Darkest Dungeon

[Jaimas]

There's also another achievement when you get the inevitable Total Party Wipe. I sent a bunch of level 0s there with no equipment at all. They survived an encounter with two Rapturous Cultists (which apparently have no attacks anyway) but then ran into a Cultist Priest. They'd nearly killed it but then it summoned two more of its kind. Everyone died of Heart Attacks on the same round shortly after killing the original.

It's theoretically possible to beat the first one of the Darkest Dungeon quests, but only with a very specific party and only if the RNG cooperates.

I personally don't see it barring spam parties or abusing flagellants.

 

[Adjective_Noun]

A bit necro but I think this doesn't warrant a new thread
So the game has a total rework mod called Black Reliquary was announced somewhere in 2021
Looks interesting if a bit goofy with the airship and giant robot that you can recruit
But my problem with it and a lot of the darkest dungeon fans is why are they all so fucking horny

this is all the character I think and the Twitter fanart was retweeted by the devs




I just don't get it. The whole setting and theme of the game really don't seem fitting for such thirstiness, and then there are all the mods to make all characters into half naked big busted women ( and all the anime ones but at this point, I don't even bother to look at anything related to anime ).

Here's the trailer if anyone is curious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QznMysTmtE
Maybe I'm in the minority or sound puritanical but I just don't want porn soft-core or otherwise to interact with vidya is it so hard to keep the two separate.

 

[Jaimas]

A bit necro but I think this doesn't warrant a new thread
So the game has a total rework mod called Black Reliquary was announced somewhere in 2021
Looks interesting if a bit goofy with the airship and giant robot that you can recruit
But my problem with it and a lot of the darkest dungeon fans is why are they all so fucking horny

View attachment 4448500
View attachment 4448524
View attachment 4448588View attachment 4448592View attachment 4448616

this is all the character I think and the Twitter fanart was retweeted by the devs
View attachment 4448596View attachment 4448600

View attachment 4448604

I just don't get it. The whole setting and theme of the game really don't seem fitting for such thirstiness, and then there are all the mods to make all characters into half naked big busted women ( and all the anime ones but at this point, I don't even bother to look at anything related to anime ).

Here's the trailer if anyone is curious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QznMysTmtE
Maybe I'm in the minority or sound puritanical but I just don't want porn soft-core or otherwise to interact with vidya is it so hard to keep the two separate.

Two of the most prevalent themes in horror are death and sex, respectively. Video games being what they are, the former is infinitely more explored than the latter, but you have been seeing elements of the latter in the last few decades. Smarter horror games, including the Silent Hill series, have exploited this extensively (SH-2, 3, and 4 most notably), but more recently tons have titles have done it. Bloodborne is Gothic Horror and carries most of the same themes that Darkest Dungeon has, and it's fucking replete with sexual themes, the difference being that they areless overt and more subtle. Even Resident Evil has flirted with it from time to time, for my money the most obvious being Resident Evil 2.

The unsettling aspects of body horror, violation, and life gone just wrong are time-honored ways to make a horror setting hit much, much more effectively when they're done right. There are many that try to use this and fail at it (Agony, F.E.A.R. 2, etc), but it can also have big payoffs, like it did in Haunting Ground, Silent Hill 3, and so on.

Now, the obvious reasons this is happening is that the artist behind Black Reliquary is a fucking smut artist (the same dude behind a few other well-known DD mods), and that the internet is literally always horny. I will remind you, lest you've forgotten, of the internet fucking losing its shit over Vampire Dommy Mommy in RE7. Thematically, however, it potentially works, provided they put the storytelling legwork in behind it. I also hope you all collectively appreciate that I refrained from making a joke about Last Stand's thirstposting about Hillary Clinton in a post about sex and horror. There is such a thing as too easy a joke.

Horny always gonna horny though.

