Posted on: September 9, 2025
RodDawg117
Verified ownerGames: 181 Reviews: 1
Dark Reign
Classic under-rated RTS, enjoying the replay, so is my 11 YO son.
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Dark Reign + Expansion
Description
A colossal war between the Imperium and Freedom Guard is annihilating your world. To save your civilization, you must enter the heart of an empire at war. Command over 35 units with specific orders and deploy suicide bombers, hostage takers, saboteurs and more. Use precisely calculated battlegrounds to your strategic advantage and play against a highly responsive and unpredictable AI that detects and adjusts intelligently to your tactics. Vanquish the military powers to alter the destiny of a galaxy.
ATI/AMD compatibility notice: Dark Reign requires graphic card drivers version 13.4 or older.
ATI/AMD compatibility notice: Dark Reign requires graphic card drivers version 13.4 or older.
- The pack contains Dark Reign®: The Future of War and its expansion, Dark Reign®:The Rise of the Shadowhand.
- Many mods and impressively polished unofficial patches created by a still very active community.
- Complex AI mechanic allows you to create and execute unique strategies.
© 1997 Activision Publishing, Inc. Activision and Dark Reign are registered trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners.
Goodies
manual (56 pages)
reference card
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Recommended system requirements:
ACCEPTANCE OF END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Time to beat
15 hMain
16 h Main + Sides
-- Completionist
15.5 h All Styles
Game length provided by HowLongToBeat
Game details
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User reviews
Edited on: September 28, 2025
Posted on: September 28, 2025
Hughster127
Verified ownerGames: 67 Reviews: 2
Fun at first, then becomes a nightmare..
At first this game is kinda fun, you can collect resources and build units and attack. The enemy is constanly harassing you but you can defend ok. Once you get to the later missions, though... you have missions where you start out with almost no resources, and Water is the only one you need for money. (The green resource is ONLY used to increase the power coming from your generators and nothing else... ) Unfortunely, they put the water far away from your base, AND you have to find it first... very dumb mechanic. All while the enemy starts out with fully fledged bases and units all over the map with resources to gather (usually from 2 or more Water spots). Mission 9 is a clear example (Freedom Gaurd), where I just stopped playing. Fortunately, there's a "cheat" where you can find the file "SHELLCFG.H" in ".../Dark Reign/dark/shell" (Open up in Notepad) and change the number after "#define BTN_MISSION_COEFFICIENT" from 150 to 157... and you can skip these stupid missions. The game doesn't save your mission progress. If you beat Mission 3, as an example, and come back to the game, the game will start you off at Mission 1 again. The only way to get around this is with a save file, and save right before you beat the mission. Dumb. (Or us the cheat mentioned earlier (which is why I use it). All in all, got it on sale, played the missions that were fun, and skipped the bad ones. Final note, every unit in this game is very squishy (they all die in 5 hits or less)... the best bet is to build a bunch of cheap units and swarm the enemy in numbers... especially at first.
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Posted on: October 22, 2025
sexyfrozen
Verified ownerGames: 153 Reviews: 4
Great, but has key problems
I both like and dislike Dark Reign 1 and 2 for different reasons and I'm pretty sure I know the reasons this series never really took off. Firstly, classic RTS style games got a bit oversaturated. Not really heavily so, but the supply was much higher than the demand and still is honestly. Which is damn shame considering how nice it feels to play this game compared to all the modern RTS games that just chase C&C or Starcraft's tail. Problems Actually clicking enemies is quite difficult. You have to sorta click on the enemy or the cell it's moving into or something. I could never really consistently figure it out. I always had to slow the game down to the point it wasn't fun to actually 'play' and was just a bit too slow and this is coming from someone who likes Myth TFL where you can slow the game down there too! Another reason is that the terrain is really unreadable. It's impossible to actually properly tell what parts of the terrain block what. Having a turret on the high ground isn't always an advantage. The complexity would be nice if it was like 2.5d view like Tiberian sun, but since it's not, it's too difficult to easily grasp. But it's also bad because you don't know the range of your turrets when you place them and sometimes they can get blocked by seemingly nothing, but it's just the terrain system. It leads to moments where an infantry will wander into a blind spot of your turret and it won't be able to shoot. As a result, it becomes 'slightly annoying' over and over again. I do quite like the unit designs and voice overs a lot! Also the unit balance is quite good. Surprisingly good in fact. Some of the base game missions aren't that fun, but I did enjoy most of the xpac missions (so far). I do really find the game quite fun and I wish more RTS games tried new things like this, but this game is just four stars. Great, not amazing.
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Posted on: January 25, 2011
kblood
Verified ownerGames: 2171 Reviews: 11
Powerful RTS
I remember playing this game and it deserved more attention than it got. It measures up with C&C and Red Alert, even Starcraft a bit. Setting it in a Sci Fi future with powerful units in your arsenal with futuristic abilities. Compared to other classic games here on GoG I wont give it 5 stars, but thats only because some games are just above and beyond usual rating systems. This is still a solid game worth trying, and when it comes to RTS games, this is probably one of the best on this site. Especially when it comes to Sci Fi RTS games.
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Posted on: March 15, 2013
deepblue83
Games: 19 Reviews: 1
Lost so much sleep over this game
I remember back in the 90s, I would play this game with 2 of my friends for the whole night and not sleep. It was an awesome game, with an awesome online community back then!
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