Darkest Dungeon

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I'd have to disagree on the ending, yeah it's kinda cliche, and not exactly cosmic horror but that wasn't the intent with DD2. It's a game about failures and the Heroes overcoming their faults to save the world, and for what it's worth I appreciated the ending the massage of hope, wariness, and overcoming our faults.

I think you should spoiler tag the ending. But at least for me it looks too silly, like they took the characters and transplanted them into a Disney scene. And while it didn't go full gay, in the end it's the idiot nihilism cope of how humans are able to do good despite the universe going against us.

I refuse to buy DD2 if Crusader is not added in and no, I don't give a fuck that he 'canonically died' at the end of 1. I had like five of the fuckers and I don't give a shit about Red Hook's storytelling because it is shit. Bounty Hunter being temporary is bad enough.

Wait, they actually censored the Crusader because he was in right wing memes?

 

[Asian tech support]

Wait, they actually censored the Crusader because he was in right wing memes?

Red Hook sneeding

 

[Lizard Machine Bugs]

I think you should spoiler tag the ending. But at least for me it looks too silly, like they took the characters and transplanted them into a Disney scene. And while it didn't go full gay, in the end it's the idiot nihilism cope of how humans are able to do good despite the universe going against us.

I get why you dislike it, but personally I liked the ending, I've always been a sucker for bittersweet and hopeful endings but that's just me, and while I really dislike Nihilists, the message of humans being able to do good and overcome bad situations is universal. And with how the DDverse(?) is I don't think the RH had much choice in ending Like humanity in DD is the failed creation of a dark god who created humans as a way to escape it's imprisonment. The other choices in endings they have are status quo, what we got, and doomer shit(which they said they wanted to avoid.

Honestly it's a shame Reynauld isn't in the game, he'd make a great Hero and his shrines would defiantly be a stand out. You could see the war crimes the effect it has on him as his PTSD grows, and finally his decision to not return to his family and continue of fighting in hopes of a redeeming glorious death. I really hope if he shows up again he isn't an enemy or a DLC character.

 

[AnOminous]

Bounty Hunter being temporary is bad enough.

Bounty Hunter sucks and is one of the most fail-tier of DD1 heroes, only slightly behind Leper.

 

[Sulla]

I get why you dislike it, but personally I liked the ending, I've always been a sucker for bittersweet and hopeful endings but that's just me, and while I really dislike Nihilists, the message of humans being able to do good and overcome bad situations is universal. And with how the DDverse(?) is I don't think the RH had much choice in ending Like humanity in DD is the failed creation of a dark god who created humans as a way to escape it's imprisonment. The other choices in endings they have are status quo, what we got, and doomer shit(which they said they wanted to avoid.

I mean there are better ways to go about that kind of ending than the literal 90 sec low effort ending that dd2 had.

Imo the route they should of gone if they wanted to be more narrative focused is dd1 happened and is canon, and dd2 is about trying to break the endless ongoing stalemate. Bam, same type of ending and you didn't even have to pull "alternate timeline" bullshit.

modify whatever the character storylines are into familial storylines so that you can actually have characters die and not have to resurrect them each chapter. It'd even feed into the whole "our families are responsible for this mess, and we need to clean it up" from dd1.

Honestly it writes itself, shame that RH's writers are incompetent. Many such cases.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I mean there are better ways to go about that kind of ending than the literal 90 sec low effort ending that dd2 had.

Imo the route they should of gone if they wanted to be more narrative focused is dd1 happened and is canon, and dd2 is about trying to break the endless ongoing stalemate. Bam, same type of ending and you didn't even have to pull "alternate timeline" bullshit.

modify whatever the character storylines are into familial storylines so that you can actually have characters die and not have to resurrect them each chapter. It'd even feed into the whole "our families are responsible for this mess, and we need to clean it up" from dd1.

Honestly it writes itself, shame that RH's writers are incompetent. Many such cases.

Considering the game has greater emphasis on your party why not have actual character epilogues for both alive and dead characters, maybe even relationship related ones of grieving/marriage?

Also a thing I thought of about the mechanic of getting a random character after a character dies, the whole point of roguelikes is having dynamic playstyle appropriate to the randomness, which makes replay difference. If 90% of the potential parties can't he expected to reach the endgame then your game is a shitty roguelike.

