Darkest Dungeon 2 Thoughts

I completed the first Darkest Dungeon 4 years after starting it and I've just completed its sequel Darkest Dungeon 2, finishing the 5th confession Cowardice.

The developers Red Hook are very brave and ambitious to reimagine key parts of the game in DD2, because it's very different. Some thoughts.

DESIGN SHIFT OF BIG RUN TO MANY SMALL RUNS

My runs in the first DD were 30-50 hours long. DD2 is aiming for the established rogue-lite formula of Slay the Spire, Hades 2 and Ball x Pit where each run is about 30-60 minutes long, and you do it over and over again while making progress in metagame systems for in-run advantages. This is the source of the biggest changes in the player experience.

A SMALLER EXPERIENCE

It's a big mental transformation as DD1 felt like a big epic campaign where you had multiple teams, had to build new ones and you could manage risk mid-stage by exiting but go again later. In contrast, DD2 is heavily instanced with less continuity, unnamed Characters and a run just seems to collapse when a single Character dies in early run. It feels more fragmented and harder to put yourself into.

This isn't always the case with instanced repeat rogue-lites, because Hades 2 excels at tying the instances together through a meta layer with strong story beats and visual progression (building out the Crossroads). The meta layer is thin in DD2, with the in-run advantages being almost all of it. 

I feel the same dread and tension in DD2 battles, and the strategizing and outfitting between battles, but there isn't an overarching emotional continuity. There was a big opportunity here to build up the meta layer, because the narrator and the context of this world has always been a big part of Darkest Dungeon.

FLAVOR AND REPETITION 

There is a deep tension in the highly repetitive nature of short instanced runs and the thick dark gothic flavoring of Darkest Dungeon 2. 

By the 10th run, I was wishing I could skip the carriage sequence and the delish narrator saying stuff over and over again. This isn't to say that repetition is bad -- repetition reinforces great experiences. However, it feels like there needed to be more curation around some of these experiences.

The pre-valley experience is ponderous for what it offers, feeling like mostly a delay from beginning a new run. Separately, the inn/pre-region setup is confusing -- critical concepts like applying inn items to buff relationships and characters are poorly explained and executed in the UX, and choosing the region should come earlier in the flow and not later as they affect downstream decisions like your load out.

It feels like several core segments don't hold up for something you need to play over and over again, and some of them for reasons of flavor. These would have benefitted from stronger direction for the repeated experience and more attention to detail onboarding players to concepts and systems.

COMBINATIORIAL EXPLOSIONS

The best part of rogue-lites are the insane builds you can get in a run. Slay the Spire is a great example with choices to build up skill kit and artifacts, alongside deep meaningful choices along the instance. This element is weaker in DD2 and perhaps the biggest issue for me.

DD2 does offer significant volatility in its experience when its combat can turn tides at a moment's notice like it was in DD1, but build variance is low. Skill kits are unlocked and then picked, while the Trinkets, Items and Stage Coach Items don't offer a lot to the build experience in any run. It feels like you can have great runs but they're not because of great builds. 

I've unlocked all the items (trinkets, combat, inn & stagecoach) in the game, and in all my runs I've chanced onto great builds and maybe interesting builds, but the effects don't compound. I suppose it's because most rogue-lites don't constrain the number of buffs you can acquire, while DD2 limits you to two trinkets and 1 combat item per character. No single character goes nuclear, and synergistically there are also limits. 

One assumption is Red Hook may have wanted it this way to preserve tension in the game, since its deadly and highly volatile combat could be stripped of character if you can supercharge your way through runs. This would be the wrong approach to developing a rogue-lite, because when you expect your players to have dozens or hundreds of runs, you should be OK giving some of them away "for free".

In all, I completed the 5th Confession at 30-35 hours in and don't want to play it again e.g. using other characters or parties. The experience doesn't endure for longer but it was a good ride.