Darklands

aka: Darklands: Heldenhafte Abenteuer im mittelalterlichen Deutschland, Darklands: Heroic Role-Playing Adventures In Medieval Germany
Moby ID: 258
DOS Specs
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Description official descriptions

Darklands is a role-playing game set in 15th century Holy Roman Empire, which at that time encompassed today's Germany and several surrounding countries. Unlike most other role-playing games, it is set in a concrete historical environment that is accurately depicted, including geographical outlines, social and cultural backgrounds, authentic establishments and items, and so on. The game's supernatural elements are strictly based on the popular beliefs of that time and region and include fantastic creatures such as kobolds or dragons, curses, witchcraft, alchemy that actually works, etc.

The player controls a party of four active characters, though any amount of them can be created and swapped in the town inns. The player can begin by either selecting a pre-made party (quickstart) or by creating their own characters. In the beginning the player selects the character's social background. Afterwards, when they are ten years old, the player can choose an initial career path for them. Careers may include diverse occupations such as soldier, peasant, bandit, etc., which may eventually become more specialized (e.g. a student turning into an alchemist).

The more time the player invests in a certain career path (in five year periods), the more experience points the character receives, which can be manually allocated to improve their skills. Career choices affect main attributes such as strength or charisma, as well as skills, which involve weapon proficiencies, stealth, virtue, speaking Latin, healing, riding, and many others. Though there are no class definitions and each character can theoretically achieve excellence in any skill, character builds in the game can be seen as warriors, clerics, and alchemists. Religion-oriented characters may learn about various saints during the course of the game and pray to them for different benefits. Alchemists gain access to formulae and have to procure ingredients to mix potions with various effects. Skills in the game increase through repeated use: using swords in combat may increase the edged weapon skill, successfully conducted conversation may increase the character's common speech skill, etc.

The party chosen by the player begins the adventure in the inn of a randomly chosen town. The main plot eventually involves confronting a powerful demon and its cult, but it is unraveled only under specific circumstances achieved in the game. 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, which also includes the quest that leads to the completion of the main plot. The player is completely free to roam the vast map of the Empire, accessing towns, castles, villages, and other places of interest. Towns and castles are navigated via text menus, with background images representing various locations. The travel screen is a map of the Empire with a lone figure representing the player-controlled party.

Most settlements of the same type have nearly identical options, though actual results may vary depending on the characters' skills, their local reputation, as well as unique traits found in different locations. For example, different towns may have wares of vastly different quality for sale; villages may engage in devil worship, and the player may attempt to prove that, etc. It is possible to increase local reputation (for example, by taking on cutthroats bothering the citizens) and overall fame by making virtue-increasing choices and vanquishing foes. It is, however, also possible to become outlaws by attacking guards, killing priests on the roads, and so on.

The game has several large isometric dungeon-type areas, most notably mines of different types, which contain generic quests as well as puzzles to solve. Areas unique to the main plot are also built like dungeons with particularly dangerous enemies and treasure to loot. However, much of the activity in the game takes place either in towns or in the wilderness, through various types of random encounters. The player is always given the option to avoid combat either through diplomacy or other means, the success depending on the character's corresponding attributes.

Combat takes place on separate isometric screens and proceeds in real time, but the player can pause the action to give orders to the characters at any time, giving it a pseudo-turn-based flavor. Characters can be ordered to attack, search for the enemies' vulnerable spots, use items, etc. Different types of weapons may have different effects depending on the enemies' armor: for example, blunt weapons are more effective against plate armor than swords. Depending on the enemies' intentions, player-controlled characters may only be knocked down or wounded mortally in case of defeat. Dead characters can not be brought back to life and must be replaced with new ones.

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Credits (DOS version)

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 78% (based on 16 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 62 ratings with 8 reviews)

Fantastically atmospheric

The Good
The game just oozes atmosphere, I love the whole medieval setting and the fact most of the graphics are stills means the age of the game doesnt show too much. The character creation system is great and you can really get quite attached to the little blighters as they develop in stature and fame. This open ended premise basically means you can create your own story rather than be lead along like in the Final Fantasy series.

