In the feverish pace of the world, one could be forgiven for overlooking the full release of the follow-up to the cult classic Darkest Dungeon, aptly named Darkest Dungeon II. With it's siren's call to "Embrace Your Failures", it invites you on a new expedition into the blackest pits of the mind. Delivering on its promise, repeatedly beating you into submission, pushing you further into despair with every punishing failure. The once seemingly stylized signs of despair, become hallmarks of reinforced failure.
Failure is not optional.
The world hostile, unforgiving and convoluted, aims to confuse, making the future moments of clarity all the sweeter. A constant ebb and flow, churning out understanding of its harsh mechanisms and grotesque environment, being reborn after every failure, and few successes, to relive the horrors once witnessed. There is respite however, taking pause before every new expedition to utilize some resources and knowledge of your previous at the Altar of Hope. Unlocking more memories of compatriots, trinkets, modifications, and combative baubles to be used in your future attempts in fulfilling your confession. Once prepared, you venture forth on your next journey towards the mountain in your lonely carriage of suffering. A twist on the same formula implemented by its predecessor, still simply a travelling mechanic all the same. Travelling on the treacherous roads to various stops, each promising a potential reward or another struggle. The Coach shambling towards the next brief moment of safety, eager to be repaired, and its passengers eager for a chance of respite, and to revel in companionship. Then you must steel yourself and face the indescribable horrors of the road on your journey to the mountain once more.
This too ended in failure.
The road offers various hazards and trials to overcome, including aiding those displaced by the horror, pillaging academic ruins, beating back the monstrosities, and reliving the memories of your retinue. The mechanisms in which you dispatch your enemies remain largely unchanged from the previous entry, though expanded and more convoluted. You must relive your characters pasts in memory to unlock their full potential, and their skills refined through mastery and reflection at the inn, or further specialized by utilizing hope to unlock alternate specialties at the altar. The monstrous horrors have increased in size and scale, a never-ending onslaught of new mutated hostiles to encounter, each embodying its environmental aesthetic. Slaughter, all in the hopes of looting treasure to aid at the culmination of one's journey, the mountain, and within it the final confrontation.
The game does its best to reinforce its proclamation of its central theme of failure. It's tale of the academic, it's difficult and at times unfair gameplay, the stories of its characters you unravel, its narration of your fortunes, all culminate in reinforcement of the idea of embracing your failures, and continuing, growing and resolutely moving to overcome them in final success. While it lacks a bit of greatness of its predecessor, it acquires some greatness of its own. It is an exceptional successor, in these trialing times of games that don't know what they want to be or how to focus on what they are it is a triumph in and of itself.