The intrepid coast allows you to unlock upgrades for your stage coach. Once your character dies in a run, that’s it until a new expedition. In the timeless wood, you can equip a memory to a particular hero for buffs that lasts as long as the player survives. The different locations within the altar of hope all have different ways to spend your candles.

Along the way, you acquire candles of hope, which can be used to unlock other playable heroes once you reach the altar of hope. You start out with four playable heroes: highwayman, man-at-arms, grave robber, and plague doctor.

Similar to the first game, Darkest Dungeon II features a narrator who acts as the hero’s mentor and guides them on the path toward the mountain to take down the corruption. Depending on what act you are in, which the game refers to as “confessions, you will fight a different final boss each time you enter the mountain. There are seven regions in total: the valley, the sprawl, the foetor, the sluice, the shroud, the tangle, and the mountain.

While the first game featured one main location, this time, you will traverse in a stagecoach through many forsaken lands filled with monsters, cults, and plenty of emotional turmoil to go around. You and your band of misfits must get to know each other and form strong bonds if they hope to put an end to the madness consuming the world. To my knowledge, this is the only gaming franchise I’ve seen that expertly blends roguelike with turn-based combat.ĭarkest Dungeon II follows the same premise as its predecessor in that tragic heroes band together to avert the ever-approaching apocalypse. It was first released in early access on October 26, 2021, with only three playable paths. If the first game was any indication of how good its sequel would be, gamers would be in for a brutal yet satisfying follow-up in this turn-based/roguelite franchise. With the release of the first Darkest Dungeon, it brought forth a wildly successful debut title that delighted many a PC gamer. They have since increased their numbers to around twenty during the development of Darkest Dungeon II. They were founded by industry veterans Chris Bourassa and Tyler Sigman in 2013 with a small but mighty team of five. Red Hook’s sophomore release, Darkest Dungeon II, showcases an excellent display of this small but mighty team’s talents.ĭarkest Dungeon II is the second title from Red Hook Studios, an independent game developer based in Vancouver, BC.

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