 

[Asian tech support]

Also a thing I thought of about the mechanic of getting a random character after a character dies, the whole point of roguelikes is having dynamic playstyle appropriate to the randomness, which makes replay difference. If 90% of the potential parties can't he expected to reach the endgame then your game is a shitty roguelike.

Which is why DD2 should have not tried to imitate bog standard roguelite design over building on what made the first game unique. Coomershit aside, Black Reliquary is way more of a proper DD2 than the actual DD2. It's a shame too because I like a lot of the changes to combat.

 

[Lizard Machine Bugs]

Red Hook said they wanted to do something radically different from the first game, and in that, they succeeded. But I feel as if making the Heroes more defined, adding a relationship system and the Roguelike elements clash.

Most of the popular Roguelikes aren't team builders and are instead deck builders or character builders for a reason. While the Heroes and the relationship system are more like something you'd see in a JRPG or a Mass Effect style game.

That being said, I don't think trying something different wasn't a mistake, although this experiment did end up with what I feel to be a fundamentally flawed game.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Gentlemen, I have done it. I have beaten act 5. God is dead, and we have killed him.

Spoiler: Still long and autistic but slightly less rage-y

Ravager/Maniac/Sharpshooter/Virtuoso

I had one failed run with this team that lost to the region 3 Cultists in a way that was more or less my own fault. I decided to run it back with the same team. I'm glad I did, because attempt 2 reached and defeated the boss. I'll skip most of the details but I do want to mention a few highlights before the boss. Highwayman and Hellion did their jobs of consistent direct damage, and Jester was a fine support, but Chadgellant absolutely ran this run. Even when Death herself showed up to try to stop the run, this certified Alpha-Sigma Male did not give a flying fuck. The Pain Train ran her the fuck over and continued its non-stop one-way trip to Murderville, USA. Especially after killing Harvest Child and trading a paltry 50% DBR for a chunky 50% HP, in a team with a top notch percentage based healer.

But then in region 3, RNGesus played a cruel joke. Right after a Hospital, and on Flagellant with a whopping 91 disease resist, he SOMEHOW managed to pick up... I think Cholera? Point is, it cuts healing received from skills by 50%.* You might recognize healing from skills as being pretty important for a character with no block or dodge, only insane self healing. I ended up derailing my entire region 4 trying to find a Hospital hidden somewhere, even skipping an easy General fight. I did not find one. HOWEVER, in nearly the last fight of the region, I got a random drop of... leeches. I didn't even know you COULD get that from drops. And then I also got... the +75% HP stained trinket from the last Bulwark. Hory shet.

*I didn't pay close attention to the numbers, but looking back I'm not 100% sure this applies to the healing from MoMo. TECHNICALLY I think that's healing as a result of a status effect.

After spending the night at the inn getting a good sucking, this absolute unit of a Flagellant left for the Mountain with a thicc 123 HP and a rough average of 27 HP consistent regen per round (approximate, assuming More More every other round and 3 hits, with Sepsis there for burst healing). Turns out you can't actually kill a walking castle who self heals for more HP per round than some characters even HAVE. Damian was now ready to casually facetank a god.

Phase 1 is hardly even worth mentioning. I heard that you needed a lot of Blight resist, but I only had immunity on Flagellant and nobody else had any bonuses. I brought 4 antidotes and only used 1. Highwayman and Hellion beat the shit out of him after set up by Jester while Flagellant tanked and healed. That's about it.

Phase 2 is... pretty interesting. It has a heavy single target damage hit similar to Fault, with a damage based prevention threshold similar to Sigh. I wish I could tell you the number, but Flagellant ate multiple 60 HP crits and asked for More, MORE! So I didn't bother figuring out the damage requirement. The token theft every turn, on the other hand, is fucking annoying for a direct damage team who desperately needs Strength and Crit for real damage. Ultimately didn't matter though, as Flagellant just utterly cockblocked everything the boss could throw at me until I whittled him down.