The Bad
The graphics are dated as are the sounds, but as I said they really dont detract from the whole experience. The open ended nature can get a bit tiresome without enough focus as generally repeating the same actions will reap the most benefits.

The Bottom Line
A classic RPG worth checking out if your a casual player ESSENTIAL if you are an RPG fan.

DOS · by Hugh McKenna (4) · 2001

Most original RPG ever.

The Good
The game is trying to be as realistic as possible in some critical areas no other game did before.

Character creation and experience system has no class limitations - any character can train any skills and do anything. There are no character prototypes you need to stick to. This is something no AD&D licence game can achieve, very fresh approach.

There are no magic and cleric spells, but alchemy and saints. Another new idea. And it works well. Due to the great game engine you can use them in almost every place to solve problems.

Lots of varying sub-plots gives much to play.

Music is guite good, giving a nice atmosphere, added to nice pastel colour pictures.

The Hint Book, which just can't be found anywhere anymore, gives loads of information about everything that goes inside the game. It tells you e.g. what each saint gives, stats for equipment and what facilities each city has. With this book you could almost run conventional face-to-face RPG campaigns!

The Bad
Only a few things to complain.

Going through all the screens over and over gets quite frustrating in a while. Especially as that gives a feeling that every city is similar.

Also, due to the unlimited nature of the game, it contains numerous bugs corrected mostly by many patches.

And the game was huge sized at the time, taking about 20 MB to install and installing from over 10 floppys. Plus applying the patches. Installing it was a lengthy process.

The Bottom Line
One of the best computer RPGs ever created. Very free character developement system added to huge game area gives you much freedom and hours and hours of playtime.

DOS · by Shogun (3) · 1999

A Historic RPG!

The Good
Darklands is an RPG set in 15th Century Greater Germany with an attention to historical accuracy, you have the whole of the map of Greater Germany to travel across to any of the towns, villages, monasteries and other locations, that you choose. MicroProse are well known for making simulation games and Darklands is in many ways a simulation of Medieval Germany. For example; time keeping uses the monastic 'hours' of the medieval era, Matins (Midnight), Latins (3 am), Prime (6 am), Terce (9 am) etc. Currency is in Florins, Groschen and Pfenniges, the seasons change on the world map and have an effect on gameplay, for example in winter you may encounter blizzards, crossing a boggy area of the map may result in one of your party members getting stuck and needing rescue (with the loss of a couple of items) and all of the armour and weapons your party members can be equipped with are based on real world items. There are day/night cycles which affect gameplay, especially in towns.

One important aspect of the game is that the beliefs and superstitions of the time are actually real in Darklands. Praying to saints can have a direct effect on attributes and skills and is often an option to solve many other problems throughout the game. Alchemy can be used to create potions from raw materials, again these can be used in battle or as options in the text style interface while in towns or during encounters, or sold for profit. Nothing is certain however as a call to a saint may fail and an attempt at alchemy could result in a large explosion! While magical spells as such do not exist in the game witches and cultists corrupt communities and gather to summon demons in unholy rituals.

You can use the Quickstart option to begin the game with a default set of characters or create your own. When creating characters there are six possible family backgrounds, ranging from rural commoner to merchant or noble etc, they affect the initial occupations (thirty something in total) which are available and each have there own advantages/disadvantages. Naturally your characters will advance in occupation and gain attributes and skills over 20 to 65 years.

Skills are an important part of the game and they improve the more often you use them. They relate to the success of pretty much anything in the game, for example Virtue and Religion help while praying to saints, Alchemy helps with alchemy, Artifice with picking locks and disabling traps, Speak Common and Speak Latin aid when dealing with the different people you will encounter and the various weapon skills come in handy in the type of situations you might expect. Skills can also be improved by finding a tutor you can hire for training.

While the game has a very much free-form or 'sandbox' style of play, you can go anywhere anytime, there is also a main plot to follow involving the Knights Templar. Once this is completed, which is well worth doing, you can continue your adventures on the map of the game world.