 

[Adjective_Noun]

Two of the most prevalent themes in horror are death and sex, respectively. Video games being what they are, the former is infinitely more explored than the latter, but you have been seeing elements of the latter in the last few decades. Smarter horror games, including the Silent Hill series, have exploited this extensively (SH-2, 3, and 4 most notably), but more recently tons have titles have done it. Bloodborne is Gothic Horror and carries most of the same themes that Darkest Dungeon has, and it's fucking replete with sexual themes, the difference being that they areless overt and more subtle. Even Resident Evil has flirted with it from time to time, for my money the most obvious being Resident Evil 2.

The unsettling aspects of body horror, violation, and life gone just wrong are time-honored ways to make a horror setting hit much, much more effectively when they're done right. There are many that try to use this and fail at it (Agony, F.E.A.R. 2, etc), but it can also have big payoffs, like it did in Haunting Ground, Silent Hill 3, and so on.

Now, the obvious reasons this is happening is that the artist behind Black Reliquary is a fucking smut artist (the same dude behind a few other well-known DD mods), and that the internet is literally always horny. I will remind you, lest you've forgotten, of the internet fucking losing its shit over Vampire Dommy Mommy in RE7. Thematically, however, it potentially works, provided they put the storytelling legwork in behind it. I also hope you all collectively appreciate that I refrained from making a joke about Last Stand's thirstposting about Hillary Clinton in a post about sex and horror. There is such a thing as too easy a joke.

Horny always gonna horny though.

Ah didn't know he was a smut artist that explains everything.

Also, I understand that horror often if not always has sexual themes which I sometimes think were implemented poorly and just make me think that I'm seeing "writers poorly veiled fetish" and not some form of body/psychological horror that is supposed to gross me out or make me uncomfortable (well I guess they kind of do just for meta reasons)

Just from my memory, Bloodborne had the surrogate children being the largest horror aspect that could be labeled as sexual I guess, but I felt it was done a lot more tastefully.
On the other hand, I can't call Fear & Hunger a game with a lot of tact but it doesn't give off the grime of hornyness that I get from shit like Black Reliquary.

And I know that the Internet is on average always horny just forget it sometimes and can't particularly sympathize with people who horny post about their waifus or the RE& vampire lady (pretty sure she doesn't count as a waifu) or insert their hornyness levels into everything they do, just feel that there is a time and a place for that.

 

[Adjective_Noun]

I just had a realization

All the half-naked buff men and women in action poses alongside weird-looking monsters it's like they added bastard bonds characters into darkest dungeon.
(just give the women bigger tits cause I think Bigfingers guy is gay (big surprise) and didn't feel the need to make them just enormous unlike the muscles on the dudes)

The dessert and the guy chained to a rock (who I think is a direct reference) make it feel like Conan the Barbarian and either way I just think it's silly.

 

[Adjective_Noun]

I just had a realization

All the half-naked buff men and women in action poses alongside weird-looking monsters it's like they added bastard bonds characters into darkest dungeon.
(just give the women bigger tits cause I think Bigfingers guy is gay (big surprise) and didn't feel the need to make them just enormous unlike the muscles on the dudes)

The dessert and the guy chained to a rock (who I think is a direct reference) make it feel like Conan the Barbarian and either way I just think it's silly.

 

[John Titor]

I see there's no discussion about the board game and what a disaster it has been for Mythic Games. Just recently, they had a flash sale and their pitch just shows how desperate they are for more money.
I'm not sure people want to hear "you can sell it for a lot of money second hand" as a perk. A shame because it looks neat.

 

[Lizard Machine Bugs]

Black Reliquary on Steam

Black Reliquary is a total conversion mod for Darkest Dungeon, one which makes sweeping overhauls to gameplay, adds a new story, a new setting, new narration, new music, new enemies, and so very much more. Embark into the distant east and uncover the ancient secrets of the Black Reliquary!

store.steampowered.com

Black Reliquary finally had it's steam version released on the 25th, I've been really impressed with BR so far from my own experience both the content, speed of development, and the transparency of the Dev team, they even tuned down the horny in the steam release, the gameplay itself doesn't copy base DD directly it's less DD+ and more like DD.5.

