Darkstone

This is a fun, accessible hack-n-slash similar to Diablo, but with a significantly different feel. The story is on the lighter side, the third-person view is less restrictive, there are some puzzles to solve, and the townsfolk are a bit more engaging--quite a bit if you play my favorite, the thief. You get the standard three classes, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Each game has a progression of randomly quests that adds replay variety. The game has two modes. Single-player mode lets you play two characters, one operated by you and one AI, and you can take control of either. Multi-player mode lets you coop on a LAN. Build a variety of skills with care, gird yourself in armor, wield magic, upgrade your weapons, and leverage class-specific secondary skills that make a difference. It all comes together to make a solid game. This game brought much joy to me and the missus. I remember with great fondness completing the game for the first time, cackling maniacally as we ran about the boss's chamber collecting our huge piles of loot. I still dust this one off from time to time. If you have yet to try Darkstone, don't miss out! :)

As a kid waiting for the next Diablo game, I figured this would be nothing more than a time-killer to pass the time. It was then I realized that this game does little to nothing to distinguish itself from its blizzard counterparts, and that is perfectly okay. I came into the game expecting Diablo-style dungeon crawling, looting, and hacking and slashing, and that is what I got, and I couldn't have been happier. Today, age-wise, while the graphics may not have aged incredibly well, the gameplay remains like a fine wine, with a good flow, micro-quests that are typically and conveniently accomplished at your current destination, a decent story, the right balance of linearity and difficulty, and fantastic character building that allows one to either be exactly what their class demands or to do a bit of everything, and of course, fun combat, and a sense of accomplishment between each beginning and quit. Unfortunately, the game is like Captain Crunch to a newer system, delicious, but can hurt to chew. As many issues, such as a yellow screen/blob of death, and flickering menus and graphics mar the experience. The bottom line is one will not miss out on an enjoyable experience from beginning to end to re-beginning to re-end across numerous difficulty levels, but the enjoyment comes with the risk of a cluster bomb of unfortunate issues that varies between video cards, and possibly operating systems.

I've liked this game for a long time, but I originally only played it on the PS1. Now that I've played in on GOG, I have discovered that the game has a feature I've literally never seen in any other Diablo style ARPG: you can play with two characters. Playing this game again with this feature is awesome. It's not the same has the Fate/Torchlight series where you have a pet, but rather like a Baldur's Gate game where you only have 1 extra character (and can't pause to issue commands...) Still it's a whole lot of fun, the random layouts and quests keep things interesting, and it's just an absolute joy to play. Can't go wrong for $6.

I still have my original copy and box sitting on the shelf. This was a great fun game, that was even more fun multi player. I remember taking around at the time my super powerful computer with Celeron 433, with even more awesome TNT graphics to friends so we could play together. What was even better was throw a gold into the bard in town so it would sing the theme song. That was epic.

it's one of the better diablo clones out there, the game has an amazing unique dark atmosphere and you really feel dived into the game. the game plays also very well, is balanced and just fun. ...and to people comparing this old school diablo clone gem to the torchlight, which gets boring after 3 hours: open your god damn eyes