Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms DLC on PC
When the core experience of a game conditions you to play a certain way, it can be tricky trying to wrap your head around a new approach. That is what Red Hook Studios expects players to do with the Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms DLC, and despite some flaws, it is one of the most brutally enjoyable experiences I’ve had in recent memory.
Working similarly to the base game‘s Confessions game mode, this new free DLC tasks players with defending the realm from incursions by all-new enemy factions. In total, there will be three different enemies added, but the only one so far is the Beast Clan. The mode starts out with a unique encounter with these wild foes, as they attack one of the many inns in your kingdom that are placed under your protection.
Like most Slay the Spire-like experiences, exploring these nodes and weighing risk versus reward paths was always challenging and fun. Do I go down the safe route with hospitals and restorative spots or risk the combat routes for more XP and gold to help make me stronger?
Building on the base game, Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms melds together the combat many know and love with even more roguelike elements. After the brief tutorial, the board starts to open up, with each turn revolving around the Beastmen attacking one of the Inns. To save the location, you will have to journey through the roguelike nodes of the map and survive.
It is also important to note that you can customize your experience before diving into each run in Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms. Alongside choosing from a few different base layouts, you can also toggle settings like hero permadeath, days till defeat, and map spacing, letting you make it as hard or as easy as you play.
I say easy in a general sense. Even while using difficulty settings that might seem like your characters would end up overpowered, I was still getting destroyed by non-boss encounters, depending on the situation. Much of this is due to just how arduous the journey can be on your team. Fatigue and madness can both take a toll on relationships and health, even causing characters to go mad mid-battle. If they do manage to persevere and retain their sanity, they’ll be stronger for it, earning more XP as a result, which is a good reward for those who persevere.
I will say that even for Darkest Dungeon standards, the Kingdom grind might just be too much. After playing hundreds of hours and upgrading your characters via Confessions just to unlock the mode, you’ll then need to individually unlock skills and paths for these characters again when playing the mode.
On top of this, the addition of Inn Upgrades adds another layer of progression that has to be managed. It would be one thing if the upgrades you make to fortify each Inn were something that carried over across the board, but to have to upgrade each one of them individually felt like too much.
Even on my best runs, I lost locations merely due to the number of brutal fights and scenarios I’d run into just trying to get to them. As always, though, figuring out the process of this and getting better is part of the fun, especially since there will be new additions and tweaks coming throughout the rest of 2025. The possibility of adding more heroes to the party also continues to be an incentive to keep pushing on.
When push comes to shove, Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms does feel like a decent addition to what we already love about the base game, but some may find it too grindy. Having to unlock individual skills once more and new paths, on top of adding Inn Upgrades into the mix after already grinding the base game, make for a less refined experience.
Of course, for some, the grind is part of the fun, as it is what made me fall in love with the series in the first place. If you’re looking for a challenge and love the series, Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms is as good of a free update as you can ask for. Just do yourself a favour and customise the settings to your liking, or else you might go as insane as the Plague Doctors did for each of my runs.
The Darkest Dungeon II Kingdoms DLC is now available for PC, with consoles to follow later.
SavePoint Score
Summary