The devs are having an open Q&A on their discord on april 1st and seem to be set on releasing content and patches for the game until it'd finished with them recently nerfing the Wilders and Trogs, and with only one region remaining, Although word of warning the Black Reliquary itself is gonna have some stupid creation myth lore even it's only implied by the environment i really dislike the decision to make a fanfiction creation myth for the DD-verse.

All of this is especially funny when comparing it to the Failed Moonlit Dungeon overhaul mod, 5 years of development with barely any updated, large cultish discord server to busy with conspiracies and drama, canned(?) after the team tranny Clair De Lune left due to drama, compared to the BR devs, anyways i encourage you guys yo give it a try out.

 

[Harammurabe]

Black Reliquary on Steam

Black Reliquary is a total conversion mod for Darkest Dungeon, one which makes sweeping overhauls to gameplay, adds a new story, a new setting, new narration, new music, new enemies, and so very much more. Embark into the distant east and uncover the ancient secrets of the Black Reliquary!

store.steampowered.com

Black Reliquary finally had it's steam version released on the 25th, I've been really impressed with BR so far from my own experience both the content, speed of development, and the transparency of the Dev team, they even tuned down the horny in the steam release, the gameplay itself doesn't copy base DD directly it's less DD+ and more like DD.5.

The devs are having an open Q&A on their discord on april 1st and seem to be set on releasing content and patches for the game until it'd finished with them recently nerfing the Wilders and Trogs, and with only one region remaining, Although word of warning the Black Reliquary itself is gonna have some stupid creation myth lore even it's only implied by the environment i really dislike the decision to make a fanfiction creation myth for the DD-verse.

All of this is especially funny when comparing it to the Failed Moonlit Dungeon overhaul mod, 5 years of development with barely any updated, large cultish discord server to busy with conspiracies and drama, canned(?) after the team tranny Clair De Lune left due to drama, compared to the BR devs, anyways i encourage you guys yo give it a try out.

I'm well aware of the failed overhaul and sequel, but only from an outside perspective with no clue of what is going on behind the scenes. Care to give a rundown? It sounds interesting.

 

[Lizard Machine Bugs]

I'm well aware of the failed overhaul and sequel, but only from an outside perspective with no clue of what is going on behind the scenes. Care to give a rundown? It sounds interesting.

I'm not entierly sure but i've seen the BR devs attribute the projects collapse to the team's troon and leader Claire de Lune giving up on the project, aounrd the time claire left MD he also pulled all of his workshop content for DD citing DD not being healthy for him and wanting to move on.
Too me both from knowing both of the dev teams it looks like the project massively underestimated the amount of effort their overhaul would take, and unlike the BR which is comprised of professionals experienced in relevant fields or where vetted by the professionals to join the mod team, MD had a bigger team with a more open application process allowing no-lifers and people who lack experience only really modding seasonally like myself, and well of course troons caused the projects to drag on and loose steam.

Checking reddit, Clair did an AMA three years ago(two years after development start) where non-specified January drama is said to happen, one module the ruins enemy pack is done, while the rest are only "conceptually done", the next module they seemed to be working on was the weald module going by it having the next semi-finished content which you now find added into various other mods, the team also seems to have had only one main artist working was Marvin Seo who was also struggling with his own Sunken City mod at the time.

Of note is that when BR was two years that was some time earlier this year when the team was 65% percent done with the overhaul and three years ago 2020 was when the first hints of BR being a thing before development officially started in 2021 and from what i can tell a majoirty of the concept work for the heroes and first area was done by then as well. Looking at it from this angle BRs success in such a limited time frame with it probably being finished sometime this or next year basically completing a standalone expansion ala new vegas while Clair struggled to complete a much smaller and easier project in double to the time was massively demoralizing, alongside probably losing access to the modders who work on BR made Clair can MD and blow up his workshop content.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I've been playing quite a bit of DD2 since launch and I'm currently malding about my most recent losses. Since both Reddit and Steam comment sections are irredeemable shitholes, I'm going to share some of my reflections here in this dead thread on a darkweb melon farming forum.

