Darkest Dungeon 2 Epic Games Store Early Access - $30 to beta test the demo says Tim Sweeney

"The thread of early access games is a finicky and immeasurable test of patience, its content causing both anemia and bulimia from malicious monetary design."

Darkest Dungeon Darkest Dungeon II: Beasts & Burdens Update - Red Hook Studios

www.darkestdungeon.com www.darkestdungeon.com

A very small but necessary update overall. The new Hero Paths add some much needed variety to your runs and the Hero rebalancing makes it so that you can actually have fun with more risky hero compositions instead of being pigeon-holed to playing very safe and cautiously. Seems like there's only two Hero Paths per character but would love to see more Hero Paths added as early access goes on.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I just don't get why go Early Access. Darkest Dungeon was super popular and gave the devs a pretty penny, what's the point in redoing the early access model that forces you to design the game in chronological pieces rather than a single whole? The fan feedback will be ignored anyways and you have a big risk of people not buying the final product if you fuck up during the long update time (which also put you on a timer and prevents you from doing future big changes).
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That or maybe because they want to copy the success Hades got since that was Early Access (Deep Rock Galactic kind of counts since it got popular when it was EA in Feb 28).
 
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So sorry to necro a dead thread but it feels appropriate for what seems like a dead game. It's just occurred to me why they went for early access on Epic Games Store... So they can charge for and release a demo for free chinabux. Red hook are a bunch of sellouts. What's the point of releasing a roadmap with no dates? The February patch came and went and the only news they've posted on the website is autofellatio about how good the February patch was. And it came out 3 months ago.

Edit: just had to open my big mouth, apparently the next update comes out this coming Wednesday. My point still stands tho.
 
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Dr. Ricearoni said:
So sorry to necro a dead thread but it feels appropriate for what seems like a dead game. It's just occurred to me why they went for early access on Epic Games Store... So they can charge for and release a demo for free chinabux. Red hook are a bunch of sellouts. What's the point of releasing a roadmap with no dates? The February patch came and went and the only news they've posted on the website is autofellatio about how good the February patch was. And it came out 3 months ago.
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I can't blame them too much since money is money and Red Hook might as well get paid for doing an Early Access on EGS, compared to Gaben's platform they'd get nothing extra. The gaming industry is one part Art and ten parts marketing after all, especially for sequels.

The general consensus is led to predict the Steam release/Full 1.0 release will come out around late October 2022/Early 2023. That should be around the time when their EGS exclusivity deal expires. This 1 year time frame also coincides with how long Darkest Dungeon 1 was in early access, give or take a few months. Arguably this predicted release window isn't much reliable since the Devs have been suspiciously cagey about the Steam release date so who really knows?

New zone next week BTW.
Screenshot 2022-05-14 205614.png
 

FULL RELEASE FOR EGS AND STEAM: FEBRUARY 2023

Mother-cucking finally! I would've preferred to not wait half a year for this announcement but hey I'm the on who bought into Early Access in the first place so I can't be too mad.

And a quick opinion on the chapter two update, The Shroud is a nice new zone to add some atmospheric variety. The two new boss fights are a pair of obnoxiously fat bitches but all in all good challenges. The game now feels about 40% complete, which seems to be the intended feeling since it coincides with the new release date.
 
I know I'm late, but I don't get the decision to change the graphics. Nobody thought the graphics was the problem in the first game, and it definitely feels like a lot of development time that could have been spent making content was spent on the graphics. This pretty much kills the modding scene as well

In my opinion a great Darkest Dungeon 2 sequel would look pretty much the same, but with the combat, variety, missions, and world greatly expanded.
 
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Übertroon said:
I know I'm late, but I don't get the decision to change the graphics. Nobody thought the graphics was the problem in the first game, and it definitely feels like a lot of development time that could have been spent making content was spent on the graphics. This pretty much kills the modding scene as well

In my opinion a great Darkest Dungeon 2 sequel would look pretty much the same, but with the combat, variety, missions, and world greatly expanded.
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The developers have stated before that the sequel is meant to be more like a separate spin-off title, as to not directly replace DD1. Despite the big 2 in the name Darkest Dungeon 2 plays fairly different than it's predecessor. There's less focus on managing a whole estate of mercenaries but rather a single set of "heroes" going on a single campaign. This game has a much bigger emphasis on streamlined mechanics like the status tokens and the revamped relationship system, which I much prefer over DD1's hard percentage based buffs/debuffs. The graphics themselves I assume, were also meant to make it distinct from DD1 as well, even if both games use the same characters. Overall after 90 hours of early access and having 150+ hours in the original Darkest Dungeon, I myself can confidently say I agree with Red Hook Studios that these two games are wholly separate experiences.

