This game is great to play every so often - great gameplay and music. After you get to so high a level and craftiness, it's good to take a break and then come back and play it again.
MOO2 is a solid game, with lots of tech expansion options. Decent ship/fleet battles as well. One of it's weaknesses is the AI diplomacy.
It starts out slow and dull, from a scenic, story and musical standpoint. But once you get a handful of hours in, everything (and I mean everything) just continues to improve. Gameplay improves, you get allies, the storyline starts to take off, the music sounds better, the scenery looks better, and the variety of creatures encountered greatly expands. This was a great game back when I first played it @2005 and it remains one of my favorites. It gets really addictive once you start building up the skills of your characters. Graphically, it can't compete with today's games, but it does ok in that department nonetheless. Very happy that GOG brought this collection here.
Dark Quest 1 serves really to get one acquainted with the game and how to play. Dark Quest 2 is superior in every way (save one - cannot split the party). It's a fun game with enjoyable music themes and it's easy to learn how to play. The frustration is, if you do not pick the correct party member to recruit at the very start, there is no chance to win the game. I picked the archer as my first recruit, for her ranged ability, her ability to detect traps and mend, but this is an impossible choice for the following reasons - you get your 3rd character (the dwarf) via a mission and then you cannot recruit your next character until completing X amount of missions. The problem is, at mission X-1, no matter which mission you decide to take, it requires a spellcaster with the ability to hit several enemies at once. Otherwise, there are just too many enemies, all with 70% hit chance and ability to do 3 damage per hit. One would have to be extremely, extremely lucky to even put up a decent battle in such a scenario. Since there is no 'retreat from dungeon' option, this battle has to be won or your characters die and have to be resurrected. After resurrection, entering the same dungeon a second time means the enemies are 'toughened up' and you've lost the gold to perform the resurrections, so the odds just worsen. I played on normal difficulty. So, I like the fact that one should pick a specific party with specific skill sets to advance through a dungeon successfully, but then let us go back and recruit any party member from mission 2 onward.
One of the very first computer games I played (along with Warcraft), the mystery, humor, exploration and wonderful story kept my attention. Of course, the graphics are much dated, but the wonderful and fun story remain. Those who like games with a great plot should definitely give this game a look. They won't regret it.