DD2 is bad and should feel bad.

Spoiler: Long winded autistic tard rage, and also spoilers. You have been warned.

I'm analyzing this game in a near vacuum. I did not play DD1. I actually found it looking for a replacement for Star Renegades (a criminally underappreciated game, despite the gay ultracringe writing). I've played long enough to unlock all the character progression and core wagon upgrades, and most of the items. So far I'm stuck trying to reach the act 4 boss. More on that later. After all this, I have two main grievances with DD2.

I have never seen a game with so many different ways for the RNG to fuck you over. Every one of them feeds into every other one until you're suffocated in an ever growing snowball of shit. A single bad roll can cascade into a run dying three hours later.
Despite being a game that gives you a wide variety of options on paper, DD2 brutally punishes player creativity. Every choice is a trap. All flexibility is illusory. You have a thousand decisions to make, and 999 of them are wrong even on a good day.

Let's take those in order.

Randomness. First, the Stress system. Stress is measured on a scale from 0-10, with negative meta-effects starting at 4 and with 10 Stress having immediate and dire consequences. You gain Stress basically whenever the game feels like it. You can get it randomly while traveling or fighting, you can get it from certain enemy attacks, and a few other ways. Getting rid of stress is much, MUCH harder.

If you max out stress, you suffer Meltdown, which craters your HP, reduces ALL relationships with that character by a substantial amount, and may give a negative quirk. There's a small chance to go Resolute, which does more or less the opposite. I don't know the exact chance of Meltdown VS Resolute, but anecdotally I'd guess Resolute is about 20-25% chance. Now in a sense that's fair because hitting Resolute is absurdly powerful and you shouldn't be rewarded for mismanaging stress. But Meltdowns are potentially catastrophic, occasionally unavoidable, and Stress is punishing enough even without them simply for what it does to relationships. Even Flagellant, with his semi-immunity to Meltdowns, doesn't want to actually max Stress.

This brings us to the absurd anti-strategy mechanic of healing thresholds. Simply put, most Stress removal skills can only be used is stress is already at a certain number, usually 5. This means that Stress sticks even if you're actively going out of your way to reduce it. Why? Because fuck you, that's why. A similar mechanic exists for HP healing, and it's about as bad.

All this means that if you leave a battle with ONE character in bad shape, it can cause you to death spiral in your next fight. HP heals between fights, but not very fast. Stress? If you leave a battle with medium to high stress on anyone, you're probably going to have even more at the start of the next fight, plus worse relationships. So now you're in a fight with the enemies at full strength, furiously treading water and trying to prevent a Meltdown/death while getting your ass beaten. You can't afford NOT to help the hurt character, because you can't afford the long term consequences of a Meltdeath. But in the short term you can't afford to not be doing damage to thin the herd, because then your other characters are getting into a worse and worse position, and they might kill your wounded character anyway. Your choices are definitely lose now, or probably still lose later. One bad fight can demolish a 3 hour run, even if you win.

And all that is assuming you have one of the good anti-stress characters, like Man At Arms or Jester, plus a good healer. If you DON'T, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

Onto the relationships. The game's relationship system is bad. It's wildly biased against the player in ways that are completely unjustifiable.

I don't just mean that it's hard to get good relationships, but that's true as well, so let's start with that. Relationships start at 9, which still has a small chance of negative effects. You're not immune to negative until 13, while the chance of negative rises greatly at 8. How do you gain relationship? Well, it's partly random. Use support skills, maintain high Flame and low Loathing, keep Stress low. The opposite is also true, and the RNG pretty much always works against you.

