Recent reviews by Dr. Lalaoz

Its a mobile gacha game ported to PC. freemium to the max. with the accursed "Energy" mechanic. In my 1.5 hours i got auto sent to the micro transaction shop 7 times. no clue why cloud meadow endorsed this steaming pile of garbage. money talks i guess.
surprise sex scenes happen with no context pretty frequently, especially early in the game.

The art is decent but you can only go so far down a characters story before hitting paywalls. The characters themselves are cartoonishly horny and annoying about it, every other sentence has a sex joke and it gets old fast.
combat basically boils down to "is your stat stick big enough". its not even really turn based combat system, there are little to no actual abilities besides the "attack" button, it plays more like an auto battler than anything.

I feel bad for the artist, because that's about the only good thing in this trashcan.

Great single player story game. the horror aspects of the game are very fluid with the story itself and they're more creepy and ambient as opposed to the usual jumpscare spam. which is really nice.

i'll admit. i am very biased. but theres 3 reasons why i dont like the game.

TLDR; great for the first half of the game. late game most weapons are useless and stealth becomes a cheesefest. most of the companions are dumb as ♥♥♥♥, suicidal, or friendly fire the player. and the villains are infuriating to deal with because of their stupidity and railroading.


1: the weapon scaling and stealth scaling are horrible.
headshots with lower tier weapons still instakill higher level enemies.. but only after you destroy their helmet. which has a set amount of hp and is affected by the tier'd damage penalty if your weapon is underleveled.
as a result if you're using the tier 2 LMG on tier 3 enemies. it ends up being a detriment to try and get headshots. their helmets take somewhere between 10 and 15 shots to destroy. which is about as many as it takes to kill them outright with body shots. helmet shots dont deal any damage. so if you hit a mix of body and headshots it results in your headshots dealing 0 damage. and it just feels horrible.

this isnt a huge issue once you get tier 4 weapons as once you do most of the enemies have a reasonable amount of health and the helmets get destroyed in a few shots. but if you're like me and chain missions together back to back without going back to base to upgrade gear. you'll run into this problem during your playthrough and enemies will feel like they're just invincible to headshots. pair that with higher level enemies dealing enough damage to kill you in a few seconds and it gets pretty annoying.

oh. and dont even attempt to use any of the snipers. tier 3 50.cal sniper gets deflected by tier 2 enemy face masks and takes 3 shots to break tier 3 helmets. i didnt bother testing tier 4 enemies with it.
meanwhile the tier 3 bow can one shot tier 3 enemies with body shots for some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason.

the game also feels like it funnels you into the wrath perk really hard if you dont get tier 4 weapons. since unupgraded punches with wrath can legitimately solo any ground mission in the entire game. as long as you're willing to wait in cover to let it recharge.

2: stealth is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ late game.
Timber is doodoo at marking enemies. so much so that i've been spotted before he spots enemies more than a few times. Timber's range for marking is relatively small. but the big issue is that it seems to be LoS based outside of a very small radius. so your better off marking the entire camp yourself for stealth. marking loot is great. but thats about all he's good for.
and marking the entire camp yourself doesnt work on max tier compounds, because tier 4 enemies are cloaked for some reason? once you mark them their icon is only visible when you have LOS to their head. if they go behind a wall it fades away. this gets really irritating because they also tend to move around a lot, and sometimes have a dog with them. which makes it hard to take them out silently. theres also the fact that they're more or less immune to headshots from anything that isnt the bow and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arrow. (i dont mind the bow being good, i mind the bow being the ONLY good stealth weapon in the entire game and it being SO GOOD that you dont even need to get headshots)
The ghost perk from eden's gift also trivialises all stealth. to the point where you can full sprint through open areas and not get spotted. but since it doesnt apply to the 1 or 2 dogs that are in the max tier camps those dogs will spot you from half way across the map and start chasing you around. making it super wierd to actually use.
once a dog spots you it will chase you and beep loudly. THIS DOES NOT ALERT THE CAMP, but its enough to freak you out the first time it happens. then when the dog SUICIDE BOMBS near you. the camp investigates the explosion. STILL IN STEALTH.

if no dogs are present; ghost mode is overpowered to the point where you can run from person to person doing takedowns as long as they're not 5 feet away from each other facing each other
if dogs are present; its useless because trying to use it like you've been using it will get you spotted by the dog immediately. and you'll probably have to resort to normal stealth anyway.

3: horatio is the only companion.
everyone else in the roster does fine until you start going to maxed out camps. at which point the only 2 that can do anything without immediately dying are gina and horatio. with gina having massive issues actually finding targets, and getting obliterated by flamethrowers. while horatio can litteraly solo an entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ max tier camp by infintiely reviving himself. and as long as YOU dont get spotted they wont sound the alarm and IT COUNTS AS AN UNDETECTED CAPTURE.

i could go on for a little while about the companions individually. but the short version is that everyone else in the roster is either too fragile and dies after getting 2 kills (nana), actively commits suicide or kills YOU on a regular bases (jerome, carmina and timber), or has a really slow AI that feels like its conflicting between staying in stealth and shooting back (gina and judge).
just because the PLAYER goes into stealth mid-fight (usually unintentionally). doesnt mean that the AI should immediately try to enter stealth as well and completely disengage from the fight, without actually leaving the fight. resulting in them just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ standing there getting shot by an m60. (gina does this the worst, but she has the health to tank it so its kind of fine)
the only AI that doesnt do this stealth conflicting thing is horatio, hence: why he ends up having the most success OFFENSIVELY. dispite being labeled as a the tank.


this last point is just me; i dispise the twins as characters. i'm all for an evil villan. but the twins aren't evil. they feel dumb as hell and cocky as hell and theres nothing else to them. one of them is slightly more sane than the other and thats about it. they remind me of middle school bullies and it legitimately made me angry.

