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.