The modding scene may not be as big as the first game but the first game's modding scene is still going strong after all these years. If you're looking for more recent Darkest Dungeon 1 content I would recommend the Black Reliquary mod, which a total conversion mod that is essentially a full-fledged expansion.
 
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Dr. Ricearoni said:
So sorry to necro a dead thread but it feels appropriate for what seems like a dead game. It's just occurred to me why they went for early access on Epic Games Store... So they can charge for and release a demo for free chinabux. Red hook are a bunch of sellouts. What's the point of releasing a roadmap with no dates? The February patch came and went and the only news they've posted on the website is autofellatio about how good the February patch was. And it came out 3 months ago.

Edit: just had to open my big mouth, apparently the next update comes out this coming Wednesday. My point still stands tho.
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Epic's part of the problem, but the bigger issue is the game's shit. They scrapped everything people liked about 1 and threw together a bunch of dumb Oregon Trail-style mechanics no one asked for, and massively cut down on moddability and replayability. They also really fucked up the difficulty and balance, since now you can run into encounters that are impossibly easy or impossibly hard anywhere with no restrictions.

I keep hearing that they tried to rip off another game called Slay the Spire, but I've never played it so I have no idea how accurate that is.
 
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BiggerChungus said:
Epic's part of the problem, but the bigger issue is the game's shit. They scrapped everything people liked about 1 and threw together a bunch of dumb Oregon Trail-style mechanics no one asked for, and massively cut down on moddability and replayability. They also really fucked up the difficulty and balance, since now you can run into encounters that are impossibly easy or impossibly hard anywhere with no restrictions.

I keep hearing that they tried to rip off another game called Slay the Spire, but I've never played it so I have no idea how accurate that is.
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I have played slay the spire and you can definitely see the inspiration. In Slay the Spire you move from encounter to encounter on a branching, tree-style map incredibly similar to how DD2 does it. And you're not wrong, it does gut a lot of my favorite parts of darkest dungeon in favor of making a more traditional roguelike. I can get the appeal of it but it just doesn't quite fit with the style and tone of the game, especially since a big part of the first game was that you were allowed to fail occasionally. Here, failure just ends your run and makes you start over. The brutal rng could be forgiven in the first game because you always have the option to give up and try again later, but you don't get the luxury of running away in DD2, unless they changed it recently.
 
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This game started a strange trend in how I've been playing games and I don't like it. When it came out of EA I absolutely grinded this game. I got stuck on act 3 boss, grinded some more, and once he was out of the way I grinded my way to the end. I did not get a feeling of success or reward, just a... relieve it's over kind of feeling. I think it's too similar to Slay the Spire to make me ever want to play it again. Changed too much, added to little.
ASCHQ said:
DLC was announced today...
Does this mean they are comfortable with the current content? I'm a bit dissapointed with the gameplay as is.
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Thanks for the heads up, I looked around and this was posted in their discussion thread about the DLC.
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Sounds like they are going to keep making DLC and whatever small fish stuff they think will "add" to the game that gets developed along side it will be free.
 
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There are like four DD threads. This shit needs to be merged.
Don't make me said:
Sounds like they are going to keep making DLC and whatever small fish stuff they think will "add" to the game that gets developed along side it will be free.
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No way DD2 sold anywhere near as well as DD1. I'd imagine most of the money came from Epic rolling the endeavor. If they wanna make money, they're gonna have to nickel and dime what's left of the playerbase. I don't begrudge them that but the game is still pretty damn barebones.
 
Wouldn't a Steam Workshop been easier if it was implemented from the get go? The fact it takes months to make it suggests the devs now need to make the game more modular to support it. It is just weird how the technical capabilities went down

Also judging from what people here said, I can't find a reason to buy the DLC. The main gameplay criticism was that you end up with a single party that needs to do everything because, unlike the previous game, you can't finetune a party for an area. So a new character lives or dies based on how it works with the rest of the characters, and new areas will still work with the old game breaking parties.
 
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wtfNeedSignUp said:
Wouldn't a Steam Workshop been easier if it was implemented from the get go? The fact it takes months to make it suggests the devs now need to make the game more modular to support it. It is just weird how the technical capabilities went down
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I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that workshop support was an afterthought despite modded content being one of the biggest reasons for the first game's longevity. DD2 modding doesn't interest me unless someone manages to remake DD1 or a DD1 style game within it.
 
Apologies for the necro but the Kingdoms game-mode should be mentioned, it's better, but still no DD1 campaign. Wayne June was the soul of this franchise and with his passing they can only milk it so far. The man had such an inflection on his voice that "AI" would do no justice.
 
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