Dark Deity 2

From all the other reviews/comments you'd think the writing was detractingly awful. It wasn't. It was serviceable. Good gameplay, voice acting and art. It's worth your money and time if you like games like these. Let's hope the developer keeps improving their craft.

Dark Deity 2 has gameplay reminiscent of Shining Force in a good way, but you're going to have to get through a novels worth of bad exposition to get to it. A good game when exercising the skip conversation button.

The gameplay is solid, reminiscent of classic grid/turn-based strategy games like Warsong. You can pick and upgrade to unique classes. After 22 hours, the story is OK and quite engaging. My main disappointment is the character writing and interactions. The cast feels like a group of annoying, emotionally unstable teenagers, led by a tough girl boss warrior and a tough girl boss assassin, alongside a healer who’s mostly asleep and male characters I found equally irritating. The dialogue seems written by someone young, lacking real-world experience. They focus far to much on emotions, this not how people interact with each other.

Super fun game despite rough edges in terms of balancing, story and unit customization. Love the additional objectives and turn limits. Combat mechanics are addictive with the constant management of buffs and debuffs, plus a lot of fun abilities to use.

Loved the followup to the first game! From a gameplay perspective, it cleans up a lot of the cumbersome and obtuse weapon systems from the first game, dropping the overbearing 4 upgradable options from the first game and replacing it with each character having one equipped weapon that has its own stats and can be upgraded with 2 passives. The list of passives, overall, varies between weapons, half of the list being general improvements while the other half vary from weapon to weapon, with some having access to options like Ferocity, giving you a guarantee 2-hits per swing (Brave, for those familiar with Fire Emblem) and / or Mana / lifesteal on hit. Accessories and items have also been streamlined as well; item slots are gone, along with the excess of recoverable items, and replaced with every character having access to 2 Ring slots. In general, the user interface for the game is vastly improved from the first game, making it significantly easier to determine how and why you want to make changes and upgrades to your characters, as well as generally just 'functioning' properly, as the first game was a hassle to navigate at a baseline level. -- Storywise, the flow and writing of the game is much more cleaned up and clear from the first game. Unlike with the first game, I was actually able to follow the narrative step by step as the player is not nearly as overloaded with noun salad to the degree the first game was. Others have noted that the game has a habit of being a bit melodramatic and preachy / whiny at times and I can't say it's wholly inaccurate, but the strength of the character writing as a whole makes it much easier to stomach as, like the first game, the interactions between the characters and their ideals that clash or align are interesting and, at times, thought-provoking. It's only a shame that, while appreciably more streamlined, there are less of them per character than the last game. There are also plenty of callbacks to the first game that are great to see as a fan of the first game without feeling like they're too overbearing. The mentioning or straight up appearance of certain characters was always a nice surprise to see with how they help to give more significance to the first game's characters without overshadowing this ones. -- Overall, very much enjoyed my time with the game and, if you were a fan of the first game, I don't see many reasons why you wouldn't enjoy this one as well if you haven't gotten it yet.

A bit dissapointed in this one. I played the first, and while never finishing it, liked it a good bit. This one has a couple important improvements, but also feels like it lost a lot of identity. I did also find a couple bugs, and also balance feels wonky. So, first the identity. The first one was more unique. Killing units and having thier HP bar explode based on what wep type killed tham was awesome. Loved the animations, and I liked how it was far less stingy with stat points (contrasted to Fire Emblem). This sequal, did away with a lot of that. Hp bars are the stock Fire Emblem knock off. Animations are much more subdued as well making crits less exciting. In addition they added a timer to every mission. after the first 5 or so i usually finished with a couple extra turns. Annoyingly, while it didnt feel as hard i still restarted a lot because most maps split left and right, and with the timer you try to speed through. 1 missplay and most non-frontlines will die in 2 hits. Oppse, this tree is a different color and it does a RANGED attack, yeah ok dead unit restart. On to balance. It is a VERY ANNOYING choice to have a lot of maps try and split you up (hello timer again) and your starting hearer units CANNOT SELF HEAL. But, you dont actually HAVE dedicated healers at start its soldiers with a heal skill which makes it an annoying choice of do i want the soldier to actually fight since he cannot heal his self damage. I upgraded the shamman (starting healer warrior combo) to the warrior side. They got more points in the frontline stats, yay, and gained an ability that after combat does some fire dmg. This did NOT give exp, so if you got a killing blow with it you just hurt yourself by losing killing blow XP. Anyways, So i had her as another frontline. Only to realise shes too slow for double hits, too low strength to hit for more than 1/3 an enemies life. Soooo she was functionally still a person who heals but cant contrinute outside of that. I changed her out of that class. Meanwhile my monk will retalite and kill a unit from max health. Balance just felt bad. A couple good points though - Less enemy crit (yay), rings were cool (big amount of varried special effects) classes yielded cool activated abilities. I made my tank a blade (something) that gained crit chance if the enemy had a debuff. I then gave him a ring so that when someone hits him they get a stack of bleed. His return hits had the boosted crit and he would also regularly 1 shot opponents.

