Four years ago, Darkest Dungeon 2 launched as one of the most controversial sequels in recent memory - Epic exclusivity, drastically different gameplay, and a community split down the middle.

Hey folks, I'm Ash, and I completely missed all of it! So today I'm jumping in with fresh eyes to answer one simple question: is Darkest Dungeon 2 actually worth your time?

Video version of this retrospective (~12 minutes)

The divide

To understand why people were so divided, you need to know what changed. The original Darkest Dungeon was about control. You planned your expeditions, you chose your targets, and you prepared for specific threats. Sure, RNG could still wreck you, but you had complete agency in how you approached each challenge.

Darkest Dungeon 2 throws that out of the window. Once you pick your team, you're on a road trip from hell where everything is randomized. The enemies, the events, the locations, the rewards - all of it. You can try to avoid the worst of it, but you're mostly just reacting to whatever the game throws at you next.

But that reactive gameplay also creates this constant tension where every decision feels crucial because you never really know what's coming. In the original you could retreat when things got dicey to rest and regroup. But here? You're committed to seeing this nightmare through to the end, which makes the combat feel like a desperate struggle for survival, and that really made an impact on me.

However, I do understand the other side as well. If you enjoyed the methodical nature of the original, this feels like complete and utter chaos. And honestly? It sometimes is. There are runs you will fail through no real fault of your own, which can be frustrating if you've invested nearly two hours in getting these characters safely back home.

Wiping out at the final stretch is a real bummer

How much is too much?

That's perhaps my biggest criticism with Darkest Dungeon 2 - the runs drag on for way too long. The punishing difficulty is right up my alley, and I don't mind getting obliterated by a boss I underestimated, but that 'Try. Die. Repeat' process becomes a lot less satisfying when each attempt takes two hours of dungeon-crawling.

There is an option to increase the animation speed, and that does help, but the runs are still significantly longer than most roguelikes. I'd like to see a third of each region trimmed down because a couple fights against pigmen are engaging, but by the seventh encounter in a row it just starts to feel like padding.

This length issue is frustrating because it undermines what's actually a really solid gameplay loop. Choosing your routes on the branching paths, weighing bad options against worse ones, trying to squeeze out any advantage you can - it all creates genuine tension and dramatic moments.

The enemy design is top-notch

The would-be heroes

Central to that tension are the heroes themselves, and they work a lot differently than in the original. Instead of being individuals you nurture and grow until they become god-slayers... or just randomly kick the bucket, Darkest Dungeon 2 treats them more like templates or classes. They're (mostly) blank slates that you build up during each run, and then reset back to zero once it's over.

Well, not exactly zero as there are some roguelite upgrades you can unlock after each run - hero variants, new items, and passive improvements. These aren't massive stat boosts that trivialize the difficulty. Darkest Dungeon 2 isn't one of those games that expects you to fail dozens of times before you unlock enough stats that you can actually win. The upgrades are mostly there to add a bit of spice to your crew of misfits.

Much like the original game, each character has a wide selection of unique and specialized skills, as well as obvious weaknesses that you're going to need to overcome. Take the Leper, for example - he's an incredibly durable frontliner capable of cleaving enemies in half with a single swing. However, he's only able to target enemies in the first two ranks, and he relies on direct support from his team to overcome his cripplingly high miss chance.

Every character follows this 'power, but at a great cost' philosophy, which makes assembling your party quite engaging. Despite there being only a dozen heroes to choose from, the way they interact with each other, the way you can equip them, and the way they perform in different positions gives the combat a lot of variety and depth.

The enemies deserve credit here as well, since even the most basic ones can seriously mess you up. But I really like that, because it actually encourages you to use debuffs and defensive abilities - two things that are often useless in these types of games since the best form of crowd-control is just killing everything.

You can still focus on dealing maximum damage in Darkest Dungeon 2, but the positioning system makes that much harder to pull off. Each ability can only be used from certain ranks, and can only target enemies in specific ranks. You can't just rely on one strategy - you have to adapt and plan ahead to make the best use of each character. And with the difficulty being fairly high, every fight becomes a strategic, intense struggle for survival.

Each character is unique and fun to play around with

A shred of hope

Failure is not only punished by a loss of health that's not easily replenished, but also by a loss of sanity that can drastically affect your overall chance at success. Once you hit 10 stress your character is likely going to break, straining their relationship with the rest of the team and crippling their performance. But there's also a much smaller chance they'll rise up defiant, ready to face the horrors with renewed determination. It's rare enough that you always expect the worst, so whenever a character stands up triumphant and rallies the team around them, it creates this genuine moment of relief and pride.

These moments work so well because of the stellar presentation. Even though Darkest Dungeon 2 has switched from 2D to 3D, the grim and oppressive atmosphere hasn't changed at all. Every moment feels like a desperate struggle against unfathomable evil. But it's not all gloom and doom. The combat animations and sound effects are punchy, especially the critical hits, thus giving you hope that maybe, just maybe, you can actually pull through!

These moments of glorious victory are often punctuated by comments from the ever-present narrator - the late, great Wayne June - whose voice elevates pretty much any scenario. So despite playing Darkest Dungeon 2 obsessively for the past few weeks, hearing him shout during combat still gets me hyped!

It's always amazing to see your heroes rise up defiant

But wait, there's more!

If this was everything Darkest Dungeon 2 had, I would've been satisfied. I got 30 hours of fun out of it, and while the runs do drag a bit, it has enough depth and complexity to warrant a playthrough. But then I tried the secondary game mode - Kingdoms - and I was blown away.

It addresses my biggest complaint with the main game: the lengthy runs. Kingdoms lets you take on a massive adventure in manageable 20-minute chunks. The goal is to protect the land from raiders, monsters and eldritch horrors by upgrading your bases and sending out groups of heroes to solve quests, defend the innocent or just take the fight to the enemy.

Unlike the base game, it's all about planning ahead since traveling around the map takes time and enemies are everywhere. Which inns do you upgrade into fortresses, and which do you ignore? Do you stretch yourself thin trying to defend everyone, or do you make sacrifices? Which heroes will you use, and are you okay risking them dying because they aren't coming back like in the main mode.

If this sounds eerily similar to the original game, that's exactly right. Kingdoms scratches that same sort of strategic itch while keeping Darkest Dungeon 2's tighter gameplay. It's still a bit limited in scope as it's a relatively new game mode, but I had so much fun with it that I sank another 10-15 hours on a single campaign. And things are only going to get better in the near future as the Curse of the Court update is launching on August 28th with a new faction, new maps and additional content.

But if you don't feel like waiting, you can already start tweaking things thanks to the best feature in gaming - mod support! You can add ridiculously new heroes like the mighty Refrigerator, make enemies more talkative during combat, or even install a complete overhaul that changes the whole experience. The choice is yours. You can make your playthrough as brutal or forgiving as you want, and I love when games offer their players that kind of freedom.

That wasn't a random joke. The fridge is real!

Is it worth playing?

Darkest Dungeon 2 is a brutal but rewarding journey - a roguelite that forces you to live with failure and make the best of it. It’s not Darkest Dungeon 1, and it was never meant to be.

And that’s why it was so controversial at launch. But coming at it now, years later, without any of the baggage - it feels less like a misstep and more like a bold new direction for the series. Not better or worse - just different.

If you bounced off it at release, I think it’s well worth another look. And if you’re brand new, there’s a punishing, atmospheric adventure here that might just get its hooks into you... even if it does occasionally beat you into the dirt.

As for me, I've put 40 hours into the game, and honestly? I'm already planning my next run. And when a game can keep you engaged for that long and still leave you wanting more, it's definitely earned its place as game worth playing.