Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness

The Good
Shadows of Darkness is the fourth instalment in the Quest For Glory series, and it was released at the time when Sierra started dropping roman numerals from sequels to some of their franchises for a number of years (Some other examples include Police Quest: Open Season, Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail!, and Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh). It also employs an Eastern European setting, much like the second game having a Middle East setting, and the third having an African setting.

The game follows right where the third game left off, and it caters for new players that are introduced to the series for the first time. You don't get a recap of what happened in the finale, nor do you read a text description of it You wake up in the cave somewhere in the land of Mordavia, wearing the same clothes as before. You have no idea of how or why you got there. All you know is that you need to get out.

You start each game by selecting one of three classes – A Fighter, Magic User, or Thief – and assign different stats to that class, and these stats affect your performance throughout the game, which characters you can talk to, and how easy the game's puzzles are. If you played a previous QFG game and saved your character to disk, you can also import him and modify the stats if you wish. I imported a thief that I used in the previous game, but Shadows of Darkness detected that I was a magic user. Luckily I was able to choose the correct one and had plenty of points so that I can beef up my character a bit more.

Assuming that you manage to get out of the cave at the start of the game, you can explore your surroundings and battle monsters. You can also visit the town where the locals are hostile toward you, but their trust in you will be gained as you do more and more heroic things. Four characters that appeared in other QFG games make a comeback, and two of them are Baba Yaga and Ad Avis. Shadows of Darkness also operates in real time, and it runs on a day/night cycle. Some events only happen on specific days, so it may be necessary to rest for a bit or improve upon your skills.

The monsters you fought in previous QFG games were relevant to its theme. Here, it's Batters, Necrotaurs, Wraiths, and Wytherns. The combat system is a bit unusual as the view is side-on, rather than isometric. During the battle, you can alter your aggressiveness, your ability to use magic, how easy it is to defend yourself, and whether you can use any special attacks. After you defeat the monster, your hero flexes his muscles as if he is a little boy saying “Yeah, I'm a big, strong man”. You can then proceed to search the corpse for a chance to gain more money and other stuff.

Also different aside from the combat system, is the way that conversations take place. Clicking the talk cursor on a character in previous QFG games cause the "conversation tree" to appear, and the character portrait is shown along with their dialogue. Here, the screen clears and a huge version of the character appears on the left, while the tree/dialogue appears on the right. I don't have a problem with this, and it's something you can get used to quickly.

The soundtrack for Shadows of Darkness is brilliantly composed by Aubrey Hodges, who plays a multitude of instruments and works in a variety of styles. He decided not to include the famous QFG theme music that we were all familiar with in the first two games. Actually, you hear a snippet of it as you head into town the first time, but that's about it. I enjoyed listening to this game's theme as it was struck into my mind for the first five minutes of me hearing it.

The CD-ROM version of the game was released at a time when Sierra dropped the idea of using its own employees to portray each character to make way for well-known Hollywood actors. In Shadows of Darkness, one or more characters are portrayed by the same actor. The game is narrated by John-Rhys Davis, who reads the script from the bottom of his heart, and one of the highlights is listening to him perform the rituals near the end of the game.

The humor in Shadows of Darkness is on par with any QFG game out there. As well as Dr. Cranium believing that pizza is one of the elements (alongside air, water, earth, and fire), for me much of it comes from the interface itself. All the cursors in the game are animated as you move the mouse around the screen, and the animation itself stretches about ten frames. You can use these animations to your advantage by hovering them over a character on screen and pretending they have big eyes or are miming some words out. Also, one of the monsters you fight during daytime is a cute little bunny rabbit, and I find that pretty funny.

Shadows of Darkness is much darker in toner than previous QFG games, and therefore the game is aimed at a mature audience. Two examples come to mind. The innocent peasant girl that has eyes for our hero throughout the game turns into a dominatrix who whips him while he's being chained up; the Resalka, a half-naked woman in the lake, turns in to something grotesque after you do something for her. Then there's the sexually-explicit language coming from the same two women.

I like the way the developers pay homage to the Castle of Dr. Brain by letting the player solve a series of puzzles to unlock his laboratory, including the “Simon Says” puzzle when you try to open the front door. You can then proceed to get an Antwerp through a maze and complete a jigsaw, and even change the difficulty of these puzzles.

The Bad
The combat scenes can be automated so all you have to do is watch your hero fight whatever monster stumbled in his path. But since QFG is supposed to be a RPG/adventure hybrid, I think this defeats the whole purpose, as I have never seen a feature in the previous games.

