Dark Dungeon II is the sequel to the 2016 indie hit Darkest Dungeon, which saw players fighting to reclaim an inherited estate from hordes of death and mutation while discovering the secrets that lay beneath. Darkest Dungeon was a huge success, thanks in huge part to its phenomenal art and presentation and its use of Lovecraftian themes and a setting that made it unique in the sea of games available on Steam at the time.
For many players (including myself), Darkest Dungeon was the first introduction to Cosmic Horror, a horror subgenre that emphasizes the terror of the unknowable and incomprehensible, making the human form feel truly small and impossibly insignificant to a universe of obscure terror. The game distinguished itself with its unique formula of grim spelunking and its enthralling narrative, which at times didn’t need to (and wouldn’t) say much to paint a broad and colorful picture of the world around you.
All developer Red Hook Studios really needed to do to capitalize on the raving hunger for a Darkest Dungeon sequel was to release a very similar, slightly improved game. The game’s formula has proven successful, and often fans of a game ask for nothing more than a rehash of the gameplay they enjoyed so much the first time.
Red Hook, however, took the far riskier route and tried something new, making a sequel to their successful formula with totally new mechanics, a refreshed art direction, and a plethora of other changes. The risk taken by Red Hook to try something new is commendable, and something that I wish a lot more game devs would try, and the best part of all is that it totally works.
In the original Darkest Dungeon, you’re tasked with managing an estate inherited from your ancestor and exploring and fighting off the depths of his debaucherous experimentation located below. Gameplay revolved around spelunking several dungeons, taking on randomly generated levels with randomly generated groups of heroes, and burning through them like coal to continue fueling the metaphorical fire of your ambition. You would sometimes have whole teams of mercenaries drafted for no other reason but to gather as much gold and supplies for your main party as possible, trading their lives to make a little progress toward the Darkest Dungeon.
Darkest Dungeon was brutal and unforgiving, tasking players with leveling up a party of inherently expandable and outmatched heroes to the impossibly high metric required to take on the final dungeon, which made the grueling work leading up to it seem like child’s play. It was a game about recovering from failure and making the best of a bad situation, where a single failure could undo hours of grueling work and see you starting again at the beginning. While enjoyed by many, this certainly wasn’t the most attractive design philosophy to everyone, and the inherent resource management involved in the game could make these failures seemingly impossible to recover from.
Darkest Dungeon II keeps the philosophy of failure and makes it less of an agonizing experience as a player by fully leaning into the game’s roguelike foundations.
In Darkest Dungeon II, you are no longer managing your estate — The events of the game have long since unfolded and your party sets out on the path to prevent the apocalypse. I think. I’m not 100% sure on how the two game’s stories connect to each other, with some changes to character relations that make the narrative connection a little confusing, but I am 90% sure it’s a direct continuation of the first game’s story.
With no estate to manage and not a lot of time to prevent the apocalypse, the entire game moves to the stagecoach and the trail toward the mountain. The frantic chase to prevent the end of the world presents the narrative more as one singular adventure than the story of countless parties hired and lost in the pursuit of your goal. This means that each death, rather than a grueling roadblock to progress and a loss of valuable resources, is a total reset of the story, putting you right back at the beginning.
This is great for a number of reasons, the first and most important being you don’t lose your hard-leveled characters. Like other roguelike games, you earn resources that can be used after a loss to permanently improve your run and characters before the run itself, making each trip toward the mountain a little more forgiving. Taking full advantage of the roguelike genre’s mechanics removes the player punishment inherent in Darkest 1, making the game so much easier to enjoy without sacrificing on the theme of grueling hardship and sorrow.
Each run sees you leading an assembled party of heroes toward the mountain to prevent the apocalypse. To get there, you first have to travel through multiple zones with their own unique hazards, enemies, and bosses. It’s your choice where you take the stagecoach, with the only caveat being that you must defeat several bosses before you can take on the mountain.
Each route you take has a branching path to explore as you see fit, giving you the option of playing it safe and avoiding hazards or facing danger head-on to earn more resources for your journey.
The changes to the gameplay go deeper than a genre switch-up and are paired with the game’s new presentation. A shift in style shows characters rendered far more lifelike than the paper-doll style they had before, and the introduction of a 2D-3D mix and tons of new animation breathes new life into the game’s dying world. Every character is now fully animated, including your horrifying enemies.
The new style is pretty jarring if you’re coming from Darkest 1, and I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first, but a few runs into the game and I am decidedly a fan. The animation adds a ton of personality to the characters, who are no longer faceless adventurers but unique, named people who exist in the world. This is expanded upon by new backstory content that fleshes out who these people are and were before they found themselves in your employ.
Alongside these bold new directions is the classic Darkest Dungeon gameplay, refreshed for the 2023 release. While so much may seem different, fans will be relieved to find that the battles play nearly identically to the original game, making use of its unique turn-based formula with very slight enhancements to make the experience smoother. While there’s plenty to learn, being a veteran of the first game will still certainly aid you in this new journey.
That’s really the perfect way to describe Darkest Dungeon II. A familiar experience that’s bold enough to try new things. The game plays close enough to its predecessor to give fans familiarity, but still new enough to be its own thing. Unlike so many sequels, Darkest Dungeon and Darkest Dungeon II are different enough to justify playing both games, with the sequel being way more than just an improved version of the first.
The Final Word
Darkest Dungeon II will appeal to fans of the old game and new victims. I mean, players, alike. The cosmic nihilism and battle to preserve hope in Darkest Dungeon II’s narrative is paired with solid gameplay improvements that are less likely to turn players into nihilists themselves.
Darkest Dungeon II was reviewed on the PC. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Darkest Dungeon II is available on Epic Games and Steam.
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