Phase 3 was where I was afraid my man Damian might be my undoing. See, one of the things the boss does is spawn a reflection of each of your characters, in turn, that only that character can damage. They don't have the abilities of that character, they just do two moderate single targets attacks per turn with slow but infinite scaling. The first problem is, while damage oriented characters can easily crunch their past sins, Flagellant is a bad damage dealer. The second problem is that Flail pushes the target back 1, and in the nature of this particular fight, that means pushing them past the main boss and into the back row. I was worried I would push the reflection out of reach and he'd eventually run me over.

To that end, I brought Echoing March to try to pull him up front, as well as Acid Rain to try to chip him out in a worst case scenario. Turns out... I didn't need it. Uniquely among the reflections, this one pushes forward after attacking so you can reach him. None of the other characters did that. It might be exclusive to Flagellant or even Maniac specifically. I bring this up because, for a game that normally has I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream levels of antipathy toward humans, this is actually a very thoughtful feature.

Anyway, third phase isn't that hard, as long as you have renewable healing. Just very, VERY long. It also requires some back row damage for the second evil-cherub-whatever, but it's not nearly as picky as Sigh. About half the characters have at least one effective option, but you best bring at one of them.

Overall, not bad! I liked that the boss didn't do the exact same fucking thing every turn and gave you a little room to be creative. You need fairly broad coverage in order to win, but nothing ultra specific other than a good healer and a way to kill/move a back row enemy, as well as at least one front row attack on everyone.

If I ever hated myself enough to do a Grand Slam, I would seriously consider taking this team rather than the conventional setup. It is fucking STRONG.

So ends my journey through the Darkest Dungeon. Or... maybe not quite. I took a peek at the Fault redesign, and it surprisingly looks pretty decent. Sometime in the next week or so I'm going to try to find the time to poke his eye out.

 

[Kane Lives]

I myself took the Radiant pill and just steamrolled the Act 4 boss with a surprisingly anticlimatic setup of PD/Runaway/HWM/MAA. The DOT rape was strong in this composition, and I can see why it even got a unique combo name. (Helped that I got a lot of DOT helpers. +1 blight for PD, +2 fire for Runaway, chance of +3 bleed for HWM, then snagged the 3 fire on crit trophy from the librarian.)

I'll try Ravenous Reach again sometime without the Radiant Torch. It really just made the entire thing mundane.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I ended up replaying both 3 and 4, and got 4 deathless this time. It was a couple weeks ago so I don't really remember the team. No long autistic stories this time.

I think the redesign of 3 is mostly good, except for token copy on crit, and punishing YOU for critting. Otherwise, mostly fine. Taunt is now king of that fight. Throw a Noisemaker on your fastest character, use it on your tank at the beginning of the first round, then have your tank taunt every round. That's seriously it. If you're struggling, just use Poet and spam Intimidate. Monarch is even better if you can drag his ass there, but... it's Monarch.

I probably won't be playing again unless there's a substantial update. But I actually came back to post this. A pretty interesting video by a series veteran on why bosses feel so shitty. TLDR: Multi-target attack spam by enemies wildly unbalances the game because it renders tanking and healing irrelevant.

 

[Asian tech support]

A pretty interesting video by a series veteran on why bosses feel so shitty. TLDR: Multi-target attack spam by enemies wildly unbalances the game because it renders tanking and healing irrelevant.

Ye that guy makes good videos. I'm glad to see he's starting to wean off the kool aid.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

My biggest problem with DD2 is that once I found a silver bullet composition, there was no need to change away from it, ever. In DD1 you had to adjust your party depending on where you went, as Ruins were vastly different fom the Weald and what was good for the goose did nothing for the gander.

Here, a team of Man-at-Arms Sergeant/Flagellant Scourge/Plague Doctor Alchemist/Grave Robber Venomdrop melts absolutely everything.

This team beat all 5 acts before I unlocked 3/4 of the Altar, with only combat and inn items being somewhat complete. And I no longer feel like playing because what else is there to do.

 

[Kane Lives]

My biggest problem with DD2 is that once I found a silver bullet composition, there was no need to change away from it, ever. In DD1 you had to adjust your party depending on where you went, as Ruins were vastly different fom the Weald and what was good for the goose did nothing for the gander.

Here, a team of Man-at-Arms Sergeant/Flagellant Scourge/Plague Doctor Alchemist/Grave Robber Venomdrop melts absolutely everything.

This team beat all 5 acts before I unlocked 3/4 of the Altar, with only combat and inn items being somewhat complete. And I no longer feel like playing because what else is there to do.

