Veil of Darkness

aka: Veil of Darkness: Norowareta Yogen
Moby ID: 1271
DOS Specs
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Description

The vampire lord Kairn has murdered his father and brothers so he could inherit control of the valley. Ever since he's used his powers to cut off contact with the outside world, Kairn has been living it up, torturing the villagers with madness and death, feeding off of them like livestock and turning the village women into his personal vampiress servants. Meanwhile, the villagers are miserable, as every day they face the possibility of either being devoured by werewolves, gnawed on by zombies, driven into stark raving lunatics, or turned into vampires by Kairn and his posse.

A cargo pilot's plane is shot down by a mysterious force while flying over a remote valley in Romania. A helpful village girl named Deirdre rescues him from the crash and takes him to her father Kiril, who informs the pilot that his arrival via plane crash marks him as the chosen one who is prophesied to destroy Kairn. Since Kairn has cut off all ways out of the valley, the only way he is going to leave is, as the old saying goes, over his dead body. That's not going to be very easy, however. Wild animals and unnatural creatures roam the countryside. While some villagers will help the hero to rid them of Kairn, others have been driven mad with despair and by the valley's oppressive aura, causing them to commit unspeakable acts or otherwise act in an unhelpful manner. Even the most trusted allies may turn out to have a few skeletons in the closet...

Veil of Darkness is an isometric role-playing game with action-based combat and adventure elements. Most of the game is dedicated to exploring the game world in a fairly open-ended fashion, gathering information and items. Puzzle-solving is conversation- and inventory-based; many battles are also designed in a puzzle-like manner, with the hero being able to defeat certain enemies only with specific weapons. Heavy inventory management and status ailments contribute to the game's RPG mechanics.

Spellings

  • ヴェイル オブ ダークネス ~呪われた予言~ - Japanese spelling

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Credits (DOS version)

26 People · View all

Producer (Event Horizon)
IBM Lead Programmer
Additional Programming
Designers
Art & Graphics
Music
Story Author
Rule Book Editors
Editing Support
Producer (SSI)
Associate Producers
Playtesters
Test Support
Graphic Design/DTP
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 9 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.9 out of 5 (based on 24 ratings with 6 reviews)

A rare and original Horror RPG from SSI...

The Good
Well this would be my first horror theme game and luckly it was made by my favorite company (then) as well as my favorite genre. You didn't get much RPG's with a true horror theme then...you still don't me thinks (I don't consider Diablo a horror theme).

Well, this game was more an Adventure puzzle-solving game that it was an RPG. It's it's almost like Gabriel Knight that fights with a sword. Basically the game to me is beautiful. Unlike most games, this game comes with a 'hint' storyline, which helps you show what to do next rather than think yourself to death like most puzzle-solving adventure games.

The game has a rather peculiar storyline actually, if not the same as Arcanum in the beginning. You have a crash landing in some Rumanian town and the local's think you're part of some prophecy which will help end the regime of a local Vampire Lord.

This would also be the one of few adventure-type games I've noticed that has fighting. The graphics is very familiar to Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight, etc. The only other game I recall with a similar concept was Hero's Quest. Anyways this game kinda looks like the grandfather of Diablo one way or the other...

The Bad
Hmm...the story line was kinda lame. Well it's not bad, it just uh...kinda dry. Guess what you have to do in the end? Yup, kill the Vampire lord. Not much mystery there, although the in-between quests are kinda neat. Especially one where you have to transform a tree into a guy by burning him or something like that.

Other than that, I recall having no regrets in playing it as it was kinda fun. I do remember feeling a sense of triumph after finishing the game...so it was worth the buy.

The Bottom Line
A rare classic game for both horror and RPG lovers.

DOS · by Indra was here (20760) · 2003

Boring and lacking in imagination and excitement.

The Good
Featuring a nice horror theme, Veil of Darkness is a nice attempt at merging rpg and adventure games (to be honest this is more of an adventure game than an rpg), the game places you in an isometric world where you interact with npcs, get some quests and try to save the poor town from the clutches of Kairn, a badass vampire that gets off by keeping an entire valley in 18th century conditions. The game uses a standard adventure game world map from which you warp to each location in the game (locations which are discovered as they are informed to you), in each location there's a collection of npcs that you can talk to and sometimes a dungeon or so filled with non-respawning baddies that you can kick around. The point of the fights is usually to uncover some puzzle elements or location since there is no leveling-up whatsoever. You have your standarized inventory with paperdoll which allows you to quickly equip weapons.... And... well, uh....

The Bad
For starters the story sucks ass. It's so bad it seems like it was pulled off from the early days of videogaming, you are flying around over this valley and since the big bad vampire is bored he decides to shoot you down for no reason. Once there you find out that you are the one that the prophecy says will kill Kairn and save the valley, so... "Fight Megaman!! For Everlasting Peace"! yawn.... of course there's a babe that has the hots for you and that you will have to save, so don't worry! It's all good...

The graphics in the game are crude but effective, what kills me is the poor animation and the effect it has in the game, you need to see this to understand me, but it seems like everytime you press a key everything just jumps a frame!... It's really crappy and slows the gameplay down to a crawl, truly this is one of the slowest games of this type I have played... It's hard to be scared at something that is a mile away in an isometric perspective, but it's harder to do so when it only seems to have 2 frames of animation and moves slightly slower than a snail.

Finally the concept behind the game is promising, but the end results are pretty dissapointing. This is a lame-ass adventure game that integrates some elements of rpg-ing such as status effects, weapons, etc. but doesn't do so effectively. Combat comes down to whacking enemies endlessly and/or escaping and plays so slow that you can go and fix yourself a drink between hits, there's no character development, the dungeon crawling is lame and almost an aftertought, the npcs are all shallow and spout information as if they were signposts instead of characters, and while you can tackle different quests at different times, the game is completely linear.

Oh! And the puzzles aren't good either. They are stupid Fed-Ex quests, Pixel Hunts or lame association exercises that seem taken from Zelda or other early console games. You know what I'm talking about: "Oh! The zombies can only be killed by silver... hmmm so now I know why the smith offered to make me a silver sword!", etc... etc... There are some interesting ones, like burning down a living three so you can resurrect it from it's ashes, but that's as far as things go...

The Bottom Line
Failed attempt at merging two very cool genres under an admitely cool horror theme. It's "classic" image and theme may fool you into thinking how this is an undiscovered gem, but to put it bluntly this is just a very lame game that becomes even lamer when faced with the competition.

DOS · by Zovni (10504) · 2003

this is as close to a vampire movie as possible

The Good
I liked the atmosphere surrounding the different locations (i have to admit this game spooked me a couple of times). The way it draws you in, you don't just stare at the action, you get involved with your character and the NPCs (each of them has a story of their own)

The Bad
The combats seem a little arbitrary for me (even though i had the right weapon it was really hard to kill the enemies) and too difficult at some points

The Bottom Line
This game reminds me of the old Bela Lugosi Dracula film, it has a little bit of everything: mystery, horror (lots of it), blood, action, romance and lots of interesting dialogues.

DOS · by n-n (50) · 2000

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Trivia

The opening sequence says you fly your plane over a region of Romania: a valley in the middle of the Carpathians. Vlad Tepes (a.k.a. Vlad "the impaler" Dracul; count Dracula) lived and ruled in a region named Transylvania (as I'm sure many of you know) which is located in none other than...Romania.

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  • MobyGames ID: 1271
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Alan Chan.

Windows added by Plok. PC-98, FM Towns added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: n-n, Rik Hideto.

Game added April 3, 2000. Last modified February 5, 2024.