TLDR: You get what you pay for, budget Indie Fire Emblem. I recommend it for FE players and fans of the genre. Maybe not if your new to SRPGs. If you like fire emblem you'll probably like this. But the main differences here are the class system and abilities. While the class system is alright, it is a bit limiting, as there are really only about 3 main classes that have a lot of options. For instance, a mage can easily change between the different mage classes with different abilities and growth rates enabling a good amount of customization at the cost of a bit of individuality. While this is alright I perfer the system in FE and DD1 with a bit more of a "class tree" system that felt a little more significant and diversifies the units themselves making everyone feel more unique, which brings me into bad stuff, starting with the abilities and the mana system. Active Abilities are powerful, but use mana that regenerates every turn meaning you have a powerful and endless resource that would trivialize each map if not for the badly implemented turn limits on each map. The game does give you the option to turn it off, but if you do then there is not really any real challenge at all in this game. Without the turn limits combined with the fact that the maps put almost not pressure on the player means that you can take your time and use your abilities to clear the map with more damage, durability, or even summons (later in the game) that your enemies have no access to. I don't really know how to put this politely, but this seems like incredibly amateurish game design. Arbitrary turn limits feel bad and cheapen it when you actually want to put real time based pressure on the player. The fix for this is to make mana a limited resource that does not naturally regenerate every turn and force you to be careful and actually think about when you want to use your special moves. Now suddenly your abilities are more significant and don't limit the map design, which speaking of is also the other biggest weak point of this game. Some of the maps are bland, most/if not all put almost no pressure on the player and the enemies wait around to be aggro'd and killed. The game relies so hard on the arbitrary turn limits to turn pressure on the player that im really not sure I CAN recommend this to anybody who doesn't already like the FE style of games as this is worse than the original DD1 as an introduction to the genre. If I can offer one peice of advice to the devs it's to learn how to put REAL pressure on the player that doesn't feel cheap and gamified. FE isn't perfect and has had the same problem but its not close to as bad as it is here. To list a few off the top of my head FE uses things like bandits raiding villages, thieves stealing treasure, recruitable allies under attack. All these are fun and much better ways to get the player out and doing things. Anyway. I know I got really negative but it comes from a long time FE fan with a lot of love and passion for the genre. I did enjoy the game. The writing and characters are mostly good and I'm looking forward to more from a dev that is actually trying new things and I'm here to support it.

Incredible followup on the dark deity story that's unafraid of making bold choices. Turn based gameplay is great and plays great into the power fantasy. My only qualm is that you don't get to use all the characters of the cast and sometimes you just cut down half the cast down to the 10 you can take everywhere. I wish there some incentives to making use of the whole company rather than just picking your best 10. I'm a bit sad to see some of the art decisions of the previous entry got cut (for example, I really enjoyed the vial breaking animations of the previous one).

Welcomed improvements from the first title, still rich in gameplay first mechanics and retro immersive styling. What I wish FE games would have evolved to.

Excellent game Amazing voice acting - fun characters All the new elements added since the first game provide a new level of depth. Would recommend All my homies hate stairs. Black abyss, i want more.

Only a bit of a improvement over the first game. In someways it felt like a step forward, the writing is largely improved with a few cringe elements and cliches mixed in; It's carried by strong voice acting throughout. In other ways it feels like it stagnated, there are still very few sprite designs for the enemies and companions. You fight enemies using the same limited set of sprites with different color schemes across the whole game. Each companion still only gets one portrait, but they do get changing eyes and facial expressions to some extent this time. I chalk a lot of that up to this being a indie team on a budget and would recommend this game if you enjoy TRPGs.