I found a lot of the fun was in experimenting, but as you say, once you found a team composition you really like there's no replayability since most regions are fairly straightforward to beat anyway. (Probably due to the fact that they need to accomodate a rogue-lite design; if a region can cockblock a particular team completely they'd get a different headache.)

 

[The Feline Solution]

I probably won't be playing again unless there's a substantial update.

Yeah, i haven't touched it ever since i did the Grand Slam achievment shortly after release. I expected a little more post-launch engagement from Red Hook, similarly to what DD1 got. It's quite disapointing that there hasn't even been some little things like character rebalancing.

And I no longer feel like playing because what else is there to do.

To me that's the one major problem with DD2.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I found a lore video about the game and it's pretty bare bones. Like you have the setup of the scholar and then just a list of how things went to shit, rather than having a timeline of the ancestor fucking things up methodically

 

[Asian tech support]

I expected a little more post-launch engagement from Red Hook, similarly to what DD1 got. It's quite disapointing that there hasn't even been some little things like character rebalancing.

They were probably in the black as soon as they signed that EGS exclusivity contract. The dudes who run the studio always seemed like asshats and I think they just ran with it to make a quick buck. I don't expect anything major in the future.

 

[AnOminous]

Yeah, i haven't touched it ever since i did the Grand Slam achievment shortly after release. I expected a little more post-launch engagement from Red Hook, similarly to what DD1 got. It's quite disapointing that there hasn't even been some little things like character rebalancing.

Yeah, that's what I was waiting for before buying at a discount. But it hasn't happened. The original DD started out pretty fucky, too, before the rebalancing.

This is part of the problem with EGS whores. They get their money up front and have no real motivation to fix their shit games.

To me that's the one major problem with DD2.

There's also the lack of any real modding community.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

I found a lore video about the game and it's pretty bare bones. Like you have the setup of the scholar and then just a list of how things went to shit, rather than having a timeline of the ancestor fucking things up methodically

The lore of DD2 is pretty basic compared to DD1. The original was the tale of a Lovecraftian scholar delving ever deeper into the forbidden subjects until it corrupted him completely, yet thoroughly enjoying every step on the path to damnation and remaining unrepentant, the latter point being presented as an actual plot twist.

In DD2, we have the well-meaning Scholar who failed to restrain his bright and ambitious protege until the student surpassed the master, performed one (1, single, один, uno) ritual that fucked up the universe by aligning it with his crumbling mental state and... that's pretty much it. Go unfuck it through group therapy with four of your equally fucked up pals who need to work out their guilt so everyone can move on. The twist is absent, and all the cosmic malignities were spawned from what amounts to an occult oopsie. And that's assuming there even WAS an one because the narrator is unreliable and the entire struggle may be happening entirely in the student's head, McGee's Alice style, after he shanked his mentor and is now gibbering in a soft-padded cell in a loony bin somewhere.

 

[Sawamura Simp]

I know its kinda silly, but the aesthetic change from dd1 to dd2 has completely killed any interest I had in playing the sequel.

Same for me. I've put about 100 hours on a pirated copy of DD (no Radiant Mode yet)
and then purchased a full-price copy on Steam + Crimson Court. Played it blind, no Wiki/FAQs until I finished it.

Never rage-uninstalled/reinstalled a game so many times in more than 30+ years of gaming.

And I'm pretty sure the Epic Games Store exclusive must have had something to do with the design decisions.
(give developers money in advance and see what happens...)
At least, that for me was reason enough to not give a damn about it.
It's not like the game needed a sequel (or tryhard, abhorrent mongoloid mods, for that matter).
As it is, it's a great achievement.

One of the things that made Darkest Dungeon so engrossing for me was
the devs' desperation to get everything done in the shortest amount of time.

Bourassa's artwork is incredibly deep in its simplicity (his YT Channel is recommended viewing for visual artists),
and "Warrior Within" Chatwood's score aided by the lighting mechanic completely made the game for me.
(In fact, I found out there was gonna be a DDII because I got an update from Chatwood's Soundcloud)

The Narrator was a stroke of genius and proof enough that you don't need raytracing,
motion capture or other supposedly mandatory technical faggotry to achieve true immersion.