Game Information Tabs
New Game Mode - Kingdoms - Now Playable!
“This squalid Kingdom, these corrupted lands, they are yours now, and you are bound to them.”
Kingdoms is an entirely new stand-alone strategic campaign game mode available to play now in Darkest Dungeon II.
Featuring a completely reimagined game structure, Kingdoms is a parallel game experience to the Confessions core game mode. You will be challenged to defend a crumbling realm against incursion from all new enemy factions.
Manage a persistent roster of heroes, gather resources, and pursue an epic questline in order to track down and defeat the source of evil before all is lost.
Progress in each game mode is tracked separately, and you can freely switch back and forth between active sessions of either.
Kingdoms is being released in thematic modules, each focusing on a different enemy threat. The first two modules - “Hunger of the Beast Clan” and “Secrets of the Coven”- are available now!
Gather your courage and ride out into the chaos of a world undone.
Four heroes and a stagecoach are all that stand between darkness and salvation.
Tried and True Turn-based Combat, Improved
The ground-breaking genre-defining combat from Darkest Dungeon returns, but everything from stats to rules has been refined and improved. The all new Token System helps make your decisions impactful while adding even more depth of play.
Unforgettable Heroes
Uncover and experience the tragic origin stories of each hero. Unlock their full potential via new skills, paths, items, and more.
Roguelike Runs, Each With Its Own Emerging Story
Each expedition lasts from 30 minutes to several hours. Even an untimely end will arm you with resources that can be spent to improve your next journey.
The Altar of Hope
Engage with a massive system of upgrades and boons that opens up new strategies for each expedition. Choose what’s important to you as you formulate your assaults on the Mountain.
The Affinity System
As travels progress, heroes bond with each other or grate on each others’ nerves, leading to desperately needed combat synergies or journey-ending dysfunction. Manage their stress and interaction to keep the team together until the bitter end.
Nightmarish Environs
From the burning Sprawl to the diseased Foetor, the long road to the Mountain will challenge your strategies and your endurance.
Explore five distinct regions, each with their own unique creatures and challenges.
A Moment’s Peace
Rest your weary, shell-shocked heroes at the Inn, where you can relieve their stress and try to improve their relationships with a variety of diversions and delights.
Face Your Failures
Journey to the Mountain and face down five terrifying manifestations of your weaknesses.
Signature Art Style, Evolved
Darkest Dungeon’s genre-defining art now improved with no expense spared on 3D visuals, animation, and visual FX.
A Feast for the Ears
The audio team from Darkest Dungeon is back. Revel in an all new narration performance by voice actor Wayne June, a brand new expansive score by Stuart Chatwood, and bone-crunching sound effects from Power Up Audio.
Minimum Requirements
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: AMD Athlon X4 | Intel Core i5 4460
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 950 | AMD R7 370
- Storage: 6 GB available space
Recommended Requirements
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: i7 6700k
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Storage: 6 GB available space
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Game Reviews
User: 76561198268674041
Of course, of course, this isn’t DD1.
The first game had a brutally high entry threshold: it punished you over and over while you desperately tried to save as many of your characters as possible through dark, convoluted mechanics and merciless RNG. Over time, you’d study the system, upgrade your recovery spots and gear so your people could survive longer and be better prepared. You’d start to understand the quirks and weaknesses of every party member. And after weeks... months... years, maybe, just maybe, you would finally beat the game.
In the second game? None of that.
Now DD2 is a pretty standard roguelike across three maps, where the main idea is to throw yourself forward and experiment aggressively. Made it to the furthest inn you could reach? Wrap up the run, gather your candles for meta-progression, and get ready for the next go.
The pros: the game is faster, more accessible, has gorgeous visuals, a genuinely interesting story, and some pretty unique mechanics for its genre.
The cons: well, the pros are also the cons. Now when you lose or someone dies — nothing bad really happens. Just pick that hero again on your next run. There's none of that soul-crushing bitterness from the first game.
Also, forget about fun meme-squads like four Lepers — freedom of choice is officially dead.
