Prepare to enter the castle and fight through rooms of Goblins, Orcs and monsters in Dark Quest 2 from Brain Seal Ltd.
Dark Quest 2 is a strategic turn-based RPG where you control up to 3 characters in your goal to take back the castle from the evil Sorcerer. Players can recruit and level up multiple adventurers to help them in their quest as well as craft various items to increase skills and stats. Each room is tile based and characters can only move a certain amount of tiles, which varies depending on class and equipped items, this makes Dark Quest 2 feel very much like a simplified tabletop adventure. Through your journey you will collect gold and gems and if one of your adventurers happens to die, they can be resurrected for a percentage of your total gold.
Similar to other turn-based RPGs every attack and defence action is left to the roll of an unseen dice which can lead to some amazing or rather unfortunately frustrating runs. Dark Quest 2 is rather forgiving though with the death mechanic and as long as you haven’t built up too much of a gold horde, it shouldn’t cost you too much to resurrect party members. Certain levels are replayable but their difficulty increases after each successful attempt giving some good grind and risk/reward mechanics. As well as the 4 classes available in the tavern, there is also a few classes spread out in the castle for you to find.
While Dark Quest 2 is a little simplified, making it easier for casual players in some respects, it is still enjoyable for those looking for a challenge on higher difficulties. The amount of time it takes to complete Dark Quest 2 also depends on what kind of player you are. While it might be easy enough to speed through the castle and min/max a few characters to defeat the Sorcerer, a lot of the fun comes from experimenting with the different classes, items and strategies. There are only a set number of unique equip-able items though and characters can only equip 2 items each, this limits your options in one way but it also allows for some nice play-style optimisation. Clearing out each area in the castle can also be a difficult but rewarding challenge for completionists.
A fun little dungeon crawler, Dark Quest 2 offers a lot in a neat little package. Regardless of player skill, fans of tile based or tabletop games will likely enjoy what it has to offer.
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Mat Panek
Retromancer – Collector, repairer & fan of retro games & tech. Atari to Amiga, Nintendo to Sega! LD, Zip, Beta and a proud dad! One half of the TiredParents on Twitch.
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Disclosure: Dark Quest II [Nintendo Switch eShop code] was kindly provided by Brain Seal Entertainment for this review.
