A Rocky Start

Some of these heroes look like they
were hitting the gym between games...

It's interesting that the sequel to the Darkest Dungeon is built around the idea of a road trip because, from a design perspective, it still has a long way to go.  To the studio's credit, Red Hook is trying to do quite a few new and innovative things.  These range from full polygonal character models to an entirely different approach as to how players manage their roster of adventurers.  Many of the subsystems that the current early access version of the game boasts certainly have potential, but are also in desperate need of refinement.

By far, the most bizarre and arbitrary mechanic has to be the five turn road combat limit.  The original game experimented with various consequences if battles dragged out for too long, such as sanity loss or enemy reinforcements.  Having combats simply end though after a predetermined number of rounds seems kind of weird and, frankly, an inelegant way to deal with potential problems.

Fan reactions seem decidedly mixed with the single most common criticism being the game is too punishing.  If you ask me, the sounds about the same as the original.  In fact, I was only able to complete the titular "Darkest Dungeon" with the aid of mods...nothing drastic in terms of adjusting difficult so much as reducing the grind.  Having to fight each of the game's bosses multiple times felt repetitive enough as is.  Needing to send expeditions in with the exact same tasks over and over just to get experience points and loot was a bit more than I could stand (especially when bad luck would result in a net loss).

It's not entirely clear how things will turn out for Darkest Dungeon II.  Unless you have an Epic Games Store account your going to have to wait until version 1.0 launches to actually play it.  Honestly though, having to hold off might be good thing because it's pretty obvious that this game need a lot of work before it can truly shine.