after 166.9 hours and 54/65 achievements done i can definitively say i am exhausted with this game
the moment to moment gameplay is excellent, as is the new tokens system which i think is a step up from the first game, as are the new skills and paths you can use with each class. it's the reason why the score is only middling and not somewhere in the depths.
this game is held severely back by one major issue. this game is torn by its ties to the original game and its desire to be a rogue-like, and thus doesn't manage to do either as well as it should.
most runs in darkest dungeon 2 takes a minimum of two hours and can get up to three. if you're very lucky (or are just doing the denial chapter) then you might get away with an hour. but do you know what i could do in one hour in another rogue-like? I could do a full run of The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. If you want a turn-based RPG rogue-like example, look no further than Hieronymus Bosch's Brutal Orchestra.
that's a good comparison piece, actually. Brutal Orchestra has a system similar to the stagecoach in that it is a UI where you choose one of so many paths in order to fight enemies, find items, etc. you know what it doesn't have? a long and drawn out stagecoach trawl where the only benefit is running over road debris to potentially get items. in Brutal Orchestra, you can go down paths quickly and near instantly and as such, runs in Brutal Orchestra at most only take about an hour. if you're not good at the game? An hour and a half. keep in mind that 1.5 hours is a generous time for how long DD2 runs last generally at minimum.
you know what else Brutal Orchestra doesn't have? five minutes of set-up before you can get into the meat of the game. must I do the fights in The Valley every time? must I ride through the stagecoach and in order to go through the Altar of Hope, to select the chapter of the game I want to play, and to pick my heroes? was all of that necessary when all of it could be condensed into one or two menus?
but here's the twist, hypothetical reader, and the twist is that all of this micromanagement and time-wasting was in the first game. you know what the first game also had? permanent and meaningful upgrades you could funnel resources into.
to be fair to the game, they sort of tried to do this, but it was a half measure. the two forms of progression that you retain between runs (ignoring chapter completion itself) is the Altar of Hope and the Memories.
the former is a sort of replacement for the Hamlet in the first game. you use candles of hope in order to unlock items for future runs. you also can pay some candles to receive benefits that will make runs easier, but it's not enough. a bizarre feature of the system is that when you unlock new items, you will start your next run with them in your inventory, but only for that run. that's odd, i thought, that they would give you a potentially busted trinket for free.
then i had another thought, why the fuck didn't the game let you use your remaining candles of hope to buy trinkets or inn items at the Altar of Hope if you are in excess, as opposed to having it fill a useless score meter? make it crazy expensive if you'd like, but it would be an easy way to keep candles of hope relevant even after you've unlocked all the items. it would make heroes feel less crippled when starting new runs.
speaking of heroes, the Memories system. it's a wash. this is the attempt by the game to recreate the "persistent heroes" from the original in a manner i can only call baffling. keep in mind that runs will often last at least two hours and that Memories reset upon death, so the marginal buffs you give your party are rendered useless by one errant critical hit. and it wouldn't be so bad, y'know, those errant crits, except each hero can only have one set of memories and you can't take duplicates into runs. you wanna play a run with your highwayman with three memories? why would you ever risk them going out unless you want them getting a new memory? in which case, hope you don't get fucked over by RNG because that's potentially six to eight hours of lost character.
this does not feel the same as it did in DD1. each hero, whether they were dupes or not, had their own personality to me. the quirks remained, as did the skills i preferred to equip on them, and they had experiences they lived through in these runs. y'know why losing them felt tragic, and not nearly as shitty as it does in this game? because i know there are other heroes, likely ones of the same class as the dead hero, who can take their place and i might even find heroes in the stagecoach with a decently high starting level so i don't feel so utterly crippled by death.
permanent trinkets, too, helped lessen the burden of death, because you were always getting something that lasts from a run so long as you don't run away without retrieving it or party wipe. in DD2, you can only win or party wipe. splendid.
were the game more like a rogue-like, they would cut out all of the filler in between the parts you actually enjoy, ie: the combat, and would just let you do that.
were the game more like darkest dungeon, long term progression would be more permanent, as opposed to locking it to future run items and minor buffs to the run that became invisible to me very quickly.
but i did play it for a while, so i must've enjoyed some of it. near the end, however, i really couldn't care less. red hook's body of work has been laid bare and i think it could use some polishing up. maybe DD3 will commit to the rogue-like bit or return to form. either way, i would probably like it better. keep the new tokens system though, i am quite fond of that.
