Darkest Dungeon 2 hits 1.0 and arrives on Steam next week

After two years of Epic early access

RPS will mostly be slumbering this Monday, May 8th, as the UK has a national holiday for some reason or other. That means I won't be around to tell you about a stagecoach's journey across a decaying land. I'm referring, of course, to Darkest Dungeon 2 hitting 1.0 and arriving on Steam for the first time.

I'm telling you now, instead. Helpfully there's already a launch trailer and Red Hook have shared some details of their post-release plans.

Darkest Dungeon 2 has been in early access over on Epic since 2021, and it mostly seems to follow in the grim footsteps of the original. You put together a party of adventurers, you take them into emotionally scarring turn-based battles, and you attempt to soothe and upgrade them enough to survive ever more harrowing foes. That bit about the stagecoach and decaying land was straight from its Steam page.

In a news post about its launch, Red Hook say that 1.0 will feature "12 playable characters with a complete narrative featuring 5 acts." One of those characters, and the two closing acts, are new to this final release.

Except it's not really a final release. The same news post explains that, just like the first game, Darkest Dungeon 2 will be supported post-release with "a number of free updates... that range from content to quality-of-life." Current plans include new monsters, new skins, mod support, and balance tuning.

Brendy looked at Darkest Dungeon 2's early access release at launch and deemed it a rough start. I have heard little about it since and I can't tell if that's a good thing or not. The original Darkest Dungeon was met with a lot of player backlash as it made substantial design changes during its own early access, and so perhaps the sequel having a quieter time in the Epic Games Store cul-de-sac is for the best.

We'll find out May 8th.