A lot of relationship comes from Inn Items. Most of these are semi-random and can lower relationships instead of raise them. Generally they're weighted toward raising, but you can get unlucky. This is especially true for full party items, which will probably lower at least one relationship and may push it into a worse bracket. You have 6 relationships to manage, and even ONE of them going negative can be devastating. These items are also expensive. Every buck you spend on relationship items isn't going toward other buffs. There are also negative and positive quirks that affect relationships, but negatives are much more common and powerful.

What do you get for all this? Semi-random bonuses or penalties, depending. The bonuses are not guaranteed to (practically) help you. The penalties are guaranteed to hurt you in some way.

Okay, I will grant that some of the bonuses are pretty disgusting, especially uncapped healing and stress reduction. But they're often on a move you don't use/equip, and some bonuses are more useful than others. Both in effect, and depending what character they land on. Negatives? Well, if you're lucky it's on a move you don't use and you "only" lose a move slot from being forced to equip it. If you're unlucky, it's on a move you DO use and you get punished for it every time, because you can't afford not to. Got Envious on Tempest Leper's Chop? Well, go fuck yourself I guess. Now some of these penalties aren't THAT bad, and being down a move slot isn't ALWAYS the end of the world, depending on party composition. But sometimes it's fucking terrible. Like most things in DD2, it's all up to RNGesus.

Oh, and then there's this. When visiting a location, you often have a choice of what to do there. This choice usually comes with a relationship shift. One character will want to make one choice, and two characters will want to do something else. The characters who agree with the choice you make get +1 relationship, and the characters who disagree get -2 relationship. Now in practice, this honestly isn't that big a deal as far as relationship management goes, despite the difference in numbers. But I bring it up because it's a clear and easily understood example of how hilariously hostile and unbalanced the game is against you. It perfectly demonstrates how the game punishes you for the decisions it forces you to make, no matter what path you take. Every single action in DD2 is one step forward, two steps back.

Also there's diseases. Diseases are allegedly rare (but not really) status effects that persist between fights, and are either annoying or expensive to cure. Either you have to get lucky and find the rare Leech item at an Inn, or you have to scuttle your otherwise optimal routing and visit a Hospital. Not all diseases are equally horrible, but I've had them destroy runs. There are ways to lower your odds of disease with careful play, but again, ONE bad fucking roll... It's not the worst mechanic in the game, but it's probably the most pointless in terms of random punishment. Absolutely nothing would be lost by completely removing it.

None of this, in isolation, is usually enough to break a run. The problem is what I said before. Every little fucking domino crashes into every other little fucking domino until they're all laying shattered on the ground. But usually only when it's working against you, not for you.

One last note on this, which was actually the thing that led to me uninstalling the game and writing this screed. A catastrophic lowroll that can send an otherwise unstoppable run careening into a brick wall. And even if you know it's coming, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it*. The Shuffle Ambush. Sometimes you start a fight and your party ends up in random positions, in a game where positioning is very, VERY important. (There are other Ambushes as well, but they vary from "not actually that bad" to "dangerous but manageable".)

Yes, there are movement skills, but not everybody has access to them. And even if they do, while it's better than using a move action, a Man At Arms using Hold the Line is a Man At Arms who's letting the rest of the team get the shit beat out of them. And you may not get a turn order that lets you get everyone where they need to be. Meanwhile, by turn 2, the enemy has casually deleted half your team because you couldn't kill/disable their damage dealers fast enough. There are certain things you can do to reduce ambush chance, but even if you keep the Flame high, it's very, VERY hard to keep Loathing at zero. Plus, how do you reduce Loathing? Resistance sites. Where do you get Ambushed? Also Resistance sites. This is why I haven't fought Ravenous Reach yet. If this happened once I'd chalk it up to bad luck, but it happened TWICE, on consecutive runs.

Bottom line: You have to be lucky every time. The enemy only has to be lucky ONCE.

