Fantastic visuals, nuanced and tightly designed combat, a great sense of progression, and The Narrator From The First One all combine to create an experience that, in my opinion, supersedes the original in most of the ways that matter.
Of course, I say 'most' intentionally. I can't honestly say Darkest Dungeon 2 is an improvement in 'every' way to its predecessor; it is a different game in many ways, but I think many of the developmental struggles and gameplay balance problems the first game ran into have their solutions implemented much more elegantly in this game.
Corpses are now genuine obstacles that have pronounced counterplay to them in abilities instead of the lackadaisical, tedious bump in the road they were before. No longer is the gameplay about minimizing terrible RNG rolls at 70-90% hit rate, instead any risks you take are visible thanks to any accuracy drops being visible as tokens (which carry their own interaction points aswell!). Of course, there's still a decent bit of RNG; critting, especially, makes it's haunting return to kill your favorite units, but the game being single segment, 'run' based means the sting doesn't go quite as deep.
Darkest Dungeon 1 does carry a bit more gravitas each time you step foot into a dungeon, as anyone coming in may not come back. However, moving into a 'run' based format as opposed to the city building dungeon delver, it also allowed red hook to move off of the extremely frustrating 'this dungeon is below my skill levels' nonsense, and constant fiddling of bits and bobs of sanity, trinkets, weapon/armor levels, etc.
It always felt like red hook didn't know truly how to match it's macro elements with the atmosphere and gameplay it wanted to encourage with the original game, and here they found it.
As an aside, I do think hero shrines are excessive amounts of meta-progression that are too important, and too numerous to do. I like how each character has a story now, and I like the interactive segments, but grinding each characters 5 unlockable moves essentially by hoping you scout or run into things in the map, as opposed to everything else (which is just spending a currency at the altar of hope) is a trial of pain. It feels like you can't even begin to even theorize what a character can do before you drag their body to 5 shrines. Runs take a long time; it can be 2 hours for 1 trip to the mountain. That's a lot of time just to MAYBE get ONE character into 'usability.'
Anyways, overall, a great, new take on the original style, if a little derivative (surely there's something else out there besides the STS map?). Can't wait to see what dlc will be like.
Of course, I say 'most' intentionally. I can't honestly say Darkest Dungeon 2 is an improvement in 'every' way to its predecessor; it is a different game in many ways, but I think many of the developmental struggles and gameplay balance problems the first game ran into have their solutions implemented much more elegantly in this game.
Corpses are now genuine obstacles that have pronounced counterplay to them in abilities instead of the lackadaisical, tedious bump in the road they were before. No longer is the gameplay about minimizing terrible RNG rolls at 70-90% hit rate, instead any risks you take are visible thanks to any accuracy drops being visible as tokens (which carry their own interaction points aswell!). Of course, there's still a decent bit of RNG; critting, especially, makes it's haunting return to kill your favorite units, but the game being single segment, 'run' based means the sting doesn't go quite as deep.
Darkest Dungeon 1 does carry a bit more gravitas each time you step foot into a dungeon, as anyone coming in may not come back. However, moving into a 'run' based format as opposed to the city building dungeon delver, it also allowed red hook to move off of the extremely frustrating 'this dungeon is below my skill levels' nonsense, and constant fiddling of bits and bobs of sanity, trinkets, weapon/armor levels, etc.
It always felt like red hook didn't know truly how to match it's macro elements with the atmosphere and gameplay it wanted to encourage with the original game, and here they found it.
As an aside, I do think hero shrines are excessive amounts of meta-progression that are too important, and too numerous to do. I like how each character has a story now, and I like the interactive segments, but grinding each characters 5 unlockable moves essentially by hoping you scout or run into things in the map, as opposed to everything else (which is just spending a currency at the altar of hope) is a trial of pain. It feels like you can't even begin to even theorize what a character can do before you drag their body to 5 shrines. Runs take a long time; it can be 2 hours for 1 trip to the mountain. That's a lot of time just to MAYBE get ONE character into 'usability.'
Anyways, overall, a great, new take on the original style, if a little derivative (surely there's something else out there besides the STS map?). Can't wait to see what dlc will be like.