A lovely game in the same vein as old Fire Emblem games. The gameplay is almost the same to Fire Emblem with a few additional feature like equippable skill rings, active and passive abilities and mana to use said abilities. Narratively I enjoyed the character stories, especially of the three main characters. That being said, the overarching plot didn't catch me very much. It takes almost the whole game to get going and was clearly written with a sequel in mind. A sequel which I am very much looking forward to.

It's ok. I wish the character classes changed things up more often. I got bored with the progression speed in the game so I quit playing way before finishing.

Incredible game with a lot of replay value. Likeable characters, impactful story, great gameplay loop that hasn't gotten stale for me. Skill and Class systems were near perfect for build crafting without being too overwhelming, overpowered, or feeling meaningless.Well worth a try especially if you're a fan of Fire Emblem or other turn based strategy. I would love to see more playable classes and possibly characters in the future. Some rings could be removed and I wouldn't notice. Varied mission objectives were good, but could be more abundant. defense chapters would be greatly appreciated. (If there was one, sorry, I didn't remember one) Overall, the game was fantastic. Fully recommend this game and I look forward to what you do in the future!

Finished my first blind playthrough on Deity difficulty and overall I enjoyed DD2 a lot. I love Fire Emblem and SRPG's and I think DD2 hits its own niche in the genre and its worth the price. I feel like the chapter length and amount of total chapters feels like it overstays it welcome a tad. The last 6 or so chapters I was ready for the game to reach its conclusion because there wasn't anymore interesting growth in terms of gameplay complexity. I did still enjoy the ending of the game and going through the last handful of chapters felt like more of a chance to let my star units shine than a challenge to surmount. Other than that, I don't have a lot to say negatively about my experience. I think I would have come away happier if the game ended sooner though. I enjoyed tinkering with my army and the units classes, abilities, rings and weapons a lot. The gold cost for resetting ability upgrades or weapon runes is understandable but I think the game would be better with the cost removed. There is a lot of customization you can do and being able to experiment freely would be nice. The class choices felt very meaningful and the abilities each class and unit has felt impactful. The moment-to-moment gameplay feels good but the UI feels weird to me. Its simple and the navigation is easy but certain ability range indicators would be unclear. Unit movement also feels odd because from memory, there was no way for me to check how much movement a unit has. Unit movement is also normalized to 5 for all units, unless enemies have modifiers for extra movement or you use rings, abilities and debuffs to modify movement. I won't speak on the subject of the story because I think in games like these, you should experience it for yourself. There were multiple moments that surprised me and the chapters leading up to the finale were affected by the choices I made during the campaign, or at least it seemed that way. I have no idea to the extent of the difference between choices but I liked seeing the consequences of my actions whether they were good or bad.

There are a lot of downsides here, but I think it's ultimately worth your time if you can deal with them. The writing feels rambling and amateurish, with no real sense that these are fantasy people in a fantasy world. And while I'm two-thirds of the way through the story, it feels random and directionless, like we're bouncing between vignettes with only a few hints at broader events or themes. The art-style also highlights this lack of care; individually, every unit looks fine, but collectively they feel like a mishmash of ideas with no thought given to what the designs say about the universe these characters live in. All that said, I'm still enjoying the core gameplay enough to give it the thumbs up. It does make a bit of a poor first impression too, to be honest; you get a lot of classes, abilities, and equipment thrown at you almost right away, and with little explanation of how it all works. Unlike the Fire Emblem games it's aping, I feel like the classes largely lack a clear visual shorthand to suggest that X will be burly but slow, Y will be squishy but fast, and so on, so it's not immediately obvious what makes Guy With Bow 1 different from Guy With Bow 2, etc. To compound that, there are an overwhelming number abilities you can use and rings you can equip; they probably could have benefited by cutting back, because it feels like you never really get to (or need to) grapple with all of them. I could see those mechanics getting interesting on harder settings, though. But once you puzzle things out it's still satisfying to level your troops and grow your army, and the map design mostly feels like a step up from DD1. Forced turn-limits on every map are a little annoying when they don't bother to justify it from a story perspective, but it does help encourage you to push forward and the punishment for losing a unit is light. It's off-brand Fire Emblem, ultimately, but it still scratched the itch for me, and I think people who are more into the genre than I am will appreciate the breadth of difficulty customisation options for future runs.

