Darkest Dungeon II - Switch Review

Jake Mounsey -

Back in 2015, developers Red Hook Studios released their debut game, Darkest Dungeon, which took the indie gaming scene by storm. People were enamoured with the eldritch horror setting and the focus on making the best out of bad situations as the main gameplay loop. Fast forward to now, where their sequel, Darkest Dungeon II, is now available on consoles.

Following the events of the original Darkest Dungeon, the corruption defeated at the Estate is found to be only a symptom of a far greater evil that is already on the verge of ending the world. As madness consumes everyone and apocalyptic cults and monsters spread chaos and decadence, the player and their party of heroes must journey to a distant, foreboding mountain with the last flame of Hope to avert disaster.

The Good

The first thing people notice upon seeing Darkest Dungeon is it’s impressive dark, gritty, cel shaded art style and Darkest Dungeon II cranks that up to 11 by masterfully translating their old 2D sprite based aesthetic into full 3D. Specifically, it’s my favourite style of 3D, where it looks almost indistinguishable from 2D.. Transitioning from a 2D art style to a 3D one has allowed the developers to really flesh out the game’s animation, making everything more grotesque in the most beautiful way.

When Darkest Dungeon II was first released in early access, it was considered quite divisive amongst fans. See, Red Hook Studios decided to take a different approach when designing Darkest Dungeon II so as not to have the sequel completely invalidate its prior entry, as a lot of sequels tend to do. As opposed to Darkest Dungeon’s approach where you build up a small town and send a small party to tackle dungeons each week, Darkest Dungeon II makes you select a party of four and go out on the road. The game then progresses a little like Slay the Spire, where you have a map and choose where to go whenever you come to a fork in the road. This can lead to combat encounters, travellers on the road that you can either help or rob or even places that expand on each character’s backstories and give them new abilities in combat. The classic Darkest Dungeon combat and general gameplay are still there in all its glory; it's just recontextualised for this new setting and adds an interesting twist to the usual formula.

TL;DR

  • Immaculate art style
  • Classic Darkest Dungeon gameplay but with a twist

The Bad

The original Darkest Dungeon was very much made to be played on a PC so when it came to porting it over to consoles, it had quite the interface issue with menu bloat. Darkest Dungeon II has unfortunately suffered the same fate, albeit not as severely as its predecessor. General menu navigation is fine but when you arrive at a rest spot or start a new run, you are just bombarded with menus, which can be very annoying to navigate since the game only faintly highlights what part of the interface you are currently on, making it very easy to lose track of what you are doing.

Unlike a lot of roguelike games, Darkest Dungeon II makes you actually traverse the world map when deciding where to go. The thing is, the more you play, the more you realise this was more to show off the game’s art style than an interesting gameplay feature. There’s nothing to really do when you’re driving your carriage; all road hazards are unavoidable and while you are incentivised to drive into any debris you find on the road to find an item, the drop chance is really low and you usually get junk that's not worth having. In the end, all this does is artificially lengthen each run, bloating it up by up to an extra hour or so.

One of Darkest Dungeon II’s new mechanics is a relationship system. If two party members get along well or end up hating each other, then they will both gain a buff (upon friendship) or a debuff (on rivalry) whenever they use a specific ability in combat. I mention this because when the game reveals which abilities get affected by this, there is a very high chance of the game freezing and causing you to hard reset your game. When I mean high, I mean “I encountered it around 65% of the time” high. Clearly, this is unintentional so I assume Red Hook Studios is currently working on a fix for this.

TL;DR

  • Cluttered menus
  • Driving the carriage is unnecessary
  • Prone to freezing

Final Score: 7/10

While Darkest Dungeon II is a fantastic game at its core, everytime I sat down to play it, I kept catching myself thinking "Boy, I wish I was playing the other Darkest Dungeon”. There's nothing really wrong with the game (outside of the freezing problem, which could be fixed by the time this comes out); it's just that its change of direction into a more Slay The Spire roguelike style didn’t really sit well with me. But that's ok, as stated prior, Red Hook Studios didn’t want this to replace the original and I think they’ve succeeded in that; they just now have to deal with a divided fanbase.

Thank you for checking out our Darkest Dungeon II Switch review, thank you to Red Hook Studios for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support: