Weekly “What games are you playing” thread #35

Darkest Dungeon II

Still a good game but besides artwork production values it does not surpass the first

They simplified and discretized combat, much RNG is removed detrimentally in my opinion. In the first game your hero had a X% dodge stat, you might use one skill to buff dodge +Y% for 3 turns and stack another to additionally buff dodge +Z% for 4 turns. Now your hero has no dodge stat, if you use a skill to buff dodge your hero gets a "dodge" token that is consumed when attacked and gives a 50% chance of dodge. Stacking just gives you another token to use for another attack. Feels like they wanted it to be practically playable as a board or card game.

The mechanism of spending special points between runs to unlock items/upgrades. which I think is considered "roguelike" though none of the OG roguelikes did this, is getting tiresome for me

A lot of elements from the first just seemed weaker. The light mechanic was much less of a factor. The first one did a rare thing for me of making inventory management interesting with the 16 slots + stack limits. I had to make choices between useful alternatives all the time, like can I risk throwing out these bandages to hold a little more treasure. In the second one I would hit the inventory limit and almost always just go in and throw out crap that I clearly didn't need.

It was interestingly themed around memory, it would make sense for me if the entire thing was a demented psychotic delusion of your character