For a paid product, I'm a lot disappointed in what I got, bought it for full price when it launched and only finished recently. Gameplay is ok, great improvement from the first for sure. Writing is dog water though, I've played free romhacks with better writing than this lol

A better experience than I had hoped for. There's a lot of customization with the individual characters from their classes to ability upgrades to weapons. The possibilities allow for crazy synergy/combo potential. Nevertheless, it is vital to not ignore training sessions/challenges as they are tools to help progress your squads's combat power. The only thing I don't personally like is can use no more than 10 units on the battlefield, with your final roster being 20 characters in total. Several of your people are bound to fall behind, so it's vital to establish a reliable rotation as you will never know who will fall in battle. As for the story, it was nicely paced, made sense. A little cliche at times, especially with some of the character's archetypes, but I never felt bored or wishing the game to end sooner. The protagonist, Gywn is at her core: selfless, family-oriented, humble and isn't afraid to look to her allies/family/friends for help in her most desperate of hours. In addition, there is a decent amount of content for your heroes through their bond conversations (pretty much standard of this genre). The few 4ish chapters are more so tutorial missions which feature decision-making that become non-existent later on in the story. The earlier chapters in comparison are pretty straightforward, but the stakes of Dark Deity 2 ramp up more and more, from a story perspective, enemy types/abilities, and map design/objectives as you progress. Finally, the game does a good job of being self-contained enough for newcomers to the series, like me to enjoy Dark Deity 2 without possessing some feeling of obligation to play the first Dark Deity. There will be references here and there, but the lore is not heavy enough to be at all overwhelmed. The experience was enjoyable and I recommend anyone to try out Dark Deity 2.

Do you like old school fire emblem games? If you do, then this game is great.

Interesting Story , game is loyally inspired by Fire Emblem

Excellent sequel. Writing is much improved over the first, despite what other reviews say.

