![]() There is one massive improvement that Redhook has made to the core mechanical engine of the game: the elimination of the accuracy system, whereby you rolled a die to hit and then rolled a die for damage and every skill had modifiers to both of those things (big swingy attacks had reduced accuracy and increased damage from the ‘norms’ for each class annoying harrier attacks had improved accuracy and decreased damage, and so on) and the implementation of the token system. ![]() They’re all suitably, pleasingly unpleasant. ![]() One of the battle locations in the biome called The Foetor. Still, the man is an institution at this point (if you’ve got 10 favorite streamers, odds are at least two of them have custom subscriber notifications that he’s done as a freelance actor) and it’s good to have him back in the saddle even if they’re going to have to work a little bit harder for the second tranche of Academic ramblings. Wayne June can deliver the hell out of lines like “Reliable insight brings accurate information, after all,” but as written that still has the personality of an actual survey course syllabus rather than a crazed Lovecraftian professor driven mad by what he’s learned. There’s hundreds of voice lines of him saying ominous, sobering, or pithy statements those looking for the comfort of the franchise mainstay will find it, though the writing on his bon mots seems a bit clunkier this time around. Wayne June is back as the voice of the narration character, whose identity has changed rather than being The Ancestor from the first game, he is now styled as The Academic. This is almost an unqualified success the animations look great, the lighting doesn’t interfere with the high-contrast, heavy-inks art style, and there’s a charming paper-mache diorama feel to a bunch of the environments as you cruise through them, especially The Sprawl, a biome that represents a burning cobblestoned city. Darkest Dungeon II is a game that can’t be in two dimensions thanks to the addition of the stagecoach mechanic (reasonable disagreements can be had with regards to the wisdom of that mechanic itself), and so it had to taken the hand-drawn indie comics look of the first title and translate it into a world with meshes and a lighting engine and so on. First, the good things: despite the game moving to 3D, the visual feel of the franchise remains intact and has arguably thrived. ![]() We’ll get to what I mean precisely by that in a bit. There will eventually be 5 different run types or game modes of which Denial is the first and most basic more importantly, I’ve decided we’re signing everything under the group penname of the “Rum Captives.” It has the now-expected aesthetic down pat, and it has the trademark random number generation factor that swings events in each run between annoying and punishing in spades…but it is somewhat too easy, while also being too overdetermined. While the game is in a very early stage of public development - all the judgments and opinions in this piece should be taken with that in mind - it’s in something of a different place than (I at least recall) Darkest Dungeon being when it launched. Darkest Dungeon II is in Early Access now (on the Epic Game Store for a year before wider release, so on and so forth, you know the deal by now). It’s time, once again, to play a game that hates you, and takes pride in hating you.
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