Red Hook’s sophomore release, Darkest Dungeon II, showcases an excellent display of this small but mighty team’s talents.
Darkest Dungeon II is the second title from Red Hook Studios, an independent game developer based in Vancouver, BC. They were founded by industry veterans Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman in 2013 with a small but mighty team of five. They have since increased their numbers to around twenty during the development of Darkest Dungeon II. With the release of the first Darkest Dungeon, it brought forth a wildly successful debut title that delighted many a PC gamer.
If the first game was any indication of how good its sequel would be, gamers would be in for a brutal yet satisfying follow-up in this turn-based/roguelite franchise. It was first released in early access on October 26, 2021, with only three playable paths. To my knowledge, this is the only gaming franchise I’ve seen that expertly blends roguelike with turn-based combat.
Darkest Dungeon II follows the same premise as its predecessor in that tragic heroes band together to avert the ever-approaching apocalypse. You and your band of misfits must get to know each other and form strong bonds if they hope to put an end to the madness consuming the world.
While the first game featured one main location, this time, you will traverse in a stagecoach through many forsaken lands filled with monsters, cults, and plenty of emotional turmoil to go around. There are seven regions in total: the valley, the sprawl, the foetor, the sluice, the shroud, the tangle, and the mountain. Depending on what act you are in, which the game refers to as “confessions, you will fight a different final boss each time you enter the mountain.
Similar to the first game, Darkest Dungeon II features a narrator who acts as the hero’s mentor and guides them on the path toward the mountain to take down the corruption. You start out with four playable heroes: highwayman, man-at-arms, grave robber, and plague doctor. Along the way, you acquire candles of hope, which can be used to unlock other playable heroes once you reach the altar of hope.
The different locations within the altar of hope all have different ways to spend your candles. In the timeless wood, you can equip a memory to a particular hero for buffs that lasts as long as the player survives. Once your character dies in a run, that’s it until a new expedition. The intrepid coast allows you to unlock upgrades for your stage coach. You can unlock different cosmetics, buffs, companions, and infernal flames.
Companions come in the shape of animals that can accompany you on your grueling trek with varying effects. For instance, the orphan wolf cub increases your chances for positive relationships between party members. Your resourcefulness allows for benefits upon reaching landmarks such as hospitals and watchtowers. Infernal flames are the Darkest Dungeon II’s difficulty enhancers and cater towards the most masochistic of gamers with taxing results.
Flame is more paramount than everything else. You must not let the light go out above your stage coach, as it could be the difference between life and death. The flame has a level of 0 to 100; the higher your flame count, the odds stack in your favor, with benefits for party members and an increased likelihood of debuffs toward enemies.
The living city allows for permanent buffs for different characters, as well as unlocking new ones entirely. You can unlock character-specific trinkets to aid you in combat and different hero paths that drastically change a character’s fundamentals entirely. Who was once someone with high ranged damage can now become up close and personal with heavier melee damage with the caveat of lowering ranged damage. Each character also has a signature item, which has a higher potency than most items used at inns, which are the Darkest Dungeon II’s restoring points. It’s a struggle to make your way to inns, so make sure you stock up on provisions and use items to fortify your bonds.
The working fields expand the game’s catalog of items, allowing access to better equipment. Make sure to spend some candles here, as you will need all the help you can get with improved items. The recollection shows every item you have acquired so far. Last but not least, the pool of reflection simply shows you the number of candles you placed there.
Darkest Dungeon II will certainly leave the battle-weary player begging for candles as you progress. This game is not for the faint of heart. You will be tested, and you will most likely fail an immeasurable number of times. Even as a seasoned RPG fan with his fair share of roguelikes under his belt, I had to play strategically through and through.
Even when you think you have it all figured out, you don’t because RNG will make sure to take you down several notches. Through the course of combat, your characters will become stressed out and can lead to meltdowns that affect the whole team. It lowers the surrounding characters’ morale, which leads to diminished trust in one another. These elements add a hefty amount of spice to combat.
If a character’s trust in someone is low enough, it can result in immense hatred for one another. Certain skills will then debuff the opposing hero in question and can even lead to attacking each other. You will want to make sure you maintain healthy levels of stress and friendship to avoid any resulting status effects or debuffs to your party.
While unapologetic and brutal, Darkest Dungeon II offers a notebook detailing every facet of the mechanics as you go along. Anything you need to know can be brought up at any time. I had to reference it on numerous occasions as there is always something new thrown at you. There is a bevy of status effects that racked my brain by the sheer amount. In addition to the notebook, you can also pull up a list of status effects in case you need to know what each symbol means. This is reflected by badges that appear underneath your character’s health bar.
At the beginning of each expedition in Darkest Dungeon II, you will start at the crossroads, where you can select your team accordingly. Each failure brought me to switch up my approach when rounding out my party. There are multiple combinations to test out, and each run always felt fresh. What fells your team the first time encourages the player to think differently. Maybe a tanky character with high defense and high health to act as a damage sponge, while weaker characters with high damage can bring hurt against the vile creatures that lurk about. This is just a small example of team builds you can mess around with.
No matter how confident you are, Darkest Dungeon II is there to crush you. It took me a little less than 30 hours to beat the first confession. Most of the time, you will have trinkets that don’t apply to your needs, and you are punished with an onslaught of fast enemies that lay the status effects on you hard.
I was always wrestling with my offensive/defensive options in combat. Dying over and over again, I couldn’t help but dust myself off before going back for more. Darkest Dungeon II offers an addictive experience for me, similar to when I would get close to beating a boss in Cuphead. I love a good challenge and just kept going until I got better and better with each attempt.
The art style is absolutely gorgeous, with the transition from 2D hand-drawn models to 3D ones. It looks like something out of a Hellboy comic. The sound design is superb, with each hit feeling meaty and enhancing the overall feel of Darkest Dungeon II. Every horse’s gallop, pickaxe to an enemy’s face, etc., can be felt.
The score of the game compliments the gothic archetype to a T. Dreary, moody, and full of woe, as it should be. Wayne Judy is back to reprise his role as the narrator, laying down the perfect voice for the most pitiful of moments to the victorious ones. I couldn’t help but laugh when he would let you know when you would swing with a miss.
Darkest Dungeon II is not kind to time-sensitive people, that’s for certain. If you want a pickup and play roguelite, this is not the game for you. Most runs would take me anywhere from half an hour, depending on the RNG and my builds, to 3+ hours. As I mentioned before, it took me under 30 hours to get to the second confession.
You can make it far just to get wiped by a boss because of how relentless the AI can be. There are no difficulty sliders except the infernal flames, which makes this already challenging title even more hellish. Darkest Dungeon II knows its audience, so I’d say the lack of an easy mode is okay in this case. Novice gamers steer clear.
Darkest Dungeon II is packed to the brim with content now that it has left early access to the full retail release. Hundreds, possibly thousands of combinations or more of play styles exist, increasing replayability, which the game is in no short supply of. The combat is highly addicting once you get past the steep learning curve. Getting the build just right is extremely satisfying. No matter how many times I perished, I always pressed on. There are five total confessions for you to get through, so you will easily have hundreds of hours worth of gameplay.
The premium price tag is well justified. Red Hook’s sophomore release showcases an excellent display of this small but mighty team’s talents. It was well worth the wait with another exceptional addition to the roguelite genre. A gorgeous yet gloomy art direction, impeccable sound design, addictive combat, and more replayability than you can shake a stick come together graciously in Darkest Dungeon II. The difficulty and extremely long gameplay sessions can be off-putting to some, but this was never a title to appeal to the masses anyway. This is a must-play for PC gamers with a love for turn-based strategy games.
