abilities, enemies, encounter elements (environmental?), and they didn't do enough of that.

They fell for the memes, a lot of people raging and complaining about RNG, when that was a core component of the game. Removing accuracy and other random factors, they will make the game dull and routine. If you can fall into a rhythm and have a strategy that works the same every time, its not fun to play. Rolling some stupid dance and having to do damage control is fun. And the screenshots show unlockable skills and shit like that, the game is just going to be much more normie in its mechanics. Or maybe I am just grumpy, we'll see.

Removing accuracy isn't always a bad / popamole move - it can work very well in a deterministic system where your ability to mitigate/cancel out attacks come in different ways, and your enemies are also guaranteed to hit, etc. However, it wouldn't make any sense to just tack this on the existing DD1 system, where attack accuracy RNG was meant to work alongside room/dungeon RNG, insanity RNG, etc. Hence the onus is really on them to produce a new and different formula.

 

[TumblingTorin]

Removing accuracy does limit what abilities can be made. You can't have the Houndmaster be a dodge tank anymore, reducing incoming damage makes him too similar to the Man-at-arms. You can't have a powerful but inaccurate attack. You would most likely have to make it into an attack that does weak damage sometimes and strong damage on others, but that's just moving one RNG to another and makes it similar to a crit.
Which begs the question of "Are they going to remove crits too?" Getting a crit (Both for you and the enemy) were one of the most memorable parts of the game. You would always react to a crit happening. Taking crits out would take all those moments away. And KEEPing them just means there is still heavy RNG, just now you have to focus on maybe lowering the enemy crit rate and increasing yours. Which just seems like replacing one problem with another.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I mind, I think it looked better. In general I don't see the point of going 3D.
But then again, maybe it looks better in motion. DD1 was an audio-visual spectacle, and you couldn't tell that from just still images, so I'll wait and see it in action. Cautiously optimistic.

I really don't get this thing about the original game being some visual spectacle. The game has only slightly more animation than a Clutch Cargo cartoon. It's got a nice Mike Mignola style, which is still in this game, it's just not a chibi version of it anymore in the dungeons...how the characters look in the dungeon now is how they looked in some of the art for the original game already.

My guess would be they went 3D to animate it. I'd guess there's more little things going on in their idle animations, attacks are actually animated now, and the same keyframe isn't used for multiple things. I'd also imagine the move away from that kind of chibi Mignola style the original game has has nothing to do with the 3D, and would have been done if it was 2D too; although the more squant version of the art style was probably quicker to draw and animation in the original game.

 

[jf8350143]

making it 3d just kills half of it's modding community, and modding community is what keeps the game alive for several years.

 

[Suicidal]

Instead of removing hit chances they should be working on making the game actually fun to play, like making the core gameplay loop consist of more than just grinding the same 4 dungeons ad nauseam, or making combat more than just spamming the same 2-3 abilities in every encounter every turn because there are are no resource costs. Are they doing that? Something tells me that they aren't.

 

[Wunderbar]

Looks like they were using DLCs as a way to experiment with the new features. "Tokens" sound suspiciously like special abilities from DLCs (such as Stealth and Shieldbreaker's Block), the whole idea of building a self-sustaining party for extremely long dungeons was explored first in the Crimson Court DLC, and then in the Endless mode.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

no vestal, man at arms, musketeer(imagine using the arbalest), houndmaster, crusader, bounty hunter, abomination, or antiquarian

unannounced hero is obviously wearing a helmet, going to guess it's a fallen crusader or something

 

[Luka-boy]

Characters now have five fingers instead of four.

Imagine Battle Brothers 2 having characters with legs.

 

[Larianshill]

Don't have strong feelings about the roguelike roadtrip, but I'm not buying this shit, unless crusader and vestal make a comeback.

 

[Zariusz]

So no Reynauld? Wtf is this shit, Darkest Dungeon is now without best bro duo?

Fucking

I feel like they wanted to make a game that didnt replace original so community stays for both games instead of trying to port every mod to sequel and abandoning Darkest Dungeon 1.
No accuracy sounds retarded and relationships was abandoned concept from Darkest dungeon 1 from what i remember.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

"Reynauld" will probably be back as some gay shit like "FALLEN KNIGHT" because Crusader is deemed offensive. Same story with Vestal, but she probably got straight up deleted because nobody with a brain takes the sand nigger as healer over the Vestal.

She was also a female healer and was deemed not independent or strong enough.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Vestal and Crusader are probably just casualties of accuracy being removed. At least in the early access portion of this game's release it seems they've dropped everyone with a Stun move besides the Plague Doctor. I'd imagine stuff like a full party heal or a full party enemy bleed would become pretty powerful if you could never miss them.

 

[Seethe]

"Reynauld" will probably be back as some gay shit like "FALLEN KNIGHT" because Crusader is deemed offensive. Same story with Vestal, but she probably got straight up deleted because nobody with a brain takes the sand nigger as healer over the Vestal.

She was also a female healer and was deemed not independent or strong enough.

