Darklands provides a deep, engrossing journey through historically and mythically accurate medieval Germany. Classic.
Welcome to Darklands, a historical roleplaying game from Microprose that seamlessly and believably combines myth, legend, religion and cold hard fact. It's a difficult game to properly describe by modern standards. Unlike most roleplaying games there is no pretentious, cliche storyline. There are no amazing visuals and cut-scenes. There is no magic. The world is vicious and unforgiving, often killing the unwary faster than they can say, "sheiss!" Death is no laughing matter, and if one of your party should fall prey to this fate, they stay buried forever. Darklands is a gritty, realistic roleplaying game set in a painstakingly researched authentic setting. I love every minute of it.
You begin with two options: you may accept the party of four premade characters that Microprose has set up for you, or you can create your own team. The choice is standard, but less than vital. At any point in your travels you can visit the local inn to drop off a party member and create a new one to take his or her place.
Inside the character creation interface, you begin to understand what sets Darklands apart from the rest. Statistics are not rolled, but rather, a character's skills and stats are determined their background, which the character directly controls. First you choose from a variety of socioeconomic classes from which your character was spawned. This determines his or her potential future, as well as the number of attribute points you can spend to increase such familiar stats as Strength and Intelligence. Then you take your 15-year-old adventurer-to-be and begin fleshing out a record of their professional history. Various career paths, representing 5 years of work, are given as options. For example, you may choose to work for 5 years as a soldier, gaining valuable weapons skills and passable equipment at the expense of miscellaneous skills. Or, alternately, you may choose to become a monk, focusing on becoming a virtuous person with strong religious training. The choice is yours, and you can take your character up to an extremely venerable age, though the older you get the more you suffer from strength and endurance penalties.
As I mentioned, there is no magic in this game. Magic-like effects are achieved by two different skill sets: religion and alchemy. The developers of Darklands researched the prevailing views of medieval Germany on these subjects, rather than the facts of the day. Thus, alchemy is real, and can produce such effects as creating a sticky pool that slows your opponents' progress to exploding on contact to great damage. Of course, unlike magic, alchemy requires components, which are expensive, and expertise, which takes time or age to obtain. Your alchemist must craft each potion individually, and their quality is determined by his skill. Or, alternately, you can buy potions from your local Alchemist NPC, at great price. Religion is also real. Your religious PC's can research new saints at each church and university, and the saints will certainly manifest themselves to those who are pure of heart, often to great and wonderous effect.
Battle is a major point of consideration in any RPG. People who are familiar with modern RPG's like Baldur's Gate will feel right at home with Darklands' system. Combat is a combination of real-time action, and turn-based strategy. While paused, you give your four heroes orders, and while unpaused they carry them out. It's quite simple. You can engage in melee, throw potions, pray to saints, run from battle, position yourself behind cover, or just stay put and do nothing. Your choice of weaponry also makes quite a difference. There are legendary weapons, but they are religious artifacts, so they are few, far between, and difficult to use. More than likely you'll be choosing mundane weapons based on a combination of their speed, damage, and penetration. For example, wild creatures like boars and wolves are lightly armored, so will take full damage from your weapons. However, the Raubritters (robber barons) typically wear expensive suits of full plate armor. A heavy weapon with little penetration (like a two-handed club) would be very effective against the wolves, while barely doing anything at all to the Raubritter, while he mercilessly cuts into you with his expensive two-handed sword. But armor and weaponry is expensive, and you can't always afford to have an option for every scenario. Balance is key.
Furthermore, Darklands is the very definition of open-ended. Like the much-loved Elder Scrolls series, Darklands has a main storyline that exists slightly beneath the surface. Your hero is not immediately thrust into the story at all, but rather just set in the world to find adventure and gain experience. At some point the beginning of the game's real "goal" is given to you through a dream. Of course, you may already know by then through your travels. In any case, you can choose to completely ignore the game's final goal if you like, and just pursue the thousands of side quests that are generated throughout the accurate map of medieval Germany.
One further note: many of the interesting scenarios that your party will become involved in take place in a pseudo-adventure interface. The party is given a set of potential actions, some of which are activated because of your skills, the possession of certain alchemical formulas, or the knowledge or certain saints. Your success in these situations usually means the difference between deadly battle (for you, perhaps) and smooth sailing.
Darklands' music, sounds and visuals could have used improvement. While the adventure-like and town screens are hand-drawn and very appropriate and appealing even for today, the rest of the game is less than impressive. By 1992 standards it would have been good, but still not that good. The character models are generic and have few customizing options available. There are perhaps four total tracks in its "soundtrack." The sounds are rather bland as well. Much of this has to be compared to the time in which it was released, and it comes up better than average in all categories for its time. However, Darklands' real draw is its wonderful world and unique, deep gameplay experience. To this day there are few games that can even come close to providing the same experience. It's a shame that Microprose didn't pursue the line of sequels that the game's manual hints at.
All in all, Darklands is a truly underappreciated masterpiece of the early 90's.