To me, Dark Deity 2's main strength is how comforting it is. What do I mean by that? Well, it's a game that feels 'like home'. It feels like I'm a 14 year old coming back from a tiring day of school and getting to launch a game to unwind from the stress. It's not the nostalgia of an early childhood game, nor is it the rush of the discovery of a new favourite found in adulthood. Instead, it's the feeling of your biggest worry being homework.

So, let's talk about the game itself.

It's a standard Turn-based Strategy RPG, a la Fire Emblem. And while it feels somewhat derivative of the GBA Fire Emblem games, I mean that in a positive way. I'll be comparing it to those - though I'll admit that I never finished the GBA Fire Emblem games.

The spritework is genuinely gorgeous in my opinion, and it's the real standout of the game. In fact, it's the entire reason I bought it. I wanted to see cool looking characters doing cool combat animations. And that's exactly what I got. I'd even say that the promotional material on the game's steam page actually looks worse than what's actually in the game. I don't really have anything to complain about here.

Next up, the story, and related to that, the voice acting. And for that I will say that they are unfortunately a bit counterproductive. The voice acting is generally good, but it didn't feel quite right most of the time, and I think the reason for that is the middling story. It's not outright bad, but it's one of those stories where I appreciate what the writer was trying a lot more than I actually appreciate what they pulled off. Which would honestly be less of a problem if the game hadn't been voice acted at all, because the writing would sound a lot better if it was only in my head. But since I get to hear the characters say it aloud, it all feels a bit too simple sometimes.

So what's the problem with the writing? Simply put, I feel like it's trying to focus on too much at once, and too little at once. Let me just say that I have not played the first Dark Deity, nor do I plan to. So it's possible that the writing would improve based on that. But considering that I understood the story perfectly well, and I had no problem with anything that felt like a callback to the first game (Such as Orcs coming out of nowhere without really being established, or the same with a Dwarven society apparently existing between two major human settlements). Actually, I would fully say that you do not need to have played the first game at all, and I do consider that quite a major plus for the story.

No, my problem comes from the fact that the game is trying to tell a very grand story about an entire world (or at least a continent), while also trying to tell a story about a family, and the people in those family, but they just don't combine well enough. And it's not a conceptual problem or anything, it's an execution thing, because in some chapters, I feel like the game actually manages to pull this off decently. The incursion into Naja (one of the realms in the game) feels like a few chapters that manage to combine character development with the worldbuilding fairly well. But in a lot of other times, it feels like you're pulled to one part of the world for two or three chapters, get given some filler, and then repeat that a couple of times, and it doesn't feel like the world is actually alive, but just serving up a few locales for levels to exist in.

Unfortunately, this all serves to make the world feel much smaller than it actually is. Hell, the entire enemy nation of Asverel, the empire hell bent on war, gets invaded and taken down in only 3 or so chapters. And while I understand that we've been winning victories against them all the while, it doesn't feel like they actually put up a threat or anything. Funnily enough, I think a major contributor for that is the main city of Chelebons being so central on the map. It makes it feel like Asverel never truly advanced far, and that it's not like we're slowly pushing them back. They just pop up in random realms across the continent, set off some havoc, and then you repel them and they leave. You don't get the sense that they actually travelled there or that you're forcing them out. It just feels like they teleport in and out - and that's ignoring the time that they actually do that. If the world had been laid out in such a way that every chapter was moving slowly closer to Asverel, then the time we spent in each place would have felt more meaningful, but instead, we visit the closest places to them in the first third of the game, before moving further away, and then returning.

On the character writing side, I have to say that my problems are less, but no less significant. The actual character writing that exists is mostly competent, it's just that some characters are woefully underused, or even misused. In the first few chapters, you get introduced to the Asverelian captain Mikhail, who so, so obviously exists as the end boss of a chapter about halfway through the game. But then you only face him about 5 or 6 chapters before the game ends (and there's ~30 chapters in the game). And it's not like he gets more to do in that meantime. The story really treats him as if he died at around the halfway point, because he's not relevant between that and his actual death, and a bunch of other characters get introduced that feel like they're supposed to be piggybacking off of his death to show that there's more 'bigger bads' where that came from.

Similarly, some of the companions you start off with have no story relevance. And I'm not talking about the ones that are made to have no story relevance, I'm fine with those. All these Strategy RPGs have some random wanderers who join in because they just like money or whatever, and that's completely fine. This game does too, and I have no problem with those. But specifically, the characters you start off with should probably be some of the more engaging and exciting ones. However, not one, but two of the initial characters are complete non-characters. Actually, that's a lie, one of them is such a non-character that I can't remember whether she was in the party or not in the initial character. This is a character that gets some story development in like chapter 20 that feels like it came out of absolutely nowhere - apparently being a native Asverelian who was helped by a current enemy commander to escape and joined the order - but none of this was built up to, or at least not that I can recall at all. And while I think my MVP unit (Eve) got the exact right amount of focus, I can't say the same is true for all of the characters.

