"5. General Access
We also reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate your access to all or part of the Game or to any product or service available through the Game or any Red Hook website for any reason or no reason, with or without notice."

Nice EULA, guys. No.

"...We also reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to terminate your access to all or part of the game..." - section 5. general access
"...When you are using the game, the game may monitor your computer's random access memory (RAM) for unauthorized third -party program..." - section 14
"...we may terminate this agreement and your access to the game immediately if you breach this agreement..." - section 20

I think the game is fine until I go to a creature den or find a drummer enemy or fight most cosmic enemies, basically the game can be okay but there are so many badly balanced/annoying enemies or bosses or mechanics that I suspect half of the game was developed by Red Hook and the other half was developed by a raging homeless person under the influence


to further explain I'll list off a few things that suck:

the max stress being lowered to 10 isn't necessarily bad on its own but some enemies have basically regular perfectly fine abilities but then add stress to them, for ex; the bishop enemy which is a regular cadaver enemy that has an ability that removes ALL positives tokens from a hero, ignores dodge, and debuffs a hero so that they cannot gain dodge for 2 rounds.

It requires a "benediction" token, which requires him to use another ability to gain these tokens. Mainly fine on its own, not anything too crazy and it requires set-up. Can be powerful against heroes that primarily need dodge and removing all positive tokens is very strong.
Then they just add on +2 stress to target for a already strong but mainly fair skill. A few mishaps aren't bad, but when so many enemies have problems like this, it stacks up

Two examples, Woodsman, which is a tanky defender cadaver enemy, has an ability named Carve The Toy which deals solid damage (4-8), has 10% CRIT, can be used from all ranks and has a 3/3 bleed (essentially dealing up to 13-17 damage ignoring crit) Mainly fine, quite high potential damage but nonetheless nothing too bad.

But it deals +1 stress on top of that. This is just an example of how enemies that aren't meant for stress dealing have perfectly fine abilities with additional stress for no reason, which again isn't too bad on its own but whenever a large percent of the enemies in the game have this problem it becomes problematic or at least moderately frustrating.

The other example is the Deacon enemy which is a cosmic/cultist enemy that you can just regularly encounter or at the end of a level. Nothing special. He is a tanky, high damage dealing enemy that has 5 abilities which all deal very high or solid damage and solid to potentially quite good debuffs. Alot of these abilities not only deal high damage and add things like bleeds or removes block tokens but he can also provide himself at the start of combat with a defense buff making him receive half damage from either all ranged or all melee skills.

This enemy is already strong, arguably too strong, but I am not kidding, 3/5 of his skills have stress on top of that. One of the abilities that doesnt IS THE ONE HE DOES AT THE START OF COMBAT. And these abilites aint no measly +1 stress, sundering steel is a high damage (8-16) single target skill that removes all block tokens and also has +2 stress. Weight of worlds hits all enemies for singularly lower damage (3-5) immobilizes them, but it also adds stress to all of them. With a 50% CHANCE TO ADD AN ADDITIONAL STRESS. Meaning he inflicts 4-8 stress each time he uses this ability with a 1 round cooldown and can be used from any rank.

The other skill, lord have mercy on your poor soul if he decides to rain it down on you, is called exultation which admittedly does need his cultist allies he spawns with to take rounds to buff him (but they are capable of healing and defensive buffs so either way) but deals a massive 15-25 damage with a 10/3 bleed. 10 damage every round for three rounds. Essentially this skill deals up to 45-55 damage and on top of that deals +4 stress with a 50% chance to deal 5 instead. Of course its also any rank. Remember that this enemy is a normally occuring enemy, not rare or special or anything.

I could go on and on but there are too many enemies to even list here that have unnecessary stress or other effects. Stress also cannot be effectively removed mid-expedition very well as stress healing skills require the target to have +5 stress to remove any stress. Whenever you reach 10/10 stress you essentially have a heart attack from the first game combined with a unsatisfying and annoying rng-reliant mechanic known as relationships.

Also have fun dealing with whatever negative trait you can gain, and -3 relationship to the entire hero party (and the deaths door debuff) If it makes you any happier, in darkest dungeon one the meltdown equivalent had a 75% chance to be an affliction and a 25% chance for a virtue but they have further lowered the chances of virtue equivalent in this game by 5%.

Traits are not balanced and are jokes in terms of balancing. The amount of nearly completely unimpactful negative traits versus character ruining ones is crazy. Not being able to reroll traits (on base, you can much much later in the game for a price) makes sense without putting much thought into it until you realize that if players get unlucky enough they either have to endure just bad rng that they have no control over or start an expedition and slowly have their heroes die to reset the traits.

Stress healing characters being required sucks big time
Many many mid-expedition bosses require certain types of teams or are nearly impossible (for ex; the sleeping general, without multiple ranged characters your cooked pal) which sucks

Memories need buffs or something like buddy never will I ever pick +10% blight resistance over +10% damage

unfortunately like the first game alot of the best strategies is just bum rushing enemies and merking them with high damage before they can do much because of stress mechanics and other goofs, making slower, dot based or more defensive teams get their hams absolutely steamed in comparison and forcing more unsatisfying combat

stun rework isnt great because stuns are much more rare now normally plus some enemies have crazy stun resistance like regular cadaver foot soldiers having 50% but woodsman having 30% is wack

ripostes are dookie now either from some free combos on the enemies

the negative relationships and their effects are unsatisfying and suck, they make a skill for each hero in a negative relationship gain a debuff whenever it is used and force them to equip it for battle, even if you reach high reputation again with one another you need to wait for an inn to get rid of the relation

the negative callouts are usally too minor to matter like why would I care if my jester stabs my man at arms for like 2 damage dude meaning all of the debuffs come from the just obnoxious forced negative skills

the possible pip down and pip up interactions can be crazy stupid at times, I assume it may be because they are percentage based so if plague doctor takes 10 damage they want to hog the heals in comparison to the 0 hp tank bleeding out carrying the team

in conclusion I do have a lot of hours but most of them have been spent not very satisfied. I have 650 hours in darkest dungeon one only on pc btw whilst writing this if it gives you a good comparison of bang for buck or quality
save your money and buy darkest dungeon one or any other roguelike or indie game

I played DD in 2015. It blew my mind. It was everything I wanted in a game. The aesthetics, the gameplay, the sound, and the replayability. The Lovecraftian components really pushed it over the edge from great to otherworldly. I played for quite some time and then life got in the way.

