Darklands is a role-playing game set in medieval Germany. The player can begin by either selecting a pre-made party (quickstart) or by creating their own characters. They begin when they are ten years old and the player can choose a career path for them. The more time the player invests in a certain career path (in five year periods), the better the character will become. Skills involve weapon proficiencies, stealth, healing, riding, and many others.

Towns and castles are navigated via text menus, with background images representing various locations. The travel screen is a map of Germany with a lone figure representing the player-controlled party. Here the player can choose to travel around the countryside, getting into adventures and meeting friends and enemies. Combat is real time, but the player can pause the action to give orders, giving it a pseudo-turn-based flavor.

The game has a vast scope and can go on indefinitely. However, characters would age, grow weaker, and eventually die, requiring the player to create new ones. The main goal is to collect as much fame for the party as possible to obtain higher-ranked quests with better rewards.

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Alternate Titles

"Darklands: Heroic Role-Playing Adventures In Medieval Germany" -- Tag-lined title
"Darklands: Heldenhafte Abenteuer im mittelalterlichen Deutschland" -- German tag-lined title

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Darklands	DOS	$16.00
	Darklands		$5.99
	Darklands
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User Reviews

A Historic RPG!	DOS	Jack Lightbeard (2618)
A realistic historical CRPG that could've revolutionized the industry.	DOS	Ray Soderlund (3500)
One of, if not the only the greatest CRPGs made	DOS	ZombieDepot (45)
Most original RPG ever.	DOS	Shogun (6)
I haven't found its equal in the 9 years since I started playing it.	DOS	Gordon Menck (3)
Wow, Darklands is an RPG that would kick the living day-lights out of today's games!	DOS	Indra was here (15465)
Fantastically atmospheric	DOS	Hugh McKenna (5)
Time to kill the mood!	DOS	Pixelspeech (928)

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The Press Says

Svenska Hemdatornytt	DOS	Nov, 1992	87 out of 100	87
ASM (Aktueller Software Markt)	DOS	Sep, 1992	10 out of 12	83
Power Unlimited	DOS	Sep, 1993	8 out of 10	80
Power Play	DOS	Sep, 1992	62 out of 100	62

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Forums

Topic	# Posts	Last Post
Wrong Platforms?	6	vedder (18704) Mar 05, 2012

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Trivia

Cancelled Amiga version

An Amiga version of Darklands was considered, but the game was judged as too large to be played from floppy, and the potential market of hard-disk equipped Amigas was apparently deemed not large enough, going by a chat log with Arnold Hendrick.

Influence

Darklands is based on history (whether true or not) of the influence of the Templar Knights, a powerful monastic order during the crusades which were eventually crushed by the Church (Pope Clement V) and the King of France (King Philip IV) based on their allegations with Satan, specifically Baphomet.

Memory

The game needs over 600K of free DOS memory to avoid crashes. In fact, the MORE lower memory you can free up, the better the game runs, something that is barely addressed by all the later patches.