Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness

The Good
Shadows of Darkness occupies a special place in my heart and belongs to my absolute top favorite games. One of the reasons is the fact it has such a strong personality while still being a typical Quest for Glory title. It manages to combine all the elements that made the series so great and add to them its own unforgettable flavor.

What makes Shadows of Darkness different? Well, for starters, there's the setting. All Quest for Glory games had "ethnic" settings, but they were always taken more humorously than seriously. In this game, however, the Eastern European milieu brings something that we haven't seen before - a uniquely melancholic feeling pervading it from start to finish. The designers concocted a marvelous setting mixing genuinely dark themes with the series' trademark charm, resulting in warm emotions spread through the entire experience.

The atmosphere in Shadows of Darkness is so dense that you'd sometimes swear there is a Domovoi hiding somewhere in your apartment, especially if you play the game at night. Try wandering in the forest when it's dark, and after a while you'll start having a strong urge to climb over the city wall, go into the inn, and warm yourself near the fireplace, while watching the taciturn Yuri smoke his pipe. The swamps, the trees, the wooden houses, the caves, the Borgov castle - everything is made with such great attention to detail that you begin to think it all really exists somewhere. There is a good deal of nearly macabre elements, and the overall feeling of horror and suspense is ever present; certain images, such as the vampire girl, can be almost described as creepy.

This atmosphere is immaculately channeled through wonderful hand-painted graphics that absolutely surpass most everything achieved in the field of 2D visual design. As much as the last Quest for Glory was pretty, this one beats it fair and square with its more serious, soulful art. Particularly expressive are the huge character portraits, bringing to life the intriguing, exotic personalities of Mordavia. The music is also superior to anything we've heard in the series' installments so far. Like the icing on the cake, the CD version presents excellent voice acting, with even the narrator's comments being fully voiced.

Now, if you are familiar with the series but never played this installment, you'll probably ask: "But what about humor? Did the series lose its charming sense of humor in this game because it is so serious"? Not in the least: like its predecessors, it is crammed with jokes and silly puns, and many descriptions have endearingly ironic undertones that have always distinguished the writing in the series. Characters come across as even more extravagant: alone Doctor Cranius with his theory about the five elements - air, water, fire, earth, and pizza - is guaranteed to amuse you. Wait till you hear the Gnome's performance, and your last doubts about this game not having humor - in case you still have those by then - will eventually disappear.

The gameplay of Shadows of Darkness is perhaps even more satisfying than in the earlier games. There is a bit less combat and more puzzle-solving here compared to other Quest for Glory games - which is a good thing, since combat was never the focus of those games anyway. Puzzles are never as confusing as in the second game, and are quite versatile and interesting - I enjoyed the animal identification or gathering the stuff for Baba Yaga quite a lot. There is a good deal of solid traditional puzzles, so any fan of adventure games will probably be more pleased with this game than with the earlier installments. Some puzzles involve finding correct pattern or placing objects in a correct order, but they are usually not excessively challenging and are never as tedious as they are in so many other adventure games.

The role-playing system of Shadows of Darkness is fairly standard for the series, mostly serving as an enhancement of the otherwise straightforward puzzle-solving adventure gameplay. You can spend your days training in the city, increasing your strength in order to fight those swamp monsters with ease, or you can decide which side quests to complete and which to leave out. Some puzzles require upgrading your abilities: for example, there is a puzzle where you have to throw a stone at something, but if your throwing skill is not high enough, you won't be able to hit the right object. You'll therefore have to upgrade your throwing skill by going into the woods, picking stones and throwing them at trees. I find this type of puzzles a rather refreshing and realistic alternative to the usual inventory-based gameplay.

The combat system has been re-made from scratch for Shadows of Darkness. Instead of offering you a real-time menu with various actions to choose from, battles have been upgraded to legitimate arcade-like exercises reminiscent of versus fighting games. Basically, every battle takes you to a separate side-scrolling area where you can move back and forth, as well as jump or duck to avoid enemy attacks. The system is simple, and the overall low difficulty of these fights will hardly satisfy a fan of real action games; but it works marvelously within the frames of this hybrid title, providing a light refreshment between the more demanding tasks.

On top of all that, Shadows of Darkness delivers what is undeniably the best story in the series. Sure, in the previous games there were conflicts, dramatic situations, as well as sad and touching events. But no other Quest for Glory had the same intensity of storytelling or dealt with a similarly serious subject matter. Shadows of Darkness has a lyrical love story, tales of sacrifice, alienation, tolerance, and other important topics that haven't been handled by this series - at least not to this extent. The natural is blended with the supernatural, the ordinary with the grotesque, the trivial with the poetic, resulting in a wonderful mixture.

The Bad
There is a little bit less variation between character classes in this installment of the series compared to its predecessors. While the Paladin has appropriately unique options, the Thief character is not very prominently featured and mostly plays the same way as the Fighter. Also, the game's combat system would probably distress people who got used to the relatively pain-free clicking of the earlier games. The game wisely provides you with an option to set the battles on auto just for such cases, letting the game calculate the outcome according to the combatants' current parameters.