Ironically, they put way more effort into fleshing out each "character" this time around than they did in DD1. Which honestly feels pointless, because characters die and respawn endlessly, with only the tiniest shred of permanence.
You're not investing in a hero, no matter what the game tries to tell you — you're investing in a class. The individuality of any given character doesn’t really matter.
Still though — it’s a damn good game. Some mechanics got better, some got worse.
...but after almost 300 hours, I still have one question:
Where the hell are the dungeons?
User: 76561198119507413
Darkest Dungeon 2 makes a bold departure from the core gameplay loop of its predecessor. DD1 is a grueling, 50+ hour campaign of managing a large roster of characters going on missions. DD2 distills the gameplay down to one rougelike loop of ~3 hour runs.
This change in gameplay loop honestly feels a lot more player-friendly, as in DD1 you could lose HOURS of progress from one bad run party wiping 4 high level characters. Here, a bad run is not quite as brutal to your mental health and time investment.
It also marks a beautifully well done upgrade in graphics from the first game, somehow maintaining the same art style while translating it into 2.5D. The animations are absolutely perfect, and this is honestly one of the most unique looking games I have ever played.
8/10
User: 76561198051210429
as this game has been continually updated since it's early access days, it has blossomed from being a niche-yet-flawed rogue-lite living in the shadow of its predecessor to being its own thing. tons of content, challenges, and two deep game modes that have kept me playing for a couple hundred hours and counting.
i love darkest dungeon 1 and i now love darkest dungeon 2. fundamentally different games, but they will both be staples of my steam library for years to come
User: 76561198158485039
Great game, still needs some refinements, but worth the price if you like this type of game loops. If you enjoyed DD1, be reminded that DD2 (at least confessions) is really different to a campaign of the first game, Kingdoms might deliver something more similar (but still not the same). I would really appreciate if we could get a timeline for the reworks and hopefully tweaks of some heroes, it feels really bad to use some of them in comparison to others, and in some cases even if you have 3 different potential builds/paths, for too many of the heroes it feels like you can only use one of those paths (except if some combination of trinkets and/or quirks align quickly in the run). On the other hand, it would be cool if the scaling of the enemies could be revised, I mean, the ordainment mechanic is fine but sometimes it feels boring the scaling of the enemies, I've done maybe 50 runs by now, beaten the all the confessions and made my first Grand Slam but I feel like I'v seen just a couple of evolved variants of enemies (and I haven’t even seen all of them).
Nonetheless, as I said at the beginning, I'm really happy with the game, excited about how kingdoms will evolve and the other "campaigns" that will be added, and hopefully in the future Leper will receive the love from the devs hi deserves.
User: 76561198083008637
Some cool ideas, I want these games to be good, but the gameplay is just exhausting.
User: 76561198250119068
Is a different idea from the first game, but I really liked. If you have the chance, give it a try.
The developers are still adding new stuff, free stuff, so the game as more potencial.
User: 76561198051797621
Great game. Different but just as good if not better than the first one in my opinion. The first one had a lot of grind, losing a hero was a major setback in terms of time investment. In DD2 the ultimate gains (progressing your heroes & coach at the end of each run) can't be lost. That makes it less stressful, some might not like that and may miss the major stress of losing a favorite hero forever, but personnally I prefer this set-up because I don't want to spend 200h finishing the game. The flame that you mount on the coach is also a great mechanic; it makes each run after a loss easier, which gives everyone a chance to succeed eventually, but if you don't want to make things easier for yourself you just don't have to equip it.
User: 76561198277972159
I will not ask for refund only because DD1 is masterwork of the game and I would like to see that in future, hopefully steam reviews, bad ones especially, will help you make a better game.
First and foremost, if game does not respect my time I do not respect game. What was on your mind to make carriage driving simulator between fights? It is just long, pointless loading bar that serves no purpose, even if you play whack a debris to get maybe something, it is still long, tedious and underwhelming. Imagine playing slay the spire but with every move you have 20sec loading screen? That's DD2
Game is static, there are no notable changes in upgrades to keep you hooked, spend candles to level up character and get 10 resistance to fire? is that a joke? Good rougelike as hades, makes every upgrade matter, here you unlock minor useless things, one at the time, you do not feel like you are progressing anywhere, you feel like waiting to get that rng you need with a few items, so you can finish the game.
