Showgunners is a turn-based tactics game set in a dystopian future where people can participate in a deadly game in order to win a big monetary reward. Yes, yes, it's like The Running Man and Squid Game, and perhaps with a dose of Gladiators TV programme - if the challenges in it were deadly and the contestants had to square off against dangerous criminals rather than upstanding athletes. All this is happening in a society where corporations rule the world, and where viewership numbers, corporate sponsorships and shameless advertising are more valuable than human life. Such settings are always interesting to explore because they're an excellent satire about where our own world is heading.

Our main protagonist is Scarlett, who has entered this death game not for the money but for something else, which we find out later. Over the course of the game, we meet a few other contestants with whom we join forces, and all of which fulfil their specific combat roles - a hacker, a sniper, a tank, and so on. But I have to say, even though the game doesn't focus as much on the story as it does on gameplay, it managed to make its characters interesting and likeable, so that we actually feel like rooting for them and hoping they succeed. They all have their reasons for participating, and on many occasions we can have some friendly banter with them. (But hands down, the coolest character in terms of personality and gameplay utility is Tybalt).

This TV show to the death in which we're a participant, consists of several episodes, and each episode puts us in a thematic area. Whilst in one episode you'll be walking through cyberpunk city streets, in another you'll be in the industrial area, and so on. The gameplay in each of these areas consists of two key aspects: 1) the real-time exploration and puzzle-solving, and 2) the turn-based fights.

The real-time exploration mainly has us travel through the maze-like levels to find loot and dodge various traps that rip off chunks of our health. In some sections there are puzzles that we need to solve in order to gain access further. Majority of the puzzles aren't too difficult to solve. You may occasionally need to use both characters in your active team in order to solve some puzzles - like for example control one of them to press a lever and then control the other one to go someplace to activate another lever, etc. During the exploration phase we can also meet some fans in the audience up close who ask us for our autograph. When giving an autograph, we usually get a choice of 3 things to say, which is different for each fan interaction. What we choose to say gives us points to different personality types for our TV persona. Like we can choose to be a total a**hole, or to be nice, or funny, or just stoically cool. These can then open up options for certain sponsorship contracts as we level up our fame. Sponsorships offer us permanent passive bonuses once we choose them.

The more exciting of the gameplay aspects are the turn-based tactical fights. I think it's safe to say majority of people who pick up this game will be getting it for this aspect. As expected, these fights are simple and straightforward at first, where we only use 2 characters, and enemies don't do much other than shoot. But with each in-game episode, a new enemy gets introduced. We also meet new characters who join us, as mentioned previously, find new weapons and single-use items, and level up the special skills of our characters. So as the game progresses, these turn-based fights get more and more interesting. The major ones within each level, called arenas, often have different objectives, so it's not always just "kill all enemies in the area". These arena challenges are very well-crafted, each one designed carefully with a lot of thought given. Maybe in one of them you'll have to diffuse a bomb and in another one dodge trains! And moreover, the show's director often likes to give us nasty surprises during these arena challenges. Steamrolling through the enemies? He's going to start pumping some deadly gas in there, so you'll need to get to its switches as soon as possible to shut it off. Or he might just switch off the lights, or do some other creative things. All for the sake of views and programme ratings of course!

Each character that ends up as part of our squad has their own unique style, abilities, and weapon choice. During most of the game we can only bring 3 of them at a time though, but by the late stages of the game, there are opportunities to use all 6 at once. In particular, the free DLC adds several optional levels near the end of the game where we can get our entire team of 6 characters engage in massive tactical fights (plus a new, pretty dangerous enemy). Some of these fights are a tad long, but generally are very enjoyable, because by then your whole team is fully levelled up and has acquired every ability. Showgunners is highly successful at creating this fine line where on one side you have an ever-increasing danger where odds seem stacked against you, and on the other side your small squad mowing through a small army of enemies and any other challenges thrown their way and giving you some serious power fantasies. You keep repeatedly zigzagging either side of this fine line, as each time you overcome one challenge, bigger and bigger threats arise.

Presentation-wise, the game is great! Colourful and well-constructed environments, and of course lots of juicy gore as enemy heads explode into fountains of blood or their bodies are turned into meat paste in the machine gun fire. Really, brutality is through the roof here as the spectators expect a fine spectacle when watching this show. Music is also great and intense. A few tracks may seem a tad jarring and repetitive if the battle goes on for long, but nothing terrible. Voice acting is great across the board.

I've only really come across small glitches, such as characters or enemies at times being stuck for a few seconds before performing their action. Gladly the game gives an option to fast-forward enemy actions in case they're taking too long or if there are lots of enemies in battle.

In total, I've enjoyed Showgunners from start to finish. The drawbacks are minor, while the strengths have been developed to the full - in particular the turn-based fights, which are really really fun. I even had a blast with DLC levels (which many reviewers seem to not have liked much). Bring on the next season of Homicidal All-Stars!

While going over each feature, I'm going to make a comparison to the first game, as a lot of things have been changed. From gameplay standpoint, DDII is quite different to the first game, which means that fans of the first might not necessarily like everything in it.

Firstly, the glum dark fantasy setting is very much the same, and we get to explore some new areas to see more of it. So thematically and atmospherically it's similar to the first game. The overarching gameplay, however, is totally different.

The game has recently received a major update, which includes the "Kingdoms" mode. But first about the original "Confessions" mode.

In the "Confessions" mode, instead of managing an estate and sending recruits into dungeons, we now just pick a team of 4 characters, place them in a stagecoach, and have it go through one long roguelike run through multiple regions till it reaches the Mountain boss. The mountain bosses are like final bosses of each run, and there are 5 in total. We have to defeat each one to unlock the next one.

