Darklands

Even after 32 years this still holds up. It's not like today's games that hold your hand and tell you what to do and where to go next. You're free to send your party wherever you desire. It can take several hours to get your party strong enough to fight the tough battles, but it's a great path to trod. The watercolor backgrounds and text choices get tiresome after awhile, but they are very well done.

I am completely new to the game and I do not know the game from my childhood or something. This is the third time I try the game. The first time I was put off by the looks. The second time I was put off by the interface. This time around I read an online game guide and took the time to read the manual and the keyboard shortcuts. And I love the game. It is easily interuptable which is a must for me and it is just lovely. The good: Some hand-drawn graphics are charming. The open world is captivating in its simplicity. Low-fantasy real-world setting is just unique. Alchemy and prayers/saints are not important but a really fun part of the game and has me hunting for recipes and ingredients and look forward to craft a potion and use it. Gameplay is interuptable and savable most of the time. The combat is not simple but also not overly complicated - there are shooting weapons, three stances and different types of weapons and armor. But no special abilities or cool-off castables or whatever. The bad The combat looks just kinda bad to me and has clunky controls if you do not use the keyboard. There is no in-game notepad that I know of. World map not scrollable. There seems to be no story-liine I am aware of. Maybe something pops up later? The ugly The controls are all over the place - you can click most of the interface. There is also a menu that is operated by clicking and holding the right mouse button. Then there are the function keys. And then there are normal keys. And then there are ctrl+function key commands. Scrolling is atrocious (you need to move the mouse to the edge and then press shift - who came up with that?). Also scrolling is not supported on the world map. Also it runs in dosbox which means if you want to look something up in the manual and alt+tab out of dosbox then it is minimised and you have to alt+enter to make it fullscreen again.

Darklands is a fantastic game, it's as old as I am and I absolutely love the game - love the low-fantasy setting, love the massive open-world sandbox, love the historical facts and settings, there's some jank to the game due to it's age and tech limitations but honestly, this game will give you TONS of playability/replayability and was years ahead of it's time. I highly recommend y'all play this one!

I had nothing but approval on TWC when I brought up Darklands as being the sadest non-remake of all time. The game simply set a precedent, that in a way was never matched, with freedom of action and exploration that was so easy to immerse yourself in and love. The realism was brilliant, and its such a shame that in the age of mega-buck RPGs nobody tried to make a Darklands II, except for failed open-source projects.

One of the coolest games from my childhood... and I still have it in my collection along with the original box, manual, and map! I spent days and days with this game - it took days and days to install too since it came on ten 3.5" floppy disks. Considering this was released in 1992, the graphics are great and the replay value is endless. So much fun - you won't regret it!