In-game run, progression also leads nowhere. Let's take FTW for example, no starting upgrades (if you do not count ships as starting upgrades) to boost your run, but each weapon you get is a really important one, you will eaither scrap it and use money for something more important or use it and you will feel it, here, have a +10 fire resitance trinket, with -3 on cr, what the heck, most trinkets I do not even feel like putting on characters in the first place. There are some good epic trinkets, but are rare and those should be base trinkets. I am not even motivated to fight for a loot, while in any other game i like, if this type, I would consider my options for a 10 min, should I risk hp/death/ect for a shoot on getting something I might need.
Combat is actually boring, it is eaither you wipe enemy or enemy wipes you and you star new run. DD1 did grate thing with push your luck, you can escape but is it smart. There is no tension here, not much of strategy either as in DD1 you had different party for different missions, now, good luck if you find shambling horror and must pick a fight and you didnt build pary around shuffle. Which bring us to party composition, it is simple really, find one party, tick to it, and that's it.
Why is every new run TPK? Where is character progression system? Best part of DD1 was character progression in only 6 levels. It was a masterwork, picking good quirks, leveling him up, keeping him alive, getting rid of bad bad quirks and it pays of in the end. Here it is replaced by really dumb progression system that unlock +10% fire resistance and new run your character is replaced. What is event the point in character names right now? not like I can relate to them, they are all discarded in the end anyway.
Death's door, was the best mechanics in DD1, here is my least favurite. I could win whole fight with boss by just being on death's door, and some bosses are unbalanced so I guess this is part of gameplay now? Characters just wont die and even then, one heal and we are good to go. DD1 low HP was a dreadful, scary thing, and those sick crits were a looming doom over your and enemy head, here, crit is same as any other attack. Again, no tension, no immersion in "hard" game as you want to present it.
Here is what happened, you made a great game with DD1 and got wrong idea of what players want. Yes, we want a hard game i guess, but not tedious hard game for the sake of it. It should have been fun and hard...
User: 76561198393270555
I'm a huge fan of the darkest dungeon series and thoroughly enjoyed DD1, but I think I have to make it clear:
DO NOT GO INTO THIS GAME EXPECTING A REPEAT OF DARKEST DUNGEON ONE.
Darkest Dungeon 2 is controversial when it comes to being the successor of the first game, but if you can look past that you'll find something fantastic. Darkest Dungeon 2 is more appealing to me because of how easy it is to start a new run. It excels at being easier to jump into than the first game, as runs could take multiple weeks irl in DD1. If you don't have the time or commitment necessary to complete the first game I wholeheartedly recommend Darkest Dungeon 2 in its stead.
RIP Wayne June and thank you for your contributions to this series.
User: 76561197990586203
If you loved Darkest Dungeon 1, then DD2 is a game that is best enjoyed if you play it with an open mind. If you have never heard of Darkest Dungeon, the DD2 is still a good entry.
You see, DD2 doesn't have much in common with DD1. Like, not at all. The heroes are mostly the same, yes, but the combat is different, more strategic, and with a lot less RNG involved. It is a [i]very[/i] solid system, certainly the highlight of this game, and it arguably fixes many issues of its predecessor by conveying all the important information at a glace.
[i]"Alright. Fine. The combat is good, you say. So why is DD2 so controversial among its fanbase?"[/i]
Well, not because of its main voice actor. R.I.P. Wayne June, you were an amazing narrator. :(
The main point of contention is the gameplay loop. To put it simply, DD2 punishes mistakes. Harshly. DD1 did it too, but in this game that fact is more apparent because your average expedition takes a lot more time than in DD1. Personally, I disagree with this notion.
The loss of a hero in DD1 was catastrophic. In DD2, it might still be possible to salvage a "doomed" expedition, as long as you are being clever with your resources, and willing to experiment with unconventional party compositions/skills. Tactical flexibility is the key. That, and luck. Lots of it.
We're still playing Darkest Dungeon, after all. We can't have this game to be too easy now, can we?