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GameSpot's Preview of Darkstone

Developer:
Delphine

Publisher:
Gathering of Developers

Target Release Date:
July 1999

By Erik Wolpaw

The Land of Uma is plagued by evil. A necromancer called Draak has assumed the form of a dragon and acquired the ultimate artifact of destruction, the Astral Hand. He has yet to fully master the use of the Astral Hand, but when he does, the world of light will die. Fortunately, the pagan goddess Kaliba has created the Time Orb, a weapon of enormous power with which the forces of good can destroy Draak. Rather unfortunately, she has smashed it into seven pieces and hidden the fragments in the bowels of seven monster-infested dungeons.

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So goes the story behind Darkstone, Delphine's upcoming dungeon crawl. Having read the plot, you can now disregard it, as you luckily won't be needing it to play the game. Like any proper hack-and-slash adventure, Darkstone looks to be light on narrative and heavy on walloping skeletons, with an escalating array of medieval weaponry and spark-shooting magic. Delphine has a history of creating both genre-defining titles, such as Out Of This World, and evolutionary works, such as Moto-Racer. Darkstone finds Delphine in the latter mode, attempting to recapture the feel of Blizzard's smash-hit Diablo while bringing it into the modern era of visually impressive 3D games.

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Character creation in Darkstone will be familiar to anyone who's ever played an RPG. There are four classes: warrior, thief, wizard, and priest. Each class has two variations based solely on gender and affecting the character in name and portrait only (for instance, the male priest is a monk, the female a priestess). Each of these personae follows the strict traditions of the genre: Warriors are good with weapons and bad with magic, thieves are without "qualms or morals" and wield a mean ranged weapon, wizards cast spells but are otherwise serious weaklings, and the priest can tunnel through solid rock with his pointy head and has a submarine. Actually, priests represent a moderate mix of spell-casting and close-combat abilities. The statistics system has also been bequeathed to Darkstone from past RPGs. Characters are defined by four main attributes: strength, magic, dexterity, and vitality. Experience is gained by destroying monsters, which periodically results in a raised level and the awarding of six generic attribute points, which can be distributed as you see fit.

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Darkstone's magic system is based on scrolls and spell books. Both can either be found in dungeons or purchased from shops in town. Scrolls are one-shot items, while spell books can be transcribed into your permanent spell list for unlimited use. Certain spells have magic attribute requirements making them castable only by higher-level characters. Spell books can be acquired and transcribed more than once, with a constantly escalating magic prerequisite, making them more effective as the game progresses. Casting a spell costs a certain amount of mana, a replenishable resource that can be regained by resting or drinking various potions. The spells themselves include virtually every golden fantasy hit from Fireball to Healing to Teleportation.

Next: Weapons and Armor