There are very few, if any, obscure or utterly illogical puzzles, and cheap deaths do not await the hero at every corner. That said, one infamously known element of Sierra design is unfortunately present in this game in at least one aggravating instance: if you forget to perform a certain action rather early in the game, it will become unwinnable much later. Dead ends might have been appropriate in the simple early King's Quests, but not in a game with so many options as Shadows of Darkness.

Unbecoming such an exquisite game, the initial release was very buggy. While subsequent floppy incarnations and the CD version seem to have corrected the most glaring flaws, new errors connected to speed issues started to claim their toll very soon. Only disabling the internal cache of my computer in the BIOS prevented me from encountering the dreaded crush occurring relatively late in the game.

The Bottom Line
It's quite hard to proclaim a specific Quest for Glory game the best in the series, since the quality of this particular franchise has been consistently high. Nevertheless, I'll make my personal choice and nominate Shadows of Darkness - a true Quest for Glory game through and through, and yet also something transcending even its excellence.

The Good
Many people see the battle system in this game as a disadvantage. I saw it as an definite plus to the game. It made battles quicker, but still allowed you to control the hero (that is, if you want to). Some battles, such as with the wraiths, are still a challenge.

I also found that the setting of this game was by far the best of any of the QfG series. I would go so far as to say it was the best, and most highly original plots, in any game I can remember. The transsylvanian setting coupled with the slavic folklore, like the leshy or rusalka, make a haunting and memorable game. The setting was so colorful and deep, that the feeling of loneliness and sorrow actually rubs off on you. You can feel the sadness in the lonely Mordavia, and get attached to the characters. As such the sacrifice Toby makes for the girl Tanya was quite touching.

Speaking of characters, I must say that they are all, everyone of them, memorable. From Yuri the innkeeper, to helpless old Nikolai, or even the ghost of the paladin Piotyr, they all standout in my memory perfectly. The characters had an almost eerie depth to them.

One of the best improvements from the previous games was the addition of speaking characters. the most memorable? I would say John-Rhys Davies as the narrator, or the screach of the "hungry, hunting hawk". The addition of voices was one of the best choices they could have made to improve the game.

Now the music...I think that the music from Shadows of Darkness was memorable ( as you might have noticed, this game was highly memorable to me) and, I think, was responsible for most of the depth in the game. I would pay good money to buy a Shadows of Darkness music cd. Just listen to the adventurere's guild music, and then you will fully understand how lonely the game is. Who ever wrote and performed that music, God bless ye.

"Here lies the spirit of Barney Blue, To his lover was untrue, So his lover knew just what to do, She fixed herself some Barney stew"

The Bad
In my opinion, there were but two problems with this game. Unfortunately, both are very bad. The first is that the game ends. I know it sounds weird, but I wish that the game would just continue, as I love the setting and characters so much.

The next problem was the BUGS. The god forsaken bugs. May the swamp bug die a horrible death. Just hearing someone say "error 52" still unnerves me.

The Bottom Line
Buy this game! even if you can't beat it because of bugs, just enjoy the characters and music until the glitches catch up with you.

The Good
First off the good points of this game. The graphics are highly detailed for their time. 256 colored backgrounds with very vivid and detailed graphics. Sprites with lots of animation and movement. The voice acting and varied personalities of the game also brought Quest for Glory 4 to life.

One of the best examples of voice acting ever. Also the fact that you could choose four classes in this game.

The mouse system is also very intuitive. Very easy to control in this game

The storyline is the best of the original four quest for glory games and delivers some really emotional moments.

The group inside the inn is also quite hilarious and some of the best lines money can buy.

The Bad
The Combat Engine. The first Quest For Glory combat engine was good The second Quest for Glory perfected it and the third one went downhill just a bit. However this combat system is more akin to a arcade title. Not too bad but very unfitting for a rpg/adventure hybrid.

BUGS! ERROR 42 will make you bang your head against the wall. Also running it on anything higher then Windows 95 tends to crash the game badly at least on my copy. Everytime I clicked outside the game screen the whole computer froze! HORRIBLE! For the best experience with this game run on at latest Windows 95 OSR 1 and under a pentium II processor

Not as diverse as previous Quest for Glory games. While there's four classes the things you do don't vary anywhere near as much as Quest for Glory 1 or 2 though better then 3 The Fighters and Theif's games are almost identical! The magicians game is a little more varied but to get the most out of this game you have to use the Paladin class to get all the extra quests.

Some extra bugs where if you don't do a certain event you can't get it again and hence literally have to restart the whole game! ARGH!

The Bottom Line
This is a great game to play. Don't let the negatives get to you too much since this is undeniably one of the best adventure games ever made. Would have been the pinnacle if the classes were more varied and the bugs weren't in there. Overall a 9/10 on my scale though to most it would be a 8/10