Darkest Dungeon 2 (actually generally well lit road trip, no dungeons to be found)
Anyhow, the Escapists own review was a bit hyperbolic, but more or less tags the issue the game has out of the gate.
The blow by blow of combat encounters is not drastically changed, although Tokens serve as a bit more user friendly then some of the previous system.
Everything outside of combat lacks any sense of feeling like you're making meaningful choices and building a solid direction though.
Heroes - Random quirks. You can't have multple copies either, so yeah, no taking out the other Highwayman this itme because this dude has some awful negative quirk and some semi-useless positive one.
Traps, or stagecoach hazards in this iteration - Literally nothing you can do about them other then not go down that road if you happen to scout them (and spoilers, you will almost never find a fully clear path. Good luck if something you need (such as a mandatory boss clear to finish the run) is down one. Same thing with your hero's stress accrual on road choices, there's no logic to it, just some roads will them stress or bad relationship points randomly.
All the interactables. Replacing the tool/puzzle mechanic of prior runs. Well there's no tools, no prep, so you can't bring a theoretical plan for the thing. Instead its random loot and random negative or positive effects based on which hero's choice you select. Sometimes it just outright won't even let you do the thing because all the hero's decide no that day.
Choosing your "dungeon", sort of not really. You get 2 options at each inn, so you can't make much proper use of the location specific quirks for enemy types or explorer bonus or whatever. You might get the matching one, you might not. Basically turning all of those into filler trash perks and items.
Of the final bosses I played (which are all in the same final region, and the same 3 fight gauntlet), 2 of them were prettymuch pure gimmicks (and arguably kind of trivial if you figured out the gimmick and didn't lose a hero mid-run to be replaced by a random that might F up your whole strategy or whatnot). The other one is just a kind of annoying roulette game that turns off certain abilities and moves more or less at random (either healing, stress healing, ranged attacks or melee attacks each round)
It doesn't capture a challenge that you're meant to push on and overcome. But a (usually bad) hand randomly dealt to you, and pray you can use the limited flexibility of the combat (because the difficulty curve doesn't leave much open endedness) to survive despite that.
