Darklands

I have an older computer, and copies of both the 5.25 diskettes and a hard to find CD. Now I can put this on my main system, and play it all day. This game has almost no "cheats" making it harder, as well as a degrading system for weapons and armor that is realistic and shows wear and tear. Weapons don't just break after x number of battles, but might drop a quality point or two from normal use, and be destroyed by some special effect ( like an acid bomb) . The main thrust of the game is not to complete the story, which you can do fairly quickly, but instead to become famous throughout Germany. You never have to actually play the storyline to achieve this!. I am so glad it is finally available, as now I can share it with friends, or spend hours playing. I can also break out my since laminated map again.

Here are some things I like about Darklands 1. it’s set in medieval Germany. A type of setting which is rare for RPGs in my experience. 2. It’s very choice oriented, which is something I like in games generally. 3. It’s an old-fashioned RPG. Playing this would presumably give you a decent idea of how the first RPGs were originally designed. 4. It had my attention for a good few hours. 5. It’s different from the stereotypical RPG. Magic is narrowed down to what people believed in at the time. However, these are the things I dislike about Darklands 1. regaining strength takes a really long time, which you need in order to avoid dying in battle 2. Money is hard to come by 3. No quest log 4. you can get wanted by the city's guards for camping outside of their city enough times. Ridiculous, I know. 5. The game tricks you with calling upon a saint for aid. It’s not grayed out for some reason in spite of the fact that you can't do it, at least when I played the game. 6. Cannot equip quest items. 7. Cannot go back and edit appearance of characters. 8. While traveling from say, one town to another, you will sometimes get randomly stopped and urged to pay a small amount of money to avoid being religiously cursed. 9. Staying at an inn is somewhat expensive 10. It has a character editing option that doesn’t seem to work on some PCs. Unfortunately, My PC was one of them. 11. Early game seems to be hard as the loot you can sell from a battle is only enough for one piece of armor. Overall, I would not recommend buying and playing this game unless you had played it shortly after it came out. I certainly didn't because I was not alive at the time. This is an RPG of a type that I'm somehow not used to since previously I have played newer RPGs like Oblivion and Mount & Blade Warband.

This is one of the best pieces of genius role play design from the pre-Oblivion era. In a real sense, it is open world, varied party possibilities, and an effective alchemy system as a substitute for any other magic. A lot of research into the beliefs of the people in the 1400s to provide an excellent flavor of history. Trty it!

I first played this on windows 95 on a 90mhz pentium 1. 20 years later it still holds up. Yes, it's quaint. And if you're not a fossil like me, the graphics might not do it for you. But there's so much depth and complexity and storytelling to this game, you really ought to try.

Game is keyboard/mouse controls, but is not recognizing mouse. It is possible to play without the mouse if you know the keyboard controls--but you'll need to download and open the game manual from the install folder.