Weekly “What are you playing” thread

Darkest Dungeon 2 is great. The devs knew that doing another long campaign through a megadungeon would just be Darkest Dungeon 1.5, so they mixed things up by making it from roguelight-adjacent into a proper roguelight. The dungeon has been replaced with a road trip, and considering that Death Road to Canada is one of my top 5 favorite games, I'm thrilled to see it. Inventory management has been maintained, but the focus on logistics from 1 is downplayed, as you keep no material wealth between runs. Stress has also been downplayed, as it's now 1-10 rather than 1-200. Taking the spotlight is the new relationship system, as since you're (most likely) using the same four heroes from the start to the end, it makes sense that they would grow to like/hate each other. Consumable items, combat actions, road events, and random flavor text interactions will all impact heroes' relationships. Low relationships will cause them to impede each other in combat by giving debuffs or even directly attacking each other, while high relationships will cause them to help each other out in combat by giving buffs and doing team-up attacks. Stress' major role now is by impacting relationships; the higher a character's stress is, the more unfriendly interactions they'll have with other characters. At 10 stress, they'll have a meltdown, which destroys their relationship with the other three. I enjoy the system, and negative relationships are delightfully crippling. I think the devs should nerf positive relationships, as they're not too hard to get but are proportionally powerful to negative relationships. Speaking of the characters themselves, the cast has seen some cuts. The Plague Doctor, Grave Robber, Highwayman, Man at Arms, Jester, Hellion, Leper, Occultist, Vestal, Flagellant, and Bounty Hunter are joined by a new character, the Runaway. The Antiquarian is present as an NPC. The Crusader, Houndmaster, Arbalest, Musketeer, Shieldbreaker, and Abomination are all MIA. I sadly don't expect to see the Musketeer or Abomination returning since they were Kickstarter rewards for backers who pledged the highest tier, which let you design your own character to be included. While I was initially disappointed by the cuts to the roster, it's well worth it, as now each character is far more complex than they were in game 1. They all have 11 skills rather than 8, and can bring 5 rather than 4 to each individual fight. Additionally, each hero has three optional paths you can pick at the start of the run to deviate them from their normal play style. Want your Occultist to sacrifice his healing and debuffs in exchance for Leper-tier damage output? Pick the Warlock path. Want your Plague Doctor to sacrifice blight damage in exchange for better healing and melee damage? Pick the Surgeon path. Want your Flagellant to become the coolest party member in RPG history? Pick the Maniac path. Additionally, the combat, which was the best part of DD1, has been improved. There is now a token system, where most buffs/debuffs, rather than directly affecting stats, grant characters tokens displayed under their sprite. There's a few basic tokens that most characters and enemies can access: block, block+, dodge, dodge+, attack, crit, riposte, vulnerable, weaken, blind, daze, and stun. I initially disliked the system, thinking it was a simplification of stat (de)buffs, but it's handled very well. Many characters have moves that manipulate tokens, and most trinkets focus on token manipulation. For example, the Highwayman has a skill called "Highway Robbery" that steals 2 of an enemy's positive tokens. The Plague Doctor has a skill called "Indiscriminate Science" that purges all of its targets' tokens, positive and negative, healing more the more tokens the target had. The Maniac Flagellant path is entirely dedicated to token manipulation and it's glorious. Lash's Gift steals all of an ally's negative tokens, while Sepsis transfers all of his negative tokens to an enemy. Very fun system. Characters learn new skills via map events that show you their backstories, which have cool unique fights and are also all edge-kino. The Highwayman is literally me. It turns out some people knew each other before even DD1. Also the game looks great, Red Hook did a very good job translating the game's art style to 3D, and seeing the characters with normal proportions is very cool. The Leper is huge.

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