Darklands

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.

The Good
It was soooo fantastically imersive. I created these characters, I designed them & specialised them. And after playing the game, I regenerated my party, creating a group of ULTIMATE warriors! I called them by name & armed them with a vast array of high quality weapons, armour, alchemical potions & heavenly saints.

The real-time strategy thing was just starting at that stage & Darklands clearly lead the pack. In many games since then, I've wished for a darklands style combat interface. The ability to freeze the action & issue new orders is awesome. Newer RTS's can be soo frustrating where combat happens sooo fast that it's all over before you can issue intelligent orders. Are there any other RTS's where you can arm units with ranged weapons as well as melee weapons? Darklands again lead the pack with its realism - how many archers would realistically have gone into battle armed only with their bow & quiver? Surely they would have carried a sword of sorts. Darklands reflects this sentiment, allowing units(characters) to carry several types of weapons at once, changing weapons when melee combat was joined.

The Bad
The limits of the Darklands world. Oh how I dreamt of crossing the Alps into Italy, traveling west into France, and across the Channel to England. And travelling East to Russia, and south-east to the Holy Land. The world was my oyster. The hints of expansion packs... Of gaining world wide fame... Oh well.

As others have already mentioned, the repetitiveness of skirmishes was another feature I occasionally tired of. Every thief & thug is identical... Every dwarf, every bear, every wolf, every... always the same image. Ten years ago it didn't make much difference - gameplay (incredible gameplay!) distracted from any disappointments with the graphics. These days, it's almost expected that games use different sprites or bitmaps to provide a mediocum of variety to normally mundane interactions.

Since Warcraft2, AOE & Starcraft (to name a few) have been around, fights with less than 10 units have become mere skirmishes. In a way, I wish that Darklands would have allowed you to control vast numbers of units, or at least become involved in major battles - (possibly allied with a Lord or King?)

The Bottom Line
Overall, I spent the 2 most important years of my educational life wasting(!?) my time playing this awesome simulation. In a way Darklands not only lead the way for real-time-strategy games, but it also paved the way for the currently new-generation of Role-playing Strategy games. Just check out World of warcraft, Warcraft 3 or Planetside. Every one of these has great similarities to Microprose's greatest title of all time. DARKLANDS.

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.