There are three main sections to the game;

On the map of Greater Germany you will meet numerous encounters while traveling from location to location (it's also possible, by the way, to travel by boat between towns with docks). These can be anything from a knight travelling to a tournament to bandits disguised as merchants (and genuine merchants).

The game enters an isometric style view for combat, which is in real-time and can be paused with the space bar for issuing orders, it's a good idea to have your characters skilled in both ranged and melee weapons.

While in towns or villages or after an encounter on the map you will be presented with a watercolour style background pic, a text description and several options. The background pictures are very atmospheric and add to the unique look of the game, although they are repeated, especially in the towns, there are a lot of them and due to the number of locations it would not be practical to create a different picture for each inn, village or docks etc.

The game music is all based on original music from or around the era, and adds a lot to the atmosphere.

The ultimate goal in Darklands is fame. Your party has an overall fame score as well as a local reputation, the latter can vary greatly from location to location, keep performing good deeds and completing missions in a town and your reputation will increase in that town and the nearby area and you may even become a local hero, however fall foul with the law and your party could achieve wanted status. Taking on the bigger problems the game throws at you, such as the main plot, clearing mines and defeating raubritters (robber knights stationed in castles) provide decent increases to fame and local reputation.

The Bad
The biggest problem with Darklands is bugs, you will probably encounter the occasional glitch during your adventures so it would be wise to keep a few saves and cycle through them. I have read that the game was very buggy on release, but MicroProse did release a number of patches. I encountered some bugs even when patched to the latest version (483.07), including the famous neon bright green hair-do and multi-coloured characters, I restored a previous save and when playing through the same events it did not happen again (and only happened once in all the hours of playing).

I also encountered a strange test screen (entitled 'Initial Card for Testing Only’) which was displayed near the end of the plot instead of the correct background pic and text. Against a slightly different night docks background it gave options to enter a location while it was preparing for war, while at peace or while it was at war, it also had options to set your local reputation to -99 (the worst), 0 (unknown) or +99 (local superhero), none of these options are in the finished game, and clicking on them didn't result in much happening, whether some of these options were once proposed to be included as features in the game or not I don't know, towns having additional states of peace/war could have been interesting. A reload solved the problem.

The Bottom Line
One thing that really should be mentioned is the manual, it's about a hundred pages and covers the game interfaces/mechanics in detail followed by a history of Medieval Germany and even a bibliography of over eighty history books (grouped under sub-headings with notes) that the development team referred to while creating the game.

Darklands is one of the best RPGs I have played, it may take a while to get into, and have the occasional bug, but I certainly found it a rewarding experience! The setting is very well done and is refreshingly different to pure fantasy RPGs.

DOS · by Jack Lightbeard (2685) · 2010

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Uh-oh... Unicorn Lynx (181788) Sep 9, 2013
Wrong Platforms? Señorita Kathryn (615) Mar 5, 2012

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.

Intended Sequels

From the Designer's Notes in the Game Manual: "Darklands was designed to permit sequels. It is possible to have some additional adventures in Germany. More importantly, it is possible to create entirely new games elsewhere in Europe. The system not only allows moving "saved game" files back and forth, but also allows you to load multiple games onto your hard disk and move back and forth between the nations, in a sort of giant adventure. Let us know what you enjoyed in Darklands, what you would like to see in a sequel, and what setting you prefer. There are plenty of possibilities: the Emperor in Germany has many political problems and intrigues, England and France are busy finishing the last half of the Hundred Years War, after which England falls into civil war (the War of the Roses). Meanwhile, Italy is at the peak of its warring city-states era, Vlad the Impaler appears in the Balkans (the historical figure who ultimately became Dracula), Tamerlane is conquering Central Asia, and much more.What's your preference?" ~ Arnold Hendrick, 1992.

Sadly, they must not have received enough feedback to pursue this any further.

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.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #10 Least Rewarding Ending of All Time

Information also contributed by Игги Друге and Indra was here

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Rubin.

Windows added by Picard. Macintosh, Linux added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Kasey Chang, Indra was here, Jeanne, Glen Henderson, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger.

Game added August 30, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.