When this game came out in 2001 or so it was following on the tails of Diablo and it shows. There a few shadows that as a designer you don’t want to fall into: a first person shooter that follows a mineral scientist named Morgan Beeman or a Japanese version of Diablo.

This is not to say that Throne of Darkness is a bad game, on the contrary, it is at least average and playing it will at least entertain the party.

The basic premise is again, very well lay out by Gamespot and need not be regurgitated here.

You are a member of a group of adventures. You can select which one of the members you want to act as and can change the selection at anytime. The rest of group follows you about and fights the enemy without any instigation from you.

As you progress in the game, hacking and slashing by simply repeating multiple left clicks on a target (right mouse button moves your character), you will find items that increase your weapons and armor, just like any other dungeon crawl. You will increase the levels and skills of your members, just like any other crawl. But one good point is that you have access to not only the four people in your immediate group, but also a few others, whom you send back to your Daimyo’s Throne room too, um, rest. After all, battling demon lords is hard work.

The logic behind this is two fold: one it makes it harder to die, as you can send for one of the resting NPC at any time (as long as you have enough magic to call for the unit) and two, sometimes you have to have a particular unit with you in order to uncover a sub-quest or to finish a sub-quest. Frankly, and this just my opinion, the sub-questing is what makes this game interesting. It was probably the most enjoyable part of the game.

I was probably the only one, but I enjoyed the voice talent…it was campy. It was clever. It was intoxicatingly simple….but I’m not that smart. I wonder if I’m playing a game or watching 70’s television.

There is one major drawback, but I can’t in good conscious just blurt it out here in this review, as it would be considered a spoiler. Let me just say that if you plan on playing this game, do NOT expect to walk away from the ending with any kind of sense of accomplishment.

But there is always multiplayer to renew your spirits (as I don’t have a magical throne room to retreat to). The multiplayer section of the game allows the four different Daimyo houses to work in harmony to defeat the evil dark lord. One of the excellent abilities of the multiplayer is that your saved characters actually transfer to online. So your level 26 ninja is a level 26 ninja, with all of his gear and abilities. Sweet! But multiplay is pretty much more of the same as in single player and I’ve never had the time to invest in finding out how the mutliplay ends.

I found that the game would sometimes stutter as my party would move around the world or during large encounters and that was back in 2001 when the game came out. On a modern system I’m sure it would have no difficulty, albeit, you still have to conquer the Diablo hurdle…and that said, buy Diablo first. Then Diablo II. If you still want to crawl around in this angled 2D hack and slash, search Ebay.