Graveyard Keeper 2 was provided by tinyBuild for review. Thank you!
Graveyard Keeper was an interesting game, and while I enjoyed myself overall, the insane amounts of grinding to progress felt like I was playing a live service game. With the sequel, Graveyard Keeper 2, I was hoping most of my grievances would be fixed. However, while it makes some improvements, it's full of annoyances that gradually brought down my enjoyment of the game.
Graveyard Keeper 2 takes a while to get going, but I will admit, pivoting to a story-heavy focus with tower-defense elements is certainly creative. Players take on the role of Keeper from the first game, and again, there are some weird isekai elements where he was transported from the real world into the game world. It’s interesting, although the intro cutscene introduced me to a very annoying Zelda-like butterfly fairy ordering me to save the world I helped destroy. Lady, I would love to help, but I’m currently handcuffed to a wall in an Inquisitor prison. Very poor timing!
The first impression was not great. Between unskippable cutscenes which can’t even be paused, and being unable to save until going to sleep, it was knocking off square after square on my ‘Things in Gaming That Annoy Me’ bingo card.
Despite those gameplay annoyances, there were positive signs too. All the cutscenes are fully voice-acted, with a sarcastic skull named Larry serving as our sidekick early on and delivering some humorous dialogue. After a long, semi-interactive series of cutscenes through a town besieged by zombies, the game finally allowed me to do things. The visual presentation is rather nice, coupled with some gorgeous environments and weather effects that enhance immersion in the world.
Fully voice-acted cutscenes and most dialogue add a nice edge over most 2D games in the farming/life sim category, and a lot of attention went into developing the characters. I really enjoy some of the NPCS, especially Larry. His constant, tired sarcasm with Keeper made for an amusing partnership as they navigate the challenges that await them. As time went on, I got to enjoy my time with Keeper, too. A lot of time has passed since Keeper ‘helped’ destroy the world, and his dry, sardonic wit put a smile on my face.
Big flaws from previous games such as grind and progression have improved slightly, but not by much. I still felt frustrated by the frequent roadblocks. This is a slow, pondering game with a lot of focus on telling its story at its own pace. Not a bad thing in itself, but at very least, let us pause cutscenes.
The gameplay loop of Graveyard Keeper 2 is about what you might expect. There’s tending to the graveyard, autopsies, crafting, and farming to handle, with a ton of things to unlock in the tech tree. Every action costs stamina, so it’s important to stock up on food items to replenish the bar to make progress. The night and day cycle goes by a bit too quickly for my liking, and there’s nothing in-game to tell the time. It became a slog as it felt like I was making little progress every day.
The technical state was disappointing. The game struggled to hit even 50FPS outside on the Steam Deck, and performance overall is a lot worse than what I would expect. I also ran into plenty of bugs, ranging from glitched voices not firing to full-on crashes. This, combined with the limited save system, slow pace, and unskippable cutscenes, made it deeply frustrating to negotiate at times.
Despite a good presentation, an enjoyable enough gameplay loop, and great voice acting, all the little annoyances became more noticeable the longer I played.
Graveyard Keeper 2 on paper should work, and comes with full controller support and a few graphical presets. The good news is that the game is playable on the Steam Deck, which is the bottom line.
However, the optimization right now feels woefully undercooked, and the performance on the Steam Deck is far worse than I expected. I struggled to hit 60FPS even in indoor areas, and outside in the open world, frequently saw the framerate drop to the mid-thirties. There are some good visuals and environmental effects, but nothing that should see performance vary this much.
Forget about trying to play the game on a low TDP. As things are, your best bet is to play on a stock profile with a 30FPS framerate cap. This was the best I could do to keep the gameplay as smooth as possible. You need all the help you can get for battery life, as I saw spikes of up to 20 watts without capping the framerate. Even with a 30FPS lock, the average power draw was around 13-14 watts, so expect no more than 4 hours on the Steam Deck OLED on a good day. While certainly playable, the performance on the Steam Deck was a lot worse than I hoped.
Graveyard Keeper 2 is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil, Simplified Chinese, and Turkish. Only English has full audio, however.
Accessibility options are thin on the ground for the game, which is disappointing. You have V-Sync and graphics quality modes, although the latter gives no details on what changes between them. There are currently no ways to change keybindings or controller buttons, and there is no colorblind support. This might get changed on release, or later down the line, though.
It has been some time since I’ve been so conflicted about a video game.
There are some great things in Graveyard Keeper 2 that make it worth checking out. Having the undead become a real threat has a great impact on the narrative of proper burials, and I appreciate the general story beats. The voice acting is also pretty funny, and the game looks great. In terms of fundamentals, I respect it.
However, the genre has expanded drastically since the first Graveyard Keeper launched back in 2018, with tons of great management sims out there in all shapes and sizes. I’ve appreciated the somewhat unique premise of Graveyard Keeper, but the sequel feels more like an expansion to the original than a true sequel. While there have been improvements, poor pacing and strange design choices remain. The biggest issue for me remains the performance.
Hopefully these technical problems can be addressed as soon as possible, because they are holding the game back. When I’m playing a game thinking, ‘this is okay, but why should I play this when more enjoyable games in the genre exist?’, that is not a great sign.
That is just how I feel on it, though, and all reviews are subjective. It might be down to me having severe management sim burnout that is having this reaction in me, so I could be wrong. As long as the technical issues get smoothed out, there should be enough for fans of the original to have a good time.
While Graveyard Keeper 2 is playable on the Steam Deck, optimization needs serious work.
このレビューはPC版に基づいています。
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Graveyard Keeper 2 boasts depth, humorous characters and plenty of charm, but rough performance and odd design choices brought down the game for me. It also runs on the Steam Deck, but not without compromises.