This approach is more similar to standard roguelikes, where you build your team and try to win the whole run in one go, and if you lose, then you lose the whole thing and start over from the beginning. I personally prefer the approach in the first game and find it more rewarding, as here, the sense of progression is almost non-existent. You lose a run and you often feel that you've just wasted time, especially if you lost it due to really bad luck. There are some items and hero upgrades we can unlock for future runs with candles that we find during a run, so at least there's that. The game is loads of fun of course, so I didn't mind losing runs frequently, but after a while it can feel repetitive. The runs themselves are way too long, in my mind. So if you can do everything and just lose on the mountain boss, you just have to redo 2-3 hours again as you go through all the regions once more, and like this again and again. In the first game, if you lost to a boss, you could take another party to the same dungeon and face the same boss within 15 minutes, which wastes a lot less of your time.

The combat is very similar to the first game: teams of 4 vs 4, position-sensitive skills, death's door, etc. A few things are different. The stress system has been largely simplified. Gone are the multitudes of afflictions unfortunately and seeing your characters turning into paranoid, masochistic, foul-mouthed wretches. Now if full stress is reached, the character just goes into a meltdown - losing most of their HP and some rep with their teammates, but other than that, there are no lasting repercussions to a build up of stress, which is a shame as it makes this system a bit trivialised.

DOTs now have one more type in addition to bleed and blight, and that's burn, which is great, although not largely different to the other two. Some enemies now have the death's door mechanic too, and can survive at 0 HP, requiring us to finish them off. Usually this is only common to larger, more dangerous enemies.

One major overhaul to the combat system is the inclusion of tokens. Forget about the stats we've had in the first game. Now most things are done through more granular buffs and debuffs, mainly in increments of 25% and 50%. This makes things simpler and more user-friendly, but I also feel it's rather oversimplified and gives less flexibility than stat bonuses did in the predecessor. At times, these tokens are applied willy-nilly, so usually before getting to damage the enemies, your first few strikes would be wasted on removing their armour or missing due to them having dodge tokens. In some fights it does create a more interesting strategy, but in others it feels more like a slog, as some enemies are notorious for reapplying dodge and guard tokens after every time they attack.

Most character classes return from the first game, although a few did not make the cut - Antiquarian (though they appear as an enemy), Arbalest, Houndmaster, Shieldbreaker.
From those that did make the cut, most are still great and have some juicy new skills for us to use. A few I feel have gotten worse. Namely Leper and Vestal. Leper had trouble with accuracy in the first game, but with trinkets you could mitigate that. Now, every time he hits, he gets a blinded token (50% miss on next attack), and he starts combat with those too. So, unless he has his teammates marking the enemies, he'll keep missing every second hit. Vestal's healing abilities got too many restrictions now (cooldowns AND only working on someone with low HP), so most of the time you'll end up using her for attacking, which other classes are much better at. And with Bounty Hunter, he cannot be picked at the start of a run and can only be gotten if you happen to come across him at the inn. Not really a fan of this approach.

There's one new fun class - the Runaway, a rank-flexible class specialising in burns and debuffs.
In the Binding Blade DLC, in addition to the Crusader, there's another new class - a Duellist, specialising in different stances, riposte, and movement between positions.
In DDII it's not possible to pick duplicates of the same class in a team. So if you want to go for say 4 Lepers, you can't anymore, so team comps are much fewer now.

Each character class now has some backstory sequences that we can view when visiting a certain type of shrine. Completing these help us to unlock their skills. I liked most of the situations in those. They were kind of like puzzles that needed to be solved.

There is now a relationship system. Team members now have an opinion about one another, based on some choices we make in-combat and out of combat. Healing another teammate while this one is low on HP, they'll remember that. Or choosing to fight a battle when they want to flee, they'll not like it. Upon entry into each new region, positive or negative relationships can form between teammates. Positive ones give some boons to them and at times hitting back an enemy that dared to attack their best friend, while negative ones cause them to debuff or stress each other, and at times even hit each other mid-battle. A very nice idea, although it's understandable why not everyone likes this game mechanic as the amount of player agency in forming these relations is limited. It is still, however, possible to win even with all negative relations. I had one such scenario where my squabbling team hated each other's guts, every single one of them hated the others, and yet somehow they came victorious in that run. Go figure.

The "Kingdoms" game mode has all the same mechanics, except they don't play like a roguelike run, and instead play more like a longer campaign. There is a map with inns, camps, and regions. We must travel between them, buy upgrades for the inns to help them repel enemy sieges, and also do quests that progress the campaign. Over time, enemies get stronger and start to attack more frequently. It's a challenging mode with a different approach than Confession mode runs, but it comes with a selection of difficulties and is different enough to be fun and engaging, giving the game a heckload of more content. Moreover, only 1 campaign has been released so far (for free), and two more are on the way in the future!

Art visuals in my opinion have greatly improved from DD1. Character models are more 3D now and much more detailed. New enemy designs are wonderful. Music is just as great and memorable (a few combat tracks, such as foetor and shroud ones, are masterpieces). Narration once again is amazing and nice to listen to even after many hours of playtime.

Overall, DD2 is great and still has the spirit of what makes DD so great, even if it's quite different to the first. Perhaps it doesn't surpass DD1, but at least it can hold a candle to it (pun intended). To me, DD1 will always be a 10/10 game, but DD2 deserves at least a 9 or a 9.5, especially with the new Kingdoms mode content.