Good game, good customization, feels like a 2d BG

[h1]TL;DR[/h1] A gorgeous tactical RPG with many improvements from Dark Deity 1 that set it apart as more unique and much less derivative. Featuring fantastic unit customization and another lovable cast of characters. The story was much better than Dark Deity 1, but it did feel like it had a lot of loose ends. Playtime: 24.5hrs for a blind playthrough on Deity with no turn limits and random level-ups. Another 2.5hrs to tidy up missed achievements on giga-easy mode. [hr][/hr] [h1]Pros[/h1] [b]Gameplay[/b] - It scratches a particular itch for me that's filled by Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, or even games like XCOM. You get attached to your units as you follow their stories and create your own. [b]Characters[/b] - An enjoyable cast of characters, with some familiar faces from Dark Deity 1. I believe that anyone could find at least one of them that they like, whether it's their backstory, aesthetics, or gameplay. [b]Artstyle[/b] - Much like Dark Deity 1, the fullbody character art is gorgeous and their design work was really well done. [b]Spritework[/b] - A huge improvement from the first game. Combat sprites are much less generic and the map assets look fantastic. [b]Animations[/b] - Everything is animated super smoothly and I never got tired of looking at the combat animations (albeit with them sped up). [b]Unit Growths[/b] - Like the first game you can see your unit growths and changes on promotion. It's very nice transparency and good for beginners. [b]Weapons[/b] - Ditching the weapon system of the previous game, they returned to a more standard "each unit has one weapon to use" format. They do get some customizability with two equippable Runes that have a pool of options depending on the weapon. With all the combinations you can do I found that even some of the lower tier weapons were viable for certain builds. [b]Unit Death[/b] - Similar to Dark Deity 1, there's no unit permadeath. They also tuned down the penalties from permanent stat bonuses to a random one-chapter debuff. These range from starting with debuffs such as bleeding or limited movement, to having -25% less true speed, or starting the mission without any Mana to name a few. [b]Campaign Customization[/b] - Similar to Dark Deity 1 there's lots of options applicable to any difficulty level. You can make the game harder or easier by altering base stats, gold/xp modifiers, or player/enemy aptitudes. There's also randomizer options for loot, class passives and abilities, enemy classes, and recruitment order. [hr][/hr] [h1]Neutral[/h1] [b]Difficulty[/b] - I played through blind on Deity difficulty (no turn limits) and felt like everything was very well balanced. The game did have a bit of an initial learning curve that threw me off, but after that it was smooth sailing. [b]Story[/b] - A massive improvement from Dark Deity 1 in my opinion. It still had it's fair share of loose ends, but the overarching plot was handled much better. I did however get a little confused at [spoiler]killing off Riordan after you most likely used him as a main unit for most of the game, and then getting a slow and chunky replacement in the form of Irving who doesn't share the same classes[/spoiler] and I can see that pissing some people off. [b]Voice Acting[/b] - I personally enjoyed the voice acting a lot and felt like the direction they took fit each character's personality really well. It was a little odd to me that the Bonds weren't voiced. [b]Bonds[/b] - I've always enjoyed peeking into the relationships between characters. A lot of the support conversations are interesting and help with a bit of character growth and backstory, but some of them fall flat. They serve their purpose by adding some flair. Additionally as mentioned above, they're not voice acted so they felt a little awkward to go through. They didn't even have the little speech-blurbs present in Dark Deity 1. [b]Passives[/b] - Each playable character and each class have unique passives and they felt much better balanced than Dark Deity 1. Each one felt helpful and something that you could build around, with a few minor exceptions. On the other end of the spectrum, some of them are just downright busted and make the unit fantastic to use. [b]Abilities[/b] - Each playable character also has a unique ability this time around that will likely define the playstyle you want them to use. They did feel like they shoe-horned you to build in specific ways, but you could easily ignore that. Each class has their own abilities as well which were unfortunately a mixed bag. At the start ability upgrade materials are kind of limited, so there is that silver lining. [b]Mana[/b] - Likely added in an attempt to minimize EXP farming using character abilities and to encourage sparing use of resources. I didn't find it too bad, and it's hardly an unfamiliar concept. [b]Rings[/b] - Replacing the "Eternal Aspects" from Dark Deity 1, you get two options for equippable passives. They're similarly a mixed bag, but I found that most of them were really good. From effects ranging from "add 50% of Might to Dodge" and "gain 1 Might on kill" or "heal 20% on kill" it was difficult to decide who to put them on. [b]Class Promotions[/b] - You can mix-and-match from four Tier-2 promotions, and four Tier-3 promotions. You keep the passives and abilities when doing from T2 to T3 so there's a lot of customization compared to Dark Deity 1. Each class had some upsides and some downsides so they felt pretty balanced. [b]Map Design[/b] - Better than Dark Deity 1 by far. They felt less like boxes and more diverse, and some of them had additional mechanics ranging from steady enemy reinforcements, needing to activate pressure plates, fog-of-war, or area-of-effect hazards. [b]Terrain[/b] - A new addition that was previously absent in Dark Deity 1. It added a bit of flair to the maps, and sometimes featured as a bonus objective (use defensive terrain x-amount of times). Not mandatory by any means, but if it's there you might as well use it. With the added factor of having to plan around enemies using it. [b]Training Chapters[/b] - Missions meant for grinding at the cost of paying some gold. I didn't end up using them much because I was able to manage my EXP distribution a bit better since I was playing without turn-limits. They're probably worth it for a more casual player if they want to get a bit overleveled. [b]Challenge Chapters[/b] - One-off missions that pop up throughout the course of the campaign. Worth doing and not too difficult. Most of the time the reward is a weapon with pretty good stats, not to mention the "free" EXP compared to the Training Chapters. [b]Controls[/b] - Mouse controls are much better than Dark Deity 1, and never made me want to pull my hair out. I didn't try using a controller, but I imagine it would work pretty well. There are options to change the default controller button icons, so that's a nice touch. [b]Story Choices[/b] - The game features a few story choices during the campaign that mostly end up being narrative fluff. They offer different rewards and some different dialogue options for the most part, and ultimately don't change the major story. [hr][/hr] [h1]Cons[/h1] [b]UI[/b] - It's very busy. It took a long time to get used to, and for some-reason the pixelart menus looked out of place to me. [b]Turn-limits[/b] - I played with them turned off because it's something I'm not interested in, and I adamantly believe games like this shouldn't feature them. I do think they have a place, but should be used sparingly or they'll overstay their welcome. I'm glad that the choice to turn them off is there. [b]Dodge Tanking[/b] - It's been heavily nerfed mainly because you get a stacking "exhausted" debuff after each combat that reduces your dodge. It's manageable as long as you don't over-commit too much, but I hate game mechanics that limit player builds and creativity, even if they make the game too easy.

Better than the first one in almost every single way. Give me Dark Deity 3 now please

不错的战棋游侠，可惜没中文

worth full price no joke

its a great game

More Dark Diety? Yes please.

it was good

Great

top tier