*Yes, The General's Dream can prevent this (I think it kicks in before shuffle, I haven't tested it). This assumes that you have a party that can beat the General cleanly, AND they don't ever want to move again, AND the Tangle spawns early enough, AND the General drops Dream rather than Nightmare's End, AND you make it to the inn before you actually need to use it. The General's Dream is ALWAYS a fake solution and anyone who says otherwise should kill themselves.

Okay. Let's go back to how the game artificially limits player choice. Nearly all of this comes back to the design of the Mountain bosses, the end bosses for a given run.

The Lair bosses, which are like semi-optional mini-bosses, are relatively not as bad. Librarian and Harvest Child are doable for most balanced parties. Dreaming General is either a gimme or completely impossible, depending on whether your party can hit back row twice a turn, every turn, while still keeping up damage in the front. Leviathan is kinda BS, but all they would have to do to fix him is remove his sooper speshul Immobilize bypass on Undertow. Whatever tester approved that one was smoking crack.

I'm not even going to go into the broken mess that is the Shambler, since you have the option to walk away from it. The only rule on fighting it is... don't. You'll be penalized (negative quirk) for retreating, but you'll also be penalized for fighting it, even if you win. The mastery points are nice, but of the 5 possible unique loot drops, only one is really worth using even if it was free. I'm convinced that 95% of Shambler victories are net negatives, never mind your generally poor survival chances.

So yeah, Mountain bosses. I'm only going to discuss bosses 2 and 3: Seething Sigh, and Focused Fault, because that will pretty well cover the problems.

The problem is that it's not enough to build a generally strong, well balanced party. You MUST tailor your party for the SPECIFIC boss. If you don't, you will fucking DIE. Now I think this was done so a player doesn't come up with one OP party and use it for everything (even though there's an achievement for doing exactly that). In practice, it's the opposite. Because the bosses have such autistically specific requirements to beat, it ends up railroading you into a very limited set of viable party compositions.

Seething Sigh is lengthy but relatively easy fight, IF your team is built for it. You need to be able to hit the front row for 12 AND the back row for 9, direct damage (not DOT), every turn, without exception. The first is easy. The second is... well, it's not hard, but the choices are narrow. It's basically Ravager Hellion or Sharpshooter Highwayman. Yes, there are other characters who can sort of cheat out 9 back row damage per turn, but out of 10 characters and 3 subclasses for each (not counting Wanderer, because why would you), exactly 2 can do it consistently. On top of that you need a way to handle Blind, plus probably a healer without an action limit because it's a pretty long fight, plus a way to handle knockback on your frontline. There is absolutely zero margin for error in this fight. If you fuck up a single turn, roll for anal circumference. If you didn't look at a guide and showed up with a party that's generally strong but doesn't meet these hyper specific criteria, congratulations, you just wasted the last 4 hours.

Focused Fault is worse, but in a different way. Focused Fault is the living avatar of the game's "because fuck you, that's why" attitude. Focused Fault shows how the devs seem to go out of their way to shut down what should be viable strategies by making special exceptions to the game's general rules. First, there's the way phase one works. I'm not going to go into detail, all you need to know is that the mechanics are unique and stupidly opaque. Read a guide. If you don't, you'd probably take 4 or 5 losses (at several hours each just to get there) before you figured out how it's supposed to work. And sometimes you can't do the positional manipulation you need to because the enemies have dodge. Why do the enemies have dodge? Because fuck you, that's why.

Assuming you did everything right in phase 1, here comes phase 2. The character you set up in phase 1 gets blasted with two attacks per turn for up to 40 damage, in a game where 60 HP is quite a lot for a character. Also he crits for 60 at a 30% rate, in a game where a 15% base crit rate is pretty respectable. So what do you do? Block? Dodge? Woops, he copies positive tokens on crit! So even though you have absolutely no choice but to reduce the damage somehow, you're still punished for actually doing it. That's DD2 in a nutshell: The game forces you to do something, then punishes you for doing it. Oh, and he has special, unique, arbitrary immunity to Blind. Because fuck you, that's why.