You then have your central cast of 3-5 main characters, depending on whether you consider the sibling's dad and uncle to be main characters or a supporting cast. And for those, I'm quite a bit more positive. Their story is pretty good and enjoyable. I did feel like perhaps there was a bit too much focus on Gwyn, at the cost of Arthur's development, but I think it's excusable, as long as you do accept that the game is actually about Gwyn more than it is about all 3 siblings equally - even though the story would probably want you to think it's the other way around. It's not that Arthur doesn't receive development, and I think Riordan's involvement in the game is perfect for what his character is supposed to be, but it's noticeable that Arthur's story ends up with unanswered questions, and both of their stories involve a lot of "how can we best support Gwyn?" Hell, Gwyn's the only unit who can't die, or you lose the chapter (more on that later). I think my only real problem with the main trio is that it felt like their story came at the cost of the side characters. Some of the focus on them should probably have been on the side characters for some of the chapters.

Now, let's move on to the gameplay. This is where I'd say the game diverges most from the GBA Fire Emblems. I know that the later Fire Emblems enabled a toggle for permadeath, and perhaps they've done many other changes as well, but as I have not played those, I can only compare with the GBA games.

The three biggest additions I'd say are the wounds system - AKA what happens when you die - abilities, and the class system. Let's talk about them in order.

The wounds system is, in my opinion, the single biggest improvement this game makes to the genre. Perhaps it's already a commonplace system, and if it is, credit goes to whoever came up with this, because I REALLY love it. Basically, instead of dying, your units get a random debuff for one chapter. Now, I love this because I am always really scared of losing access to content I wanted to see because of a mistake I made. Doubly so because if you have to restart a chapter due to losing a unit, that could easily mean half an hour wasted. So as much as I understand the design reasons behind permadeath, I emotionally abhor it. This system completely fixes that for me, because it allows me to not be constantly scared of losing a unit, while still incentivising me to avoid unit losses as much as possible. It's all I needed to make sure I wasn't being absolutely reckless with my units, while also not overly punishing me for mistakes I've made.

My one gripe with the system is that this does not apply to main character Gwyn. If she dies, you just lose the chapter, and this feels a bit weird. The game never treats any of your other units dying as them actually dying, or even getting wounded. Nowhere does the game pretend like the actual damage inside of the chapters is related to the damage in the story - which, to be clear, isn't a problem. Even her two brothers can die without it ever impacting the story. So it just does not feel correct that Gwyn somehow has to make it out. It would honestly have felt better if this restriction applied to all 3 of the siblings - even though it would have caused more frustrating restarts - because that would have felt more justifiable story-wise. The way it is now though, it just feels like an arbitrary restriction that made me quite annoyed the one chapter it came into play.

The abilities, on the other hand, are a much bigger mixed bag. They do feel fun to use... until they start to scale out of control. In the early game, they feel like an extra boost to help finish off one unit, or to just make sure you don't fail that 80% hit that you really need. In the late game, my Arthur could deal 85 damage per turn from 7 squares away, my Gwyn could teleport up to 12 tiles, and my Zanele was doing 45 bonus damage to any enemy she needed to. It's an issue that is generally present in the game, in that the late game is much easier than the early game, but it is most noticeable in the abilities. Whether or not this is enough of a problem is up to each player individually to decide, but for me, they were just a bit too strong.

Finally, the class system is great. You have I believe 5 different class archetypes, who each have 4 different classes, and 4 different promoted classes in them. Units have a set class archetype, but you can choose the specific class and promoted class they are. This is a really good system for making your units individualised to your playstyle, while also giving enough variety. It's really great, and the highlight of the game was whenever I unlocked new classes to see their animations.


I just wish, really wish, that there was an additional class archetype based around mounted units. Because there are in fact, no mounted units in this game. I kinda get it, mounted units are almost always broken, and considering there's no weapon triangle or counter weapons to think of in this game, they would likely be even stronger than what's already possible. But honestly, I would have been fine with them having the same movement as your infantry, I just really, really wanted to see the cool animations that they could do for mounted units. Plus, there could be a lot of different class options as well, from your standard knight with a sword, to a mounted archer, a lance knight, and a wyvern rider making up the initial classes, with the promoted ones being cooler versions of those. It feels like a missed opportunity, though I won't hold it against the game too much.

The one problem with the class system is that I don't think there's enough content for it considering the length of the game. A new set of cool animations to look at could have carried the final stretch of the game, when the story was starting to drag, and the gameplay was becoming a bit too easy. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be.

Still, in the end, I would say that Dark Deity 2 was a very enjoyable game, and well worth the money I spent on it, which was approximately ~€12,50. I think I would have been happy with my purchase up to €20, satisfied up to €25, bedgrudgingly okay up to €30, and disappointed beyond that.

PS: Works great on Steam Deck. I had 0 issues.