i will gladly move on to playing Fear & Hunger 2, which is a game where i also get killed by RNG and potentially lose hours of progress and goddammit
the moment to moment gameplay is excellent, as is the new tokens system which i think is a step up from the first game, as are the new skills and paths you can use with each class. it's the reason why the score is only middling and not somewhere in the depths.
this game is held severely back by one major issue. this game is torn by its ties to the original game and its desire to be a rogue-like, and thus doesn't manage to do either as well as it should.
most runs in darkest dungeon 2 takes a minimum of two hours and can get up to three. if you're very lucky (or are just doing the denial chapter) then you might get away with an hour. but do you know what i could do in one hour in another rogue-like? I could do a full run of The Binding of Isaac: Repentance. If you want a turn-based RPG rogue-like example, look no further than Hieronymus Bosch's Brutal Orchestra.
that's a good comparison piece, actually. Brutal Orchestra has a system similar to the stagecoach in that it is a UI where you choose one of so many paths in order to fight enemies, find items, etc. you know what it doesn't have? a long and drawn out stagecoach trawl where the only benefit is running over road debris to potentially get items. in Brutal Orchestra, you can go down paths quickly and near instantly and as such, runs in Brutal Orchestra at most only take about an hour. if you're not good at the game? An hour and a half. keep in mind that 1.5 hours is a generous time for how long DD2 runs last generally at minimum.
you know what else Brutal Orchestra doesn't have? five minutes of set-up before you can get into the meat of the game. must I do the fights in The Valley every time? must I ride through the stagecoach and in order to go through the Altar of Hope, to select the chapter of the game I want to play, and to pick my heroes? was all of that necessary when all of it could be condensed into one or two menus?
but here's the twist, hypothetical reader, and the twist is that all of this micromanagement and time-wasting was in the first game. you know what the first game also had? permanent and meaningful upgrades you could funnel resources into.
to be fair to the game, they sort of tried to do this, but it was a half measure. the two forms of progression that you retain between runs (ignoring chapter completion itself) is the Altar of Hope and the Memories.
the former is a sort of replacement for the Hamlet in the first game. you use candles of hope in order to unlock items for future runs. you also can pay some candles to receive benefits that will make runs easier, but it's not enough. a bizarre feature of the system is that when you unlock new items, you will start your next run with them in your inventory, but only for that run. that's odd, i thought, that they would give you a potentially busted trinket for free.
then i had another thought, why the fuck didn't the game let you use your remaining candles of hope to buy trinkets or inn items at the Altar of Hope if you are in excess, as opposed to having it fill a useless score meter? make it crazy expensive if you'd like, but it would be an easy way to keep candles of hope relevant even after you've unlocked all the items. it would make heroes feel less crippled when starting new runs.
speaking of heroes, the Memories system. it's a wash. this is the attempt by the game to recreate the "persistent heroes" from the original in a manner i can only call baffling. keep in mind that runs will often last at least two hours and that Memories reset upon death, so the marginal buffs you give your party are rendered useless by one errant critical hit. and it wouldn't be so bad, y'know, those errant crits, except each hero can only have one set of memories and you can't take duplicates into runs. you wanna play a run with your highwayman with three memories? why would you ever risk them going out unless you want them getting a new memory? in which case, hope you don't get fucked over by RNG because that's potentially six to eight hours of lost character.
this does not feel the same as it did in DD1. each hero, whether they were dupes or not, had their own personality to me. the quirks remained, as did the skills i preferred to equip on them, and they had experiences they lived through in these runs. y'know why losing them felt tragic, and not nearly as shitty as it does in this game? because i know there are other heroes, likely ones of the same class as the dead hero, who can take their place and i might even find heroes in the stagecoach with a decently high starting level so i don't feel so utterly crippled by death.
permanent trinkets, too, helped lessen the burden of death, because you were always getting something that lasts from a run so long as you don't run away without retrieving it or party wipe. in DD2, you can only win or party wipe. splendid.
were the game more like a rogue-like, they would cut out all of the filler in between the parts you actually enjoy, ie: the combat, and would just let you do that.
were the game more like darkest dungeon, long term progression would be more permanent, as opposed to locking it to future run items and minor buffs to the run that became invisible to me very quickly.
but i did play it for a while, so i must've enjoyed some of it. near the end, however, i really couldn't care less. red hook's body of work has been laid bare and i think it could use some polishing up. maybe DD3 will commit to the rogue-like bit or return to form. either way, i would probably like it better. keep the new tokens system though, i am quite fond of that.
i will gladly move on to playing Fear & Hunger 2, which is a game where i also get killed by RNG and potentially lose hours of progress and goddammit