A few years ago, we reviewed Dark Deity, an interesting strategy RPG that took its cues from a number of classic games but ended up creating its own personality along the way. It’s a great game that slipped under most strategy gamers’ radar but was well worth your time. Now Sword and Axe LLC are back courtesy of publisher indie.io with Dark Deity 2, a direct sequel to the first game!
Dark Deity 2 takes place 25 years after the original, building on the events of the first game with a new cast of characters and a few old friends as well. You’re part of the Eternal Order, maintaining peace and working on independent non-political contracts for Verrona, but the undercurrents of both your and neighboring countries are shifting. The game starts out with three siblings, Gwyn, Riordan and Arthur exploring an old ruin and things quickly accelerate from there to create a sweeping epic.
The plot in Dark Deity 2 is quite entertaining and the script work is overall very solid, though Riordan and a few other characters are a bit too silly sometimes. Despite the serious nature of the overall plot, this is a much lighter fantasy world than other strategy games like the spectacular Redemption Reapers (review here). In addition to the main story, characters who fight together create bonds that give additional bonuses and provide side stories as well. While this is similar to Fire Emblem Engage (review here), the bonding in Dark Deity II is much less onerous and the character interactions are a short but fun aside that is well worth the minimal amount of time. Unlike Engage, you are not pulled away from the action for long!
If you’re expecting the same exact GUI with a few additions, think again. Dark Deity 2 changes up gameplay a bit to make things more customizable and there’s a lot of leeway for personal preferences in the setup for your characters. The main gameplay is largely unchanged with a grid-based combat system where you move your characters to attack the enemy. Each stage lays out goals that you will need to meet to clear the stage and additional optional goals that gain you bonuses of various types of loot (money, runes, gems, etc). Characters have movement and range limitations based on their abilities and a certain number of ability points to use their special abilities. Moving within range enables you to attack enemies and when your turn is complete, the enemy moves all their units. There’s a very strong feel of Fire Emblem influence still present here and that’s not a bad thing. However, the overt weapons triangle isn’t a thing here and there’s a surprising amount of versatility in your attack options.
Assume almost anyone in your party can attack most other enemies and you’ll be doing ok. Combat plays out much like Fire Emblem or Shining Force with a straightforward combat graphic, though there are no backgrounds here and the critical hit imagery seems to be in standard definition for some reason. You can watch as the enemy (and your) health drops while you exchange blows. If you’re not sure if an attack will be effective, there’s a preview of how much damage you’ll do before you even select fight in the corner next to the characters. Using this, you can estimate how effective your units will be overall and plan on whether to attack with only a few soldiers or overwhelming numbers. It’s not always accurate but it generally tends to get things right.
Every playable character type has multiple preset selections for their specific character spread out among 3 tiers. Once you unlock Tier 2, you can choose from any one of the four presets between missions and each has different abilities and stats. At level 25, Tier 3 unlocks as well, allowing you even more power choices. These alternate character types are incredibly powerful and noticeably speed up combat. You can earn Tier 2 characters fairly early on too, so don’t miss out.
Dark Deity 2 definitely doesn’t hold your hand when it comes to character development. Sure there’s a notification for bonds becoming available and that you’ve earned runes and such but it doesn’t really tell you how important everything is. It’s all important. Each character can hold 1 weapon, 2 runes, and 2 rings and if you’ve got all that on your character, they’re pretty heavily boosted. Starting weapons can be upgraded to new weapons but the runs stay on a weapon unless you pay 350 gold to remove them. Gold is scarce early on so be careful what you spend it on. However, having two runes on every character’s weapon makes them do massive additional damage and drop stacks of weakness, poison, and other effects onto enemies. The power of runes cannot be overlooked if you want to succeed.
The same goes for rings. You make all your own rings with gems earned in combat and through bonding (told you it was important). The ring sub-menu shows you which rings you can create with which gem combinations in your inventory and then you have to decide which ones would be best on which characters. Do not skip this process because the rings you make add noticeable boosts to your stats and they’re quite powerful, keeping in line with the rarity of gems. You’ll also find elixirs in combat, especially when looting in-stage chests or completing optional in-stage tasks. Those elixirs provide additional permanent stat boosts to your characters, allowing you to fill in weaknesses in characters or overpower them depending on your choices.
Between character tiers, rings, runes, and elixirs, there are a lot of tools at your disposal, but perhaps the most important one is gold. You’ll be able to use gold to buy some of those items (excluding rings) but it’s definitely expensive. Gold is also useful for training missions however. You can buy training missions at 1000 gold a shot to boost the experience levels of your characters. Each training level is just a combat scenario with no additional loot chests or fancy bonuses. Unlike regular combat, you’ve got a massive 99 turn limit as well, so you can take your time to build up the characters that need it. Regular stages are heavily constrained on time, forcing you to make tough choices and sometimes characters get bypassed so if you really want to strengthen your forces for the massive 30 stage fight ahead, this is the way to do it.
The look of Dark Deity 2 hasn’t changed much from the first game in the series. This is still a clearly 16-bit approach to classic turn-based tactical strategy and notably, the character portraits are quite well-done but the general focus here is on gameplay, not visuals. The GUI is a bit confusing at first too, with menus on both the L+R buttons and ZL+ZR buttons so it’s easy to make a mistake in menu navigation between stages. Combat is far easier to navigate but the lack of backgrounds during combat is a smidge disappointing. There are a handful of higher quality still images at key points in the story as well, but they are few and far between. All in all, this is a very retro experience and with that intentional aesthetic in mind, Dark Deity 2 manages to be very engaging visually while keeping a somewhat minimalist art profile.
Audio is a different matter entirely. While the soundtrack is good, it isn’t something you’ll end up humming as you walk down the street. The tracks are good, solid fantasy pieces though and the shifts from area to area and story segment to story segment are smooth and intentional, creating a soundscape that augments the story. There are only limited sound effects due to the turn-based nature of the game, but they are excellent as well. Where the sound really shines in Dark Deity 2 however is in the dialogue. The dialogue in the game is fully voiced, a pleasant surprise that creates a much more immersive experience. Voice actors are realistic, not over the top (except maybe Benji) and they give believable performances that really enhance the impact of the well-written plot of the game. It’s hard not to get invested in the characters when everyone is taking things so seriously and that’s quite impressive and unexpected.
There honestly aren’t many flaws in Dark Deity 2. Sure, the visuals could use a bit of spit shining here and there and the management GUI could use a slight bit of design tinkering but overall this is an excellent game. The only true failure of the game might be the difficulty on the default settings. Yes, there are multiple difficulty levels that you can choose from, but the recommended standard difficulty is just a bit too easy. So easy in fact that during this review, not a single character died in combat in the first 1/3 of the game. Not one. That’s uncommonly smooth for any tactical SRPG and it’s not a skill thing, the enemy AI is just not all that aggressive or powerful. Recommendation? Crank things up a bit. If that’s the worst criticism you’re getting, you’re definitely doing things right!
Dark Deity 2 is a fun, well-written strategy RPG that surpasses the original and manages to be the rare sequel that’s truly enjoyable. It’s fun to play, character management isn’t daunting, and the characters are fun and likeable. There’s enough complexity for veteran players but brand new strategy gamers would have no trouble either, making for an extremely well-balanced experience. At only $25, it’s pretty reasonably priced too, and for the next week or so as of the publication of this article, it’s 20% off! It’s hard to go wrong with a game as grounded as this one and while it might not be the most complex and nuanced game out there, it more than makes up for it in fun factor and good plot!
This review is based on a digital copy of Dark Deity 2 provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Dark Deity 2 is also available for PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.