The game is very fun, with amazing art direction and gameplay. There are some issues that I would like to mention, but that doesn't mean the game is not enjoyable. I still recommend this game, but I have some notes:
Quality of Life: There are many aspects of the basic game loop that are tedious and time consuming. This makes the basic rogue-like gameplay loop of dying and restarting hard to continue for a long time. For example, many of the animations and cutscenes cannot be skipped. The intro cutscene for the confessions, the ending page detailing the itemized list of all the candles you earned, etc, all of which cannot be skipped. Also, many actions require a button to be held down. While not a huge time waster, it still adds time to each run. The roads between nodes also stretch on for longer than needed, making runs take much longer. With most other rogue-likes, after losing a run, you can jump into a new run almost immediately. For Darkest Dungeon 2, the extra fluff can make doing multiple runs in a row feel tedious and make dying more frustrating. Shortening the distance between nodes, giving an option to just press a button to do certain actions and allowing an option to skip cutscenes would make runs move smoother and make dying less frustrating since you can start again faster.
Grinding: The grind from the start of a new game can feel very frustrating, since many of the heroes' most interesting/best playstyles are locked behind upgrades. Personally, most of the grind feels rewarding to go through as it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything extra to upgrade, since the resource used to upgrade is something you get for doing runs. The only pain point I have, and I would like to mention, is the shrine of reflections. These are special nodes in the regions which allows you to unlock new skills for your heroes. While you only need to go to this location in the early game, since unlocking skills is permanent, the early game often involves you changing course in order to drop by shrines of reflection. This often impacts gameplay since the path to get to the shrine might be more difficult or less optimal. You may miss out on a store node, or a hospital, or extra battles for resources. Choosing to divert your course to a shrine may end up costing you a run. One way to make this less tedious, albeit a bit boring and uninspired, is to just have hero skills locked behind candles, meaning that you can complete the run without having to divert course to a shrine if you wish to unlock skills that may be more fun for a hero.
Kingdoms: I have not really clicked with the kingdoms game mode. It takes aspects from DD1 and DD2, but personally feels clunky and tedious. Having more things to upgrade beyond just heroes is something I liked about the first game. My main issue with Kingdoms is the fact that each individual inn needs to be upgraded. There may be more resources rewarded in that game mode that I didn't get to, but the small amount of inn-upgrade resource awarded early game just made the early game feel tedious to get through. Having inn upgrades apply to all inns, rewarding more inn-upgrade material, or making inn upgrades cost less would help make the early game feel less tedious.