You are trying too hard

 

[Delterius]

"Reynauld" will probably be back as some gay shit like "FALLEN KNIGHT" because Crusader is deemed offensive. Same story with Vestal, but she probably got straight up deleted because nobody with a brain takes the sand nigger as healer over the Vestal.

She was also a female healer and was deemed not independent or strong enough.

You are trying too hard

how else is a generic giant spider gonna stand out?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

"Reynauld" will probably be back as some gay shit like "FALLEN KNIGHT" because Crusader is deemed offensive. Same story with Vestal, but she probably got straight up deleted because nobody with a brain takes the sand nigger as healer over the Vestal.

She was also a female healer and was deemed not independent or strong enough.

You are trying too hard

how else is a generic giant spider gonna stand out?

He could, like, stand, instead of crawling about like a paean to servility.

 

[Reinhardt]

Vestal and Crusader are probably just casualties of accuracy being removed.

Then how do you explain Leper?

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

The 2D artwork is fantastic just like the first game. The monsters and heroes are incredibly well designed. The storyline sounds decline and it is almost as if they could not come up with anything so they just mixed-matched some existing genres with a dice throw. You would think the sequel would have a better story and more dialogue and character development. I was expecting that in the sequel but cannot really get excited about this.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

You are trying too hard

You keep my post in mind, Reynauld is either DEAD or REPACKAGED and the Vestal is GONE. Christianity being ameliorated in any way, shape or form in 2021 is forbidden.

And if you're half the man you think you are you'll bet your account on it, baby. But you ain't got the SET for that, baby.

 

[copebot]

I think they made a misstep by changing the genre. One of the things I like about DD is the whole aspect of managing a bunch of characters. Just picking a team at the start of a run and sticking with it is kind of lame. It was nice how in the original game you could either play it like a meat grinder by taking more risk or how you could focus on optimizing your squads and keeping everyone alive as long as possible. It also created situations in which you would have to experiment with a new squad type just because of recovery requirements or inopportune deaths.

The whole thing that makes the game fun is unpredictability and taking calculated risks. You really have to just ignore player feedback about RNG. DD1 honestly has less RNG than it seems, less than most RPG systems, because of the whole deathblow resist thing. Sure every once in a while your party will get surprised by spiders and a character will be killed in round 1. That's very rare, and one character dying is also relatively trivial to recover from, so it just adds color to the game. Compared to something like BB where it is quite easy to lose, in DD apart from the hard difficulty you can get TPK'd multiple times, lose all your trinkets, and have it still not really matter because you keep all your hamlet upgrades.

With the new design it sounds like it'll be a more conventional roguelite but with less interesting gameplay. Curse of the Dead Gods and Hades are both good "dungeon run roguelite" games because the action gameplay is good. The gameplay of DD is not all that good, but it's the risk management that makes the decisions interesting. Take away the risk management and it is a total snoozefest. Hades with predictable turn based combat would be bad.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Eh... I was following DD development since well before the kickstarter, I actually watched the live twitch stream in which the devs came up with the name "Swinetaur," I have 135 hours in it on Steam and about as much in various salty versions... well honestly I ain´t too impressed with what I am seeing.

Hamlet management was a huge part of the game for me, having it replaced with this rougelike stuff just doesnt feel right. We will see I guess, but this is not the kind of sequel I was hoping for.

 

[Seethe]

The real question is, where the hell is Celerity?

 

[Ibn Sina]

I think they made a misstep by changing the genre. One of the things I like about DD is the whole aspect of managing a bunch of characters. Just picking a team at the start of a run and sticking with it is kind of lame. It was nice how in the original game you could either play it like a meat grinder by taking more risk or how you could focus on optimizing your squads and keeping everyone alive as long as possible. It also created situations in which you would have to experiment with a new squad type just because of recovery requirements or inopportune deaths.

The whole thing that makes the game fun is unpredictability and taking calculated risks. You really have to just ignore player feedback about RNG. DD1 honestly has less RNG than it seems, less than most RPG systems, because of the whole deathblow resist thing. Sure every once in a while your party will get surprised by spiders and a character will be killed in round 1. That's very rare, and one character dying is also relatively trivial to recover from, so it just adds color to the game. Compared to something like BB where it is quite easy to lose, in DD apart from the hard difficulty you can get TPK'd multiple times, lose all your trinkets, and have it still not really matter because you keep all your hamlet upgrades.

With the new design it sounds like it'll be a more conventional roguelite but with less interesting gameplay. Curse of the Dead Gods and Hades are both good "dungeon run roguelite" games because the action gameplay is good. The gameplay of DD is not all that good, but it's the risk management that makes the decisions interesting. Take away the risk management and it is a total snoozefest. Hades with predictable turn based combat would be bad.

It would have worked if they made the game much longer, from start to finish unique heroes are not replaceable (I hated that you can hire 10 vestals or 10 abominations, removes the absolute uniqueness of their characters) . And make the journey longer with each chapter being unqiue, no grinding same dungeons over and over again.

 

[Wunderbar]

A batch of new screenshots (some of which are high-res)

Spoiler