Red Hook have just released the third and final part of Darkest Dungeon 2’s Kingdoms mode – a boardgame-style add-on experience that sees you moving a stagecoach around a map’s worth of benighted inns, fending off pigmen, witches and – as of this update – giant mosquitos.
To celebrate, they’ve also made the base roguelike RPG free on Steam until September 1st. Admittedly, being offered Darkest Dungeon 2 for free is a bit like somebody warmly offering to give you the plague. But this is the fun kind of plague, a plague rich in dicey turn-based battles, grindy but engrossing character development, and suppurating vistas of cthulhoid swampfields.
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I think that, on balance, I prefer the first Darkest Dungeon’s cliffside ambience and town/dungeon format. I find the older side-scrolling dungeons less fussy than the second game’s branching 3D road systems, and I think the original game’s handling of sanity and darkness is expressed more compellingly through the layered dungeon soundtrack. Here is what Joe Donnelly thought about it in 2016: “You’ll cry. And cry and cry and cry. But I think you’ll love it.”
I think the second game’s combat system is superior, though – it boils off some of the numberfluff and introduces a more readable system of HUD tokens, while retaining the same, diabolical relationship between party member positioning and skill availability. Laena Hafer summarised the game thusly in our 2023 Darkest Dungeon 2 review: “A roguelite sequel that takes a few steps forward and one or two back from the original, but keeps the gloomy but intense spirit alive.”
If you’ve played neither, both are fine, gruelling RPGs with amazing narration and glorious visuals cut straight from the pages of Hellboy. Kingdoms brings back a little of the first game’s feel, married to the second game’s wagoneering, but is pretty much its own thing. You must defend inns as they come under siege, while travelling about to gather party members and complete a central questline before the map is swamped by nasties. Speaking of which, here’s what they’re adding in the third major Kingdoms update Curse of the Court, which is available now:
Swarms of Bloodsuckers have descended upon the Kingdom, bringing with them a supernatural contagion that can inflict your heroes with the dreaded Crimson Curse! Players will be challenged in an all-new questline to find a cure for this rapidly spreading infection and exterminate The Bloodsuckers before time runs out! Additionally, this release features new achievements to earn, and three new Kingdoms maps, each with a different layout that presents a unique set of challenges. These new maps are playable on any of the three different Kingdoms modules.
If you come down with a severe case of Dankest Sturgeon 2 this weekend, take comfort in the knowledge that they’re running a discount alongside the free timed promotion – 63% off, or more if you buy a bundle with all the DLC. Read more on Steam.