Also, runtime errors happen if you attempt to run Shadows of Darkness on anything greater than a 486, and the first set of these occur when you are traveling down a slope at the start of the game. And the first lot of these happen when you try to travel down the slope at the start of the game. Something totally unexpected also happen as well. In his Let's Play for the game, YouTuber LateBlt was throwing the spear at Ad Avis after telling “the ultimate joke”. Ad Avis gets killed only to be resurrected and kill our hero, triggering the scene where Avoozl comes out of the volcano and starts terrorizing the town.

The Bottom Line
Shadows of Darkness is my second favorite QFG game (after Wages of War). As the nameless hero, you do the usual things that you did in the previous games, such as exploring the sights, battling monsters, talking to people, and building up skills. The game operates in real time. There are events that only happen during the day, and some at night. The graphics and sound is great, and there are heaps of playability as you can play the game again with a different class and possibly see everything the game has to offer.

The Good
Besides being a funny game with a great story it had one thing that no other QFG game had... John Rhys-Davies. Thats right, direct from Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's Indy's friend Sallah as the narrator. Along with that theirs a great atmosphere and a sweet arcade style combat system.

The Bad
BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS BUGS

Count the number of times I types bugs. Multiply that by a million. Thats how many bugs are in the game. I may be exaggerating, but not that much. The game would have been great without them. I CURSE YOU ERROR 42!!!!

The Bottom Line
If your a big quest for glory fan get the game. If your not swimming through the sea of bugs may not be worth it.

The Good
Wow,what is there not to like?? This was the first PC game I ever bought, mainly because of the great box design: graves, tentacled monsters, witches and skulls, when I saw it I fell in love. Added to this all the booklets, full of gothic puns and spooky stories I thought it couldn't get better.

This game is mostly an adventure game combined with RPG elements which make it really decision-open. You can go anything you like, click at everything and read something clever, talk to anyone and actually do anything you can think of, almost.

The graphics were superb for 1994 with very nicely drawn surroundings and some of the most distinctive faces ever made for a game (ahh... Rusalka...). The sound effects and music add very much to the eerie atmosphere and a cozy feeling of old horror stories featuring ghosts and curses in little towns were the townsfolk bolt their houses at night (for example the inn features a midi sample of Grieg's Annitra's Dance, magnificent!).

The gameplay is a bit on the easy side, with most adventuring riddles being solved with a combination of using the right item on the right place, conversing with everyone and advancing the right skills to overcome obstacles. There is so much to be done though, and the feeling of adventuring is always there so its not so much of a hindrance that the various objectives are mainly easy. There is also a bit of fighting which adds an extra flavor, although it was very badly implemented in this game .

In the end the best aspect of this game is its concept, imagery and spooky feeling. It is a combination of all the classical horror themes (vampires, werewolves, mad scientists, ghosts, graveyards, Slavic mythology along with a Poeish and Lovecraftian touch). The master aspect of all these is that they never feel out of place or disjointed like in other horror games of that time (waxworks etc), but completed each side of the story of one of the best RPG adventures ever made.

The Bad
Well there were some bugs, but I didn't care at the time.

The really hideous part of the game is one that was advertised on the box.. combat. It was badly programmed and not entertaining. There was even an option that the character's fighting was carried out by the PC on autopilot which was very awkward at first, but really logical after the first few lame battles. Also the sound effects after a victorious battle were so kitsch and out of place.. a common feature of all Sierra games. Sierra could never really criticize their games effectively and cut some stupid art or effects out of them, but hey they had just come out of the 80's eh?

The game these days can be seen as a little retro. It hasn't aged very well as most of Sierra's games unfortunately. A bit childish in some aspects too.

The Bottom Line
This is the perfect blend of a mixture of gothic horror and comedy in a PC game adventure/RPG. You have to try it out if you like graveyards, superstitious folk, vampires, bloodthirsty bunnies and early 90's gaming. Actually there hasn't been one single game to be compared to it since then.

My dream one day, is not to see the wars end and earth be a better place, but some gaming company make another game that could compete this one in gothic horror feeling , mixing traditional spookiness and a bit of comic humor and make an equally open actioned game with more clever puzzles. Is it so hard???

My only hope right now for something a bit close to this, is "A vampyre's tale" an adventure made by Autumn moon entertainment, although its more on the cute graphics , leaving a bit of horror aside.. but since its supposed to be made from the creators of the perfect Monkey Island 3 its ok I guess.

So still Shadows of darkness is as close as it gets to the perfect gothic horror themed RPG/adventure. There is always Ghost 'n Goblins of course and Castlevania but these are arcade platformers and another story.

FIN.