Anyway, that means your choices for dealing damage are DOT, or block piercing skills like Burning Stars. (Dodge is too risky for you and too hard to work around on him, IMO.) Direct damage won't work. Why did they effectively prevent direct damage strategies on this boss? Because fuck you, that's why. Oh also every time he hits you he reduces the healing you can get. (This is so you can't stall infinitely. I dislike the implementation, but I don't really have a problem with the concept. It's probably the least offensive design decision on this boss.)

To their credit, the devs have apologized for how fuckawful this fight is and promised to redesign it. So I should probably reserve judgement. But it's just so emblematic of everything else wrong with the game.

All that is why DD2 totally blows. This game personally fucking hates YOU, the player. Now there's probably some sweaty neckbeard out there with 15,000 hours in the game and a 200 full random unupgraded deathless Stygian Grand Slam streak who's going to explain that ACKCHYUALLY every retarded design choice in this game is a really skill issue. The game is perfect, it's the children who are wrong. Just highroll, bro.

Fine. I will concede that's it's probably mathematically possible to win from any starting position if you're insane enough. But there are two things I want to tattoo on the inside of the eyelids of every "muh hardcore tactical rogueli[k/t]e" player and dev.

Randomness != Difficulty
Difficulty != Quality

If you think the game is fun, you are free to do so. There are many bad games that I enjoy playing. If you think the game is GOOD, however, then I can only assume you've been playing it on the short bus.

But I ain't even mad.

 

[Love Machine]

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

 

[Jaimas]

@Lord of the Large Pants That was a fascinating read, and went along with what I've heard about it. What bothers me so much is that it's like they went out of their way to learn exactly the fucking wrong lessons from the success of the first game. The first game became less of an RNG-fest, and less prone to fucking a player into the ground for no particular reason.

It sounds to me like they went hard on copying the roguelite demographic, abandoning what made the original interesting in the first place. And some of the new mechanics are so broken that even now they attract hate.

 

[AbyssStarer]

All they really had to do was keep the game's mechanics the same but make all new dungeons, enemies, music, and classes with 2-3 returning. It didn't need to be any more roguelike or 3D or anything.
I liked Darkest Dungeon 1 a lot though I never finished the game, it's disappointing.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

@Lord of the Large Pants That was a fascinating read, and went along with what I've heard about it. What bothers me so much is that it's like they went out of their way to learn exactly the fucking wrong lessons from the success of the first game. The first game became less of an RNG-fest, and less prone to fucking a player into the ground for no particular reason.

It sounds to me like they went hard on copying the roguelite demographic, abandoning what made the original interesting in the first place. And some of the new mechanics are so broken that even now they attract hate.

Well hey, thanks! I didn't really expect anybody to read it all, I was just tard raging into the void. I bought the original as part of the bundle, and I do think I'll try it at some point.

Despite everything I've said, I do think DD2 is fixable.

First, just tone down the asymmetry of the RNG. Just a little. For example, instead of location decisions giving +1/-2, make it +1/-1. A few tiny changes here would prevent Stress and relationships from death spiraling.
Second, stop giving bosses special exceptions to the rules. There is no reason for Focused Fault to be immune to Blind. There is no reason for Leviathan to be able to ignore Immobilize. The devs are just salty bitches that someone figured out a strategy they didn't think of and want to force you to beat them the "right" way.
Third, and closely related, overhaul the Mountain bosses into bigger, angrier versions of the Lair bosses. Give them one big gimmick that you have to play around, and 2-3 smaller ones, instead of 5-6 giant ones. This would allow so much more freedom in party composition.

I actually really like the first Mountain boss, even though a lot of players consider it babby mode. Compared to later ones, it only has a few things you need to handle.

