Certain skills can only be used from a specific position, and only affect enemies or allies in specific rank slots. These effects matter for both your team and the enemy's, as the returning system of four ranks for hero and enemy positions dictates how a character fights. The combat design is also a step up, with many powers and abilities distilled into a system of handy status tokens to gain and exploit, such as bleed, blight, weakened, dodging, and guarding, among others. Brilliant narration and stiff yet surprisingly expressive animation make it easy to be drawn into its vague but tantalizing world, though the end feels artificially out of reach.

What We Said About Darkest Dungeonĭarkest Dungeon is a grim and merciless tactical strategy game whose great tension comes from its many layers of complexity, unpredictable randomization, and willingness to put our fragile characters in mortal danger if we dare to venture into its depths in search of treasure and glory. It's certainly controversial to some, but to my eye those improved, smoother animations (like when a mace is dragged back across the floor after a heavy blow) and spatial sense are worth anything lost in translation from sprite to model. Working in 3D space gives everything a much stronger screen presence, adding a sense of weight to more of the cast and monsters. While the graphics are now 3D instead of the 2D paper doll look, they still make use of Darkest Dungeon's signature heavy-lined graphic style. The famously gritty narrator returns, rumbling out some outrageously melodramatic lines. The self-aware approach to the dark fantasy genre here is so pleasing, with characters from the first game evolving forward in unexpected ways as you learn their stories – and popping up in new or weird places you wouldn't expect. There'll be a lot of that, by design.) The same famously gritty narrator returns as the only voice you’ll hear aside from grunts and wails, rumbling out some outrageously melodramatic lines so overwritten and overwrought that I can't help but love them.

(And it's nice that everything looks cool while you get frustrated by repeated failure. Creepy characters, unsettling music, and ridiculously gloomy writing combine with the game design to make one of the neatest early-modern fantasy worlds in gaming. What's still there from Darkest Dungeon? It's all very stylishly presented.

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