This game is unfortunate...but had tons of promise...read on to find out why...
You play the role of Anna, a vampire warrior charged with protecting the land. Not the first time, I'll grant you. The game starts on January 1, and in one year, the Shadow Lord appears and you must take him on in battle. The whole year, then, is spent keeping the Shadow Lord's legions at bay, completing quests, becoming stronger and steeling the land for the impending battle. That's where the good premise comes in. Usually in solo fantasy games, aside from performing quests, you're only strengthening yourself. Here, you're increasing the capabilities of the land, which makes things mildly interesting. There's three towns, three above ground battlefields, and three dungeons. Each town has a battlefield and a dungeon adjacent to it. Each town controls different aspects of the land: Economics, Invention and (I believe) Physical Manpower. Each time you perform a quest for one of the townspeople (that involve either rescuing said townspeople, killing a specific monster, retrieving an item from a dungeon, things along those lines), one of those three aspects increases. If those aspects are high enough at the end the game year, the townspeople will be able to develop powerful weapons and equipment that you can use to fight the Shadow Lord at the end of the game. Another good factor of this title, its lack of story cuts out the middle man entirely, doesn't hinder the game with a pretentious, empty tale that will only be forgotten by those who want to get to the action. Which is usually what happens anyway with games like Diablo. Diablo is a great series of games, but once the story is experienced, it's skipped past on subsequent playthroughs because it becomes unnecessary. People don't play on Battle.net for the story, they play because the gameplay is fun and engaging. Which Dark Angel does accomplish...good premise, good ideas...battle is fast-paced as well, the fact that the four face buttons can all be customized with potions, gauntlets, boots and weapons however the player chooses makes for interesting combinations of items...
However, there are clearly downsides. One key problem, that I believe Gamespot left out in their review, is that the dungeons are randomly generated. This is normally a great thing for hack-and-slash experiences, as it's always nice to walk into a maze you've never explored before, encountering new monsters and treasures. You never know what or who you'll find! Unfortunately, every couple of floors in each dungeon you'll encounter a boss. Again, not inherently a problem. The boss usually holds a key, that opens a door to a small room where you'll find a switch, which upon pulling, will open the way to subsequent floors below. The problem occurs when the floors randomly generate, occasionally, the boss is created in the room you can't enter before killing the boss. Basically, the game screws up and that dungeon is no longer explorable. I'm not sure if the designers of this game took that into consideration and are saying to the player, "well, tough luck, old chap, guess you have to explore the other dungeons instead!" After all, you can continue the game further, just not in that particular dungeon anymore. Although, should such an anomaly happen in the very beginning, you'll likely get to the very end with extremely unbalanced land aspects. If it happens at the end, you could probably proceed, of course if you're only a few points away from increasing that town's land aspect enough to obtain a great piece of equipment that would make taking on the Shadow Lord easier, you won't be able to obtain it. And if you care enough, will have to start from the very beginning to get it.
Again, this game is unfortunate. Had a bit more time been put into some voice acting, flashier graphics, prettier interfaces, textures, towns, and the dungeon situation been improved and debugged, this game could've been a lot of fun, especially if the main character was generic and could be created by the player, possibly including a multiplayer aspect so multiple people could get in on the action.
Unfortunately...this one likely won't be remade anytime soon...too bad...