1. Make sure you have variety in your attacks, since the boss can shut off either ranged or melee for the turn.
2. Try to make sure you can hit any position, since their formation is random and you'll probably want to kill them in a certain order. But this isn't mandatory, it just helps.
3. Heal early since it might get blocked at any time. Don't wait for Death's Door.
4. Since it's multiple opponents, killing one early HEAVILY tilts the fight in your favor. This means it favors massive front loaded burst damage rather than DOTs.

All this is doable by a wide variety of parties and characters. It discourages certain characters, but it doesn't railroad you into a hyper specific setup. Make the other bosses like that.

There are a few other things that should probably happen, like removal of diseases and full party Shuffle (except maybe for Shambler, I'd consider him a bonus boss and if you take that fight you better know what you're fucking doing). But I think those fixes would make the game infinitely better. I honestly can't believe it's like this after 2 years of early access. The game is quite functional, but the balance feels like a mid-stage beta.

 

[AnOminous]

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

I was also starting out looking at it askance because of the Epic Store shit, but that wasn't a dealbreaker by itself. It's dumb to change the design aesthetic when that was easily the best part of DD1, which was initially released after early access in a pretty broken state (after a few years of fixes it is actually pretty good and well worth a play and while there is enough RNG to satisfy roguelite purists it can easily be countered by strategy and contrary to requiring autistically specific parties you can really beat the game with damn near anything).

Despite everything I've said, I do think DD2 is fixable.

Ironically, so was DD1 even though it was broken in the opposite direction, with some metas being so powerful that you could easily walk over the entire game.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

Surprisingly you can't expand a game that puts priority on a masochistic RNG experience without completely shitting the meta.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I was also starting out looking at it askance because of the Epic Store shit, but that wasn't a dealbreaker by itself. It's dumb to change the design aesthetic when that was easily the best part of DD1, which was initially released after early access in a pretty broken state (after a few years of fixes it is actually pretty good and well worth a play and while there is enough RNG to satisfy roguelite purists it can easily be countered by strategy and contrary to requiring autistically specific parties you can really beat the game with damn near anything).

Ironically, so was DD1 even though it was broken in the opposite direction, with some metas being so powerful that you could easily walk over the entire game.

Well, maybe I'll come back in a year then. I'm probably going to force myself to stubbornly drive the struggle bus through the last 2 acts at some point, but I need a break. That said, the devs have promised mod support Real Soon Now™, so if they don't do something about balance maybe the community can.

Surprisingly you can't expand a game that puts priority on a masochistic RNG experience without completely shitting the meta.

Then let the meta be shitted. It can't be much worse than it is right now.

 

[Jaimas]

Second, stop giving bosses special exceptions to the rules. There is no reason for Focused Fault to be immune to Blind. There is no reason for Leviathan to be able to ignore Immobilize. The devs are just salty bitches that someone figured out a strategy they didn't think of and want to force you to beat them the "right" way.

This is 100% due to the fact that players, through trial and error, found ways to beat bosses in DD1 with minimal risk. The Devs were fucking *pissed* when players found ways to (for example) beat the last boss of DD1 without getting hit by its bullshit instant kill, or found ways to utterly invalidate the Swing King or Flesh bosses.

 

[AnOminous]

The Devs were fucking *pissed* when players found ways to (for example) beat the last boss of DD1 without getting hit by its bullshit instant kill, or found ways to utterly invalidate the Swing King or Flesh bosses.

I like that typo for Swine King but Swing King describes him pretty well.

Also you can't do that 3 PD + 1 Leper nearly as easily now. There were also lots of things that were basically cheesing game mechanics, like knocking the Anchorman to the back of the Drowned Crew so they could basically do nothing and would be helpless as you murdered them again.

They were actually right to fix a lot of those broken mechanics.

Even after that, though, almost all boss fights are just noticing the main gimmick and neutralizing it.

It's a fun game but it's nowhere near as tough as its reputation. Platformers like Cuphead or Super Meat Boy knock it out of the ballpark in terms of difficulty.