It's not a bad game by any means, but after playing through with a couple of characters and trying some NG+ I just don't see anything special about it at all.

This is a very generic and basic ARPG, and the Roguelite elements are extremely limited - while there are different skill orbs and trinkets to find each run, the balance between skills isn't great and there aren't very many different options, so you'll be aiming for the exact same skill orb setup every run.

Very few of the Trinkets are transformative at all and the vast majority of them can be described simply as "a number goes up". At 25 hours in I have yet to pick something up in a run that changed how I played the rest of the run. A character's playstyle is set in stone the moment you choose their subclass.

Build variety is very limited too. Each class has a small number of different skill paths to choose from. Normally you would call these "skill trees" but in HoH2 they are straight lines so maybe "skill bamboo" would be more appropriate. Your character's skills will never really evolve in any meaningful way, the numbers just go up.

There are a few different weapon types to use but for most of them the only difference in how they play is in their weapon skill (if they have one), and again these are poorly balanced - some weapon skills are simply flat-out better than others which renders the worse options as borderline useless. A one handed melee weapon feels like every other one handed melee weapon, whether you're using a dagger or a mace.

There's only one mission to play at the moment, and while the layout of it's levels does slightly change from one run to the next it's not enough to stop things from getting very repetitive very quickly. Especially as your characters get stronger and more of the levels become trivial, you'll find yourself skipping enemies and running through environments because they're just not worth the time to engage with anymore. It becomes possible to skip some of the early levels but doing so will mean that you miss out on resources, skill orbs, and equipment, so from a min/max perspective this is almost inarguably the wrong choice to do.

Now, this might seem like a pretty scathing criticism but I'll reiterate that it's not a "bad" game at all. It's just not particularly "good" either. It doesn't roguelite well enough to actually be a roguelite, and it doesn't ARPG well enough to stand out from the crowd of other ARPGs.

If you can pick this up on a substantial discount in a sale then it's fine to get just for the sake of mindlessly killing a few hours with. I will probably continue to play it while I'm listening to podcasts and things like that because I already bought it and it gives my eyes and my hands something to do, but I could do that with literally any other ARPG that I could've bought instead.

I have never played the first game, so this review does not compare it to the first game.

This is one of the best rogue-like & dungeon crawler games, quite repetitive but not boring. Job, equip, and skill mechanisms can be combined and customized according to how you play.

This game worth every penny!

Let me start by stating I had fun for the first 10+ hours but quickly I realized nothing new was going to happen. Its the same levels over and over and over again, same mobs. It just gets harder via mob dmg increases & bullet sponge mechanics. The end goal, push your level higher, thats all. Endgame is nothing more than that and I'm bored to tears. No more fun Village changes, resources are pointless .. its all about leveling up for that stat increase. Meh. I expected more than this. My fault for not waiting for more honest/accurate reviews. Watch a gameplay video to see if you'll like playing this game for yourself and to see if I'm right or not. Have fun

If you are coming from the first Heroes of Hammerwatch, you will find yourself in a familiar world, familiar mechanics, and charm. That being said, there are several bugs (some game-breaking), fewer items, and a lack of polish. While the game, at it's core, is more than promising, I can't recommend playing it in it's current state.

Im writing this review as someone who HASNT played the first game as it seems most the negative comments are comparing the 2, so let me just say with no prior knowledge of the first game, Heros of Hammerwatch II is an incredibly addicting and fun Dungeon Crawler Rouge-Lite, the gameplay loop thus far has been incredibly fun to go through and the 7 classes all have really fun and unique playstyles/abilities, plus the 4 player co-op is really fun (even if your mercenaries get sent to the shadow realm at random)

all in all i really do reccomend people get this game! its very fun!

Feels like Hammerwatch 2: Heroes instead of Heroes of Hammerwatch 2

So far basic but fun, I would wait for a sale though. Not really worth $18 so far ---$10 would be a solid value

Where is... the game?

I've played for 8 hours, yet my first run is identical to my last run, except numbers are bit bigger.

Were those 8 hours fun? No. I kept expecting things to change, to open up, long after I knew that they wont. Take that as you will.

Pretty fun - wish there was a little more to the endgame other than climbing NG+ difficulties and that you could respec completely instead of only unlearning certain skills.

Worth giving it a shot if you're looking, there's even a demo

After playing a lot of HoH 1, I found this to be a perfect sequel so far. Exactly what I was looking for. I haven’t gotten as deep into optimization yet (e.g. aggressively optimizing the items I carry and the town I build) so I can’t comment on some of the critical reviews, but so far I’m really enjoying it!