I very much enjoyed Darkest Dungeon 1. I’ve done several playthroughs, and bought all the expansion packs.

Yesterday I bought Darkest Dungeon 2. I’d always kind of intended to buy it, but it hadn’t reviewed great - so I wasn’t in a hurry. But since it was on special, and I’d heard that updates had improved things etc, I figured that it was time.

Anyway, I bought it, and I’m a bit disappointed. I think the developers took a wrong turn in their stagecoach. I haven’t played heaps, but I’ve played enough to put in a few dot points:

• Firstly, DD1 had a native linux port. DD2 does not. So that sucks. It’s not really a big deal, but its an immediate disappointment.
• For the first hour or so of the game, there is a near constant stream of notifications and popups explaining how things work. And while it is nice to have fairly tougher documentations, it doesn’t feel great when I’m just trying to play the game. Perhaps more gradual flow of new game mechanics with a show rather than tell introduction would be better.
• The user interface has heaps of little design problems, for example sometimes opening a menu seems to do nothing, because it opens behind something else that needs to be closed first.
• Most things can be done with the mouse, but apparently starting the stage coach cannot? That feels a bit weird.
• Many symbols and icons in the game have a less-than-obvious meaning. You can of need the mouse-over text to learn what they do. But often the symbols appear inside the mouse-over text of something else - and so you cannot mouse-over the symbols that are inside the mouse-over text to see what they do…
• From a style point of view, I think the game is … too grand too fast. I feel like I’m not finding the right words for this. But I just think it’s weird that there is a constant stream of full-screen declarations for new areas and enemies, and big grand battle zoom-ins and commentary etc. right from the start. There seems to be no way to ramp up the tension for the boss battles or anything because it is already at maximum right from the first ghoul or whatever. It ends up making things feel a bit flat.
• Regarding the game strategy and tactics… I probably shouldn’t comment on this, because I haven’t played enough to be sure - but sometimes I feel like there’s just a bunch of random junk happening, with enemies pushing me around and setting me on fire or whatever - and that’s all fine but it doesn’t seem to make a lot of difference to what I do. So it feels like it’s just a lot of light and noise and luck. – That said, I’m very aware that often when reviewers say a game relies too much on luck, it’s really just that the review is not good at the game and so they over-rely on luck to make up for their skill deficit (which they cannot see). I suspect that a lot of the possible counter-play and strategy gets ‘unlocked’ as you unlock more characters and abilities; but I’m not sure that’s great design, since that would mean the early experience is a bit crap.
• I feel like the game is designed so that I cannot succeed at first, but it will get easier on each attempt because I unlock bonuses etc. And although this is similar to DD1, the feel of it is very different - and worse. Because in DD1 there was this sense that the town and the characters visiting the town formed a consistent and continuing world. We journey into the dungeon and bring back supplies which may be useful for the town. Whereas in DD2 it isn’t really clear what it is that we’re upgrading or how we’re upgrading it. The characters seem to just die and respawn for no apparent reason, and we get awarded candles which make everyone stronger? I just don’t think the feel of it is right at all.

So over all, while I appreciate that the developers wanted to make a new game rather than just rehash the original, I feel like their “new game” was basically to mash the original together with ideas lifted straight from Slay the Spire and/or Hades - and it just quite fit properly.

So I’m a bit disappointed.