Darkest Dungeon II (Do Not Buy (yet))
Okay, so having dipping several hours into the early access, I’m going to write a preliminary review just for those of you who care and for the developers to know the thoughts of someone who’s been playing their first Darkest Dungeon since it was in Beta.
For the sake of a positive attitude and because I love Red Hook, I’ll begin with the good stuff.
The Aesthetics. Holy shit the aesthetics. The characters, the art, and oh my god the landscapes. It’s all aces. You are all kings and queens of dark aesthetic and this game shows it. In addition, the Combat is clean and neat (aside from one glaring issue I’ll bring up in a bit) and I love that you limited many of the combats to 5 rounds maximum. It keeps everything short and punchy, and forces you to actually fight rather than sit and buff/heal. I love the events on the road, they’ll fantastically designed (once again with one exception) and I’m looking forward to the finished product.
With that said...
The Affinity system is just bad. I’m really sorry, but it is. The stress system of the old game could be frustrating, but it was a good kind. It was resource management. You could control it to a certain degree, and deal with it if not. The affinity system is just praying to RNGesus that Audrey doesn’t take her buried hatred for her late husband out on everyone around her in the middle of fighting Yog’Sothoth.
Affinity ruins the game for me. A third of the way into the second zone every single character hated each other despite my Graverobber and Highwayman actually having a positive relationship at one point. Having to deal with the constant jump-cuts to verbal abuse interrupting combat at least two to three times a round combined with the characters constantly nerfing each other just isn’t fun. Every round sees at least one person Dazed (skip a turn), and everyone else either Weak, Vulnerable, or both. It’s impossible to meaningfully improve affinity, too, because the items that help only work at inns, and certain quirks actually stop those items from working on certain characters.
I use every single affinity improving item I gather in an area, plus some that I buy at the inn, at the end of every zone, and it barely gets the majority of my characters back to neutral, and that doesn’t last more than a few fights in.
Sorry guys but it’s just not a good game right now. I really hope you improve the system because it feels like it could be good. Right now, though. It’s just a frustration, and in a bad way, because it’s completely random. I’ll protect one person, and they won’t care, it won’t improve jack shit, but boy-howdy does my Plague Doctor get pissy that she’s not the one being protected.
I wish I liked Darkest Dungeon II, I really do, because I loved the first one. This game is just not good, though. I’m sorry.