Darkest Dungeon 2 is divided into "acts" referred to as "confessions," each of which has its own route through the game's region and a unique final boss themed around a different body part, not unlike the Heart of Darkness from the first game! We're going to review this in their ideal gameplay order, rather than design rankings, but the first one is the least visually exciting anyway; you actually battle the magical locks and chains holding down this giant brain, which doesn't really have any "creature design" to it. It doesn't even get a pair of eyeballs or anything! It does have the interesting angle of having supposedly chained "itself" up, that it represents "denial" through its (quote) "self-imposed incarceration."

If we were going in order of design, this would actually be the #1 favorite at the end of our list! Representing resentment, the Sigh is a gigantic set of blackened, rotten lungs arranged like a huge set of wings, while the trachea curves forward as a sort of "neck," dozens of little pale bronchial tubes erupting from the trachea like a cluster of oral tentacles, while more clusters of severed bronchi can be seen through the missing patches of tissue on the lungs themselves. It's such a fearsome, badass design, like a grotesque dragon or bird with a severed head, and genuinely may be the only lung-based monster I've ever seen in a video game! One of only a couple lung-based monsters I've seen in anything, in fact!

This boss is "obsession's unshrinking gaze, focused to a fault!" Its first phase is a bunch of different eyestalks, but its true form is a huge eyeball surrounded by little fangs, then surrounded by a giant cluster of little eyeballs - kind of like an egg mass - and then attached to the arena by a bunch of meaty, gooey flesh strands! Eyeball creatures can be difficult to remix into a novel enough design, but this is an anatomical arrangement I've really never seen before. During battle, its eyestalks can add "seen" status to a character, causing all eyes to focus their attacks on their latest fixation.

This monster represents "ambition," not usually framed as a negative characteristic, but obviously ambitions aren't always good things. Ravenous Reach is themed around arms and hands, and its battle strategy is to constantly buff itself up. Its beautiful but quite formidable design consists of a headless torso-like mass with four very different pairs of arms; a fairly human looking greyish pair on top, then a grotesquely large and musclar blue-tinged pair with pink veins and a number of small fingers randomly sprouting from the biceps, a longer pair of pinkish arms with rotten flesh, exposed bone and thinner, clawed fingers, then a pair of smaller limbs again. In place of legs are the fingers of two gigantic, fused hands, and the torso also has a gaping, open chest cavity containing a single blood-red fist - like a heart?? - and a couple of paler hands that may represent "ribs," though they aren't always visible. Its arrangement of these limbs varies across three combat phases, beginning with its many hands eerily folded together in a more compact shape, giving a sort of meditative impression as it builds its strength!

This is the first of a three-phase final boss, The Body of Work. The bottom third of this monster is a giant tangle of putrid yellow-tinged intestines, four bloated colonrs ending in ghastly humanlike faces that drool green bile. Actually the most horrifying looking being in this franchise, I have to say, and digestive system monsters are almost as rare as lung monsters!

The second phase and upper part of the Body is a decayed and mutated looking torso, its belly area a vertical mouth with rows of sharp fangs that point straight outward, while the chest is an enormous eyeballs surrounded by a single ring of smaller eyeballs, kind of a callback to the Focused Fault!

Finally, where the "head" of the Body should be, tangles of veins and arteries flow into a black-robed figure seated upon a rough, blocky stone throne, flanked by a couple of "wings" formed from what look like more bronchi. The yellow-tinged pustules forming a somewhat oversized left arm and hand look pretty cool, too. The Body of Work has a delightfully freakish design concept overall, while all three of its phases are fairly interesting taken on their own, too!

As a big fan of body organ creatures, I love that the second game goes all in on the theme, and in doing so, monstrifies some viscera we don't get to see all that often!