Fast forward to the release of DD II and all I noticed were bad reviews. It was different than DD I. It was in a wagon? Why? This was just a cash grab off of a good IP. I played a lot of great games in the meantime and forgot about it.

Fast forward again to Halloween week. It was on sale, I was feeling down from major surgery recovery, and I figured it would be nice nostalgia. I fired it up, heard some great music, did a couple runs, was thoroughly confused by the relationship numbers and paths, and figured I should have let it be. Reddit was no help for a beginner either. And I'm 42 now and maybe just don't get games like I used to. I shut it off and went about life.

Alright, lemme fire it up one more time. Maybe I need different trinkets. Then I beat the first boss I still didn't understand everything but I understood enough to know what blanks I needed to fill in. Oh, so when I get all of the items, I'll be able to pay for a random group of them with candles at the beginning of the run? Awesome! Ah, now I get relationships! Those are important. Oh, memories need to be used or you lose them! I then played another 120 hours. Hi dopamine, thanks for stopping by for my recent Hellion's Iron Swan.

It's not DD1. It's different. To be honest, it's probably one of the top 5 games I've ever played. It's the complete package. It's like Darkest Dungeon I got the Dark Souls treatment and then had added roguelite elements. I cannot wait for the two expansions.

Despite fantastic animations (I see you, Occultist burning stars), phenomenal sound, awesome narration, and an amazingly satisfying gameplay loop with filled in holes of the hero stories, I have one major criticism. When you drive the cart (you don't even have to hold the button, just press it once), you DO have to steer left and right (by obnoxiously pressing left, or right) to hit the debris, so you can't make a sandwich in between fights. However, there's probably enough time to pet your cat (if he or she cooperates).

game feels odd you are obliged to put two back rangeish or supports and two melee tanks on the front and there are only two good caracters for that unfair traits like pacifist for a crusader??? yeah that dosent make any sence also some bosses like the boss from the tangle needs a reedoo kinda ♥♥♥♥ cause if you dont have range you get destroyed anti fun builds also the baby gets annoing to fight whitout range i mean they pushed to far the range builds they need to make the game more diverce and enjoyable but yeah kinda good but whit ♥♥♥♥♥ bosses and aslo stop making ppl to pay for characters from dd1 its not a good way to make ppl wanna buy it its not but yeah kinda good game if you like to rage like a ♥♥♥♥♥

I'm a random reviewer so it doesn't really mater what I say. Anyways this game is real good.

3-4 hour runs that amount to almost no progress unless you beat the boss? Seriously?
On a game fully loaded with decisive RNG, plus gimmicks you can only learn by checking a guide or die trying a few times?

That's a dealbreaker.
No matter how good the combat is, it gets repetitive as the game have zero respect for player's time.
DD1 had its flaws, but it is clearly the superior game.

nah, but u know steam tho keep asking me what i recommend. i click no but doesn't work for some reason, the question remains: do i recommend this?
and i have to answer that i recommend leaving a company that keep inconveniencing their customers with messages uninteresting to them. especially persisting questions. it's like if i just hung a picture at ur wall. small picture. can i come do that at ur place? button there maybe: review this painting. if i say no, there's a blinking every other minute to remind me to answer yes so that sales rise.
and yes, i have no loyalty towards steam and i never really did. they went and made this thing pretty good, the gaming platform, but there's some stuff.. like this, where i have to write a review to get rid of this ask they put on the library page.
no, i don't recommend this game, and not this company who sell the game, neither of them.
but there's no current alternatives. however, to this game there is plenty of options and u should take them.

This game has so many good things going for it. Great art, great voice acting, great skill trees, get synergies, great enemies and great story. It's just so good.

Problem is the actual GAMEPLAY is just not fun and never has been, whether it's Darkest Dungeon 1 or 2. The weird rank based combat looks visually cool, it's conceptually cool to think about, but it just plays terrible with all kinds of rank displacement abilities and shuffling nonsense that breaks your suspension of disbelief heavily when playing the overly complex design. Bosses are all about knowing exactly how to build and play against them, making them impossible to beat dynamically but relatively easy to beat once you watch a youtube video on how to do it, which again, breaks suspension of disbelief as you play a cookie cutter style of design for the awkward rank system.

I would absolutely love to enjoy playing this game, but after finishing the game to the end I think I have finally learned my lesson that I didn't learn from the first game, and that's basically to avoid playing Red Hook Studios games, no matter how beautiful they look and sound in gameplay videos.

How have I not left a review yet? In all honesty, I think it's an overall better game than the original. It would be hard to go back to the original with the amazing updated artwork and animations. This remains one of my favorite titles to date still and the only single player game I'll ever really play on and off. My only real complaint here has always been....where are the dungeons? This is really just the Darkest Stagecoach and it never made much sense to me. They should have at least been traveling to dungeons in the stagecoach.