I'm having trouble playing Descent 2. The actual game works fine, and I don't have any problems running the original Descent, but each time the game fades to the game menu the framerate drops. This also happens when a new level loads up, and the game fades to black before exiting. Is there any way to fix this?

I also have this problem. For now I just use D2X-Rebirth (http://www.dxx-rebirth.com/), which, if you're going to play multiplayer any time soon (especially over Kali), is what most people use.

Go to your Descent2-Folder, open the "dosboxDescent.conf" with notepad and set framerateskip to 1 (frameskip=1)

I've got the same problem; Descent runs as smooth as butter, but I just can't get Descent II to play anything but choppily, especially when any action starts. I've messed with the frameskip, CPU cycles, RAM allocation, all the video options, and nothing makes any difference.
I suppose, if it's possible for such an old game, I simply don't have the computer power to run it smoothly? Turning down all the graphical options in-game doesn't do anything either, though. I've got a 2 GHz processor and a gig of RAM, so I think I'd be sorted for this old game in that respect - though my video card is rubbish.
Any other ideas? After playing Descent so smoothly, the sequel is virtually unplayable while jumpy.

I've got the same issue: on my main rig (E5200@3,75GHz, HD4850) playing it was as simple as install&run, and on my EEE1201N (Atom@1,6GHz, Nvidia Atom) framerate is too low no matter what I do (and I've tried every graphic setting and messing with the DOSBox itself) it is just unplayable.

Ditto. I decided to replay Descent 2, and this happened to me as well.

same prob. "sort of" workaround for me is to hit alt-enter and play in windowed mode. it happens with both descents with me though