After more or less abandoning the game for a few months i can honestly say that i expected to find a steaming pile of garbage. But thats not what i found.
Now that all of the progression, que time, and lack of build variety issues have been sorted out the game is actually a lot of fun. both in stealth and in loud.

The game used to be dead set on forcing this "limited time and resources" mindset in regards to enemies, ammo and armor, but they've more or less abandoned that.
Adaptive armor exists now which ignores the perma-damage mechanic from taking damage as long as it doesn't break the entire chunk. Armor repair kits also exist, which restore the perma-damage on your current chunk for the non-adaptive armors and can be found naturally spawning, as drops from certain special enemies, or can be farmed en-mass by trading hostages between assault waves.
The enemies assault armor that they get as the game progresses was also weakened significantly since i last played. It used to take half a clip emptied directly into the enemy helmet to kill one enemy on very hard, now it takes a couple of bullets. More than unarmored enemies, and enough to make you pay attention, but not bullet sponge hell.

Additionally the Adrenaline mechanic makes first aid kits and medic bags have a solid use with or without being paired with the relevant perks. Adrenaline takes damage before armor does, meaning if you are leaving and not coming back, eat the medic bag to save your armor while you move. I was very surprised at how effective the tank build was using fortitude and enforcer for a near infinite 30% DR and manipulator to stack first aid and armor repair kits en-mass.

As for ammo, the ammo efficiency of all guns in the game I've used is enough to not need ammo bags provided you're picking up ammo from your teammates kills. (ammo drops are dropped locally for everyone, this isn't "stealing" someone else's ammo)
Ammo bags do have some niche perk uses and let you refill in a safe location but its not necessary as long as your somewhat accurate.

So far my only real complaint is the hit registration and bloom of most weapons. hip fire is more or less impossible to predict after the first shot, and aiming with most sights gives you a blurry half rendered mess of a reticle. Also i swear I've seen my bullet tracers go through enemies heads with no hit registered on multiple occasions.

very good strategy game, looking forward to its future.

look at the hours played at time of review.
i have not completed my first playthrough yet. i havn't even made it to act 3 yet.
calling this game a MOUNTAIN of content is an understatement. there is so much to do, so many unique characters, bosses, stories, quests, lore. you can be whatever you want to be, do whatever you want to do.
this is the only DnD style game that legitimately gives you the level of freedom that normal DnD gives.

This is most definitely darkest dungeon TWO, entering this game with the mindset of the original will work somewhat, but you will have learn how to adapt to the new systems and the heightened importance of team synergy. in DD1 you made teams of characters, in DD2 your characters make the team. if one person doesnt fit well, i promise you there is probably someone else who does.

i think the most important thing to take into account for older players is that most of the abilities have had major balance changes from DD1, i'll use plague doctors "Incision" as an example, it used to be mostly worthless, but now it can be an absolute powerhouse with the right setup. the same can be said for a lot of different abilities.

I see a lot of people talking about the healing skill changes and my only comment on that is that 1: you heal passively while traveling in the cart, frequency is a bit random but it heals in 10 or 20% health increments depending on if your wheels are damaged or not. and 2: characters on deaths-door can pass to heal themselves for 20%. healing SKILLS are much less important in DD2, preventative abilities are still just as important as they always have been.

the only problem i have with the current healing skills is vestal, she has always been DD's posterchild support. but if you use her you will quickly realize that she is very clunky and risky to have as your teams only healer, since her base heal threshold is 25% its really easy for her to see someone on 9/35 and get scuffed out of healing them, only for them to get killed between her turns.
this happening is usually the result of poor team management, but if divine grace is inconsistent in its SINGULAR use case, it makes the entire skill mediocre. when it works it feels like you've only delayed the inevitable and when it doesn't you question why you even use her over anyone else.

honestly i would love to see divine grace get a tweak where it heals proportionally to missing health, that way we still have the gimick of her being able to heal a ton in a panic, but she can still keep up with a changing fight where you might not have time to wait another turn.

First try IDIOT

legitimately beat the game first try with the starter deck and loved it.
got absolutely destroyed on my 2nd playthrough and still had fun with it.

I died

Great concept, ego of the dev kind of ruins it though.

First, theres no speed button, and one game can last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. honestly i'd be fine with games lasting that long if half of that time wasnt spending watching my towers do litteraly nothing while the enemies slowly walk 600 miles to my defenses.

2nd, Rng hell.
i get it, its a rogue game, RNG is a mechanic. but there's a point where it becomes more RNG than game. and once you unlock more than half the "upgrades" that sound interesting and fun. you quickly realise that you've just smothered your deck with useless garbage. useless being used in the litteral term. its pretty much impossible for me to go the first 10 waves without getting forced into taking an item that does LITTERALY nothing. like increasing bleed damage when i dont have access to anything that deals bleed damage.
apon trying to un-select items i discovered the only way to solve the problem is to FULLY RESET YOUR PROGRESSION.

after looking into it i found a few posts from the developer more or less ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on his community for litteraly begging him to add a speed up button. hence: save your money.