Veil of Darkness

The Good
Well, to begin with, I'm a fan of horror games, especially adventures. There are not much of them, so I was very glad to get this one. And I must say, it is a very good attempt, though not the best one.

The story is quite standart at first, but it becomes more complicated as the game progresses. As you solve different quests, you find out that everything you meet is a part of the story, it is somehow tied to the characters you already met and to the prophecy you have to complete. Really, the story is very strong and thought-over, lke in a true adventure. The atmoshere is also very nice - dark, scary, you feel somehow lonely in this world, everyone you meet has his own problems and are seemed to be very scared too. As for the other characters - they are very well done. There are quite a lot of them, everyone has his own appearance, manners and has enough topics to talk about. Speaking with them is also well done - while the characte talks, some of the words in his speech are underlined, so you can talk about them later. But sometimes you have to tell the character about another topics, so you have to write the words from keyboard like in old good IF games, and this is very good indeed.

The puzzles are also very good, especcially the final one, where you have to collect several different things to kill the Kairn. In the beginning you got a Prophecy, which consists of all the main quests you have to solve in order to win (though not a solutions to them), so you don't have to think "what shall I do next?" walking aimlessly around. It was said in the other review that the game is very linear. It is not true. Most of the quests you can solve in any order, only a few requires the right order (and they are only in the beginning).

The Bad
Well, the game is still far from ideal. Not everyone will enjoy the RPG elemnts in adventure, fighting with monsters. Though, it is seemed more like action elements to me - the monsters you kill don't ressurrect and their bodies even don't disappear, and that's a nice touch. Also, in order to kill all monsters, tou have to take evrywhere with you a number of different weapons, as usually there is only one type of weapon for one type of monster. But, from the other hand, firstly, you can choose your skill level in the beginning (and on easy level the combat is quite easy), and secondly, you can just run away from monsters - there is really nothing you need from them.

The graphics is not very good, though the isometric view is quite nice.

There are several mazes in the game that can become frustrating, but, again, there is one good feature to help in navigating - a map that is drawn automaticly while you are wondering in the labirinth, which you can look at any time you want - isn't this wonderfull!

The Bottom Line
This is one good horror adventure game with interesting story, nice atmosphere, good puzzles and some nicely implemented RPG elements. For all horror fans.

The Good
The graphics are good for their time. Anyone who has played any DOS or SNES era games will enjoy the visuals.

The story is the typical hero ends up in Transylvania and has to kill Dracula. It's cliche but it's written well enough to motivate you to keep going.

The puzzles are solid and make sense in context of the game. There aren't many silly contrived puzzles you see in many Adventure game.

The big positive for me was the open ended nature of the game. You can skip around in what order you want to travel or solve quests/puzzles. Too often, adventures games are written well but force you along a linear path.

The Bad
Combat is overly simplified. You literally just walk up to a monster and click attack over and over until one of you is dead. Most of the time you end up just running away monsters so you don't have to keep going back to town to heal. That being said, fighting and/or running away from enemies probably takes up 10-20% of the game.

Inventory management becomes more and more of a chore. The interface itself is a nice. But you can only hold maybe 15 items in your backpack. But within your backpack you can have a bag that holds 12 items in it. So halfway through the game you end up having a bunch of a bags of items inside your bag. It's hard to explain, but anyone who has played Ultima 7 will know what I'm talking about.

The music is pretty bad even for MIDI. There are certain locations like the starting town where this really grating music loops over and over.

The Bottom Line
Veil of Darkness is a solid Adventure/RPG hybrid game that plays very much like the Quest for Glory series. The game is mostly about interacting with NPCs and solving puzzles with your inventory.

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.

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.

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.

The Good
Being a big fan of Accolades horror roleplaying offerings-namely the "Elvira" series and "Waxworks"- I stared at the box art for "Veil of Darkness" with hungry eyes. An isometric viewpoint was an interesting take. In 93' an isometric viewpoint in a game was a rare sight, with programmers seeming to struggle with angles and such, before then we had seen relatively flat characters sliding around 45 degree environments, SO...I was intrigued. When the none of the sprites were moving the the game boasted some attractive visuals, I'll be honest, I enjoyed playing this, sort of like you would enjoy playing Tetris to pass the time, except....

The Bad
...Tetris can be played over and over and still enjoyed, the true horror of this release was the dire animation and storyline. The linearity of the game prevents you from progressing past the painfully obvious step by step adventuring and this is an adventure title, Sierra's "Quest for Glory" series had more roleplaying than this.

The Bottom Line
A relatively unscary horror release, good potential but lack of programming effort or perhaps technology restrictions, make this an average adventure which could be finished in a day. If this game scares you don't ever read the newspaper, you might just get a heart attack.