INTRO:
Dungeon crawlers are some of the oldest digital games around. There is something entertainingly gritty about having a perhaps-unwise but determined “hero” romping around in a dank indoors environment, fighting anything he/she comes across because they are in the way of the exit.
This is the idea behind the first Dark Quest, which is really just a prototype for the second game. The second game has expanded content, better graphics and slicker presentation.
PREMISE:
According to a brief back-and-forth between the main antagonist and the poster-boy for the game, Dark Quest 2 has a story that is set after the events of the first game. The evil sorcerer from the first game has survived and set up shop elsewhere, still intent on forming a dark kingdom.
Presumably, the heroes from the first game, such as the Barbarian (obviously inspired by Conan, bane of evil sorcerers), have followed him to a town that he is currently terrorizing. He has taken over an abandoned castle and recruited an army of greenskins. A group of heroes oppose him, and even so, only a small number can travel through his territory at any time due to the difficult paths to the castle.
The heroes have support in the form of the township’s facilities. There are several people in the township that can provide assistance – for the right price of course. The fantastical world in Dark Quest is the dark fantasy kind, after all.
DUNGEON-CRAWLING - OVERVIEW:
The first playthrough begins with the Barbarian braving the first dungeon. It also has a tutorial going on, telling the player about the basics of the gameplay.
Each level is called a “dungeon” (of course). Each dungeon is in turn composed of a network of “rooms”. Each room is in turn a grid of squares, which determine where characters can go to and where they cannot.
The first few enemies are easy-to-kill goblins, always at the same place regardless of how many playthroughs that had been played. This is indeed the case too for most of the other levels; the enemy compositions and their initial locations are the same. Nonetheless, the difficulty curve is noticeable and seems to be well-paced (at least for me).
Yet, even the earliest levels would show that fickle luck is part of the gameplay. Percentage-based RNGs determine whether attacks land or not, whether hits can be defended against or not, and whether secondary effects trigger or not. Indeed, bad luck can ruin a run quite easily.
There are more elements that concern these separate gameplay elements; they will be described later.
HEROES – IN GENERAL:
The first party member (called a “hero” in-game) is the Barbarian, whose hair colour in the box-art is red likely because of litigation concerns. Anyway, the player can eventually recruit five other party members, which include, presumably, the Dwarf and the Wizard from the previous game.
Each party member has his/her own set of abilities, though the Dwarf and the Ranger share some skills that are related to traps. Each has his/her own set of statistics too; some variables are not even available to all party members, as will be described later.
Party members can die; in the regular game mode, they can be resurrected, but for a considerable cost. Getting them killed is generally not a good thing, because money is not so easy to gather due to escalating difficulty, which will be described later.
Perhaps the most startling thing about this game is that the player should not expect to be able to develop a team of powerful adventurers that can eventually sweep all before it near-effortlessly. Of course, the player would still be sweeping things, but only with deft decision-making (and more than a little bit of luck).
BARBARIAN:
The Barbarian has the highest potential damage output, but is also the least useful of the team. This is mainly because he has to get close to enemies to do the most damage, yet some of the nastiest enemies are melee monsters. Worse, the Barbarian is not exactly built to be the party’s tank. Worst of all, most of his damage potential depends on RNG rolls.
The other Heroes have much more versatility and/or staying power than he does, and with less risk. There are few reasons to take the Barbarian on any missions.
DWARF:
The Dwarf may or may not be the Dwarf from the previous game. Anyway, like he did in the previous game, the Dwarf can find and disarm traps, or set traps for enemies to step on. He is also the best Hero for the role of party tank (as is often the case with dwarves in games with fantastical settings).
Also, like stereotypical dwarves in fantastical settings, the Dwarf is talented at somehow finding more gold; this is implemented in-game as a bonus to any gold that the party finds. All these abilities very much ensure that the Dwarf is guaranteed a spot in the party; besides, gold is not as easy to farm as it seems.
WIZARD:
The Wizard does not have a hat, has a smaller (and neater) beard and sports more elegant clothes than the Wizard in the previous game. He may or may not be the same Wizard, but he has the same magical versatility and perhaps more. Like the previous Wizard though, he is rather frail.
The Wizard has a plethora of spells, all of which are unique only to him. They include spells that can hit multiple targets and magicks that throw down a line of energy that damages enemies that pass through, among others.
However, the Wizard’s magical energies are not infinite. Curiously, his abilities follow the limitations for wizards in Dungeons & Dragons, in that he can only cast the same spell once or twice, but that’s it.
One of the incentives to use the Wizard is that his default ranged attack cannot be defended against. Anything he hits is going to take damage unless they have protection that is specifically anti-magic. However, he has terrible range and no Defense rating whatsoever. If there is not another character to block the path of incoming enemies, the player would get a reminder why wizards are often regarded as glass cannons.
KNIGHT:
The Knight is the primary healer of the party. She is also a good secondary tank, mainly due to her high Defense percentage, and she is not a slouch at melee either. These abilities alone make the Knight a mandatory party member.
However, like the other characters, she cannot use her special abilities without limits. Therefore, the player can only have so much healing for party members before their hit points inexorably go down to zero.
Fortunately, the Knight also has a resurrection ability, so it might be worthwhile to just let a party member die – preferably after he/she has taken many enemies with him/her. (The Barbarian may seem to be best for doing this, but the Dwarf is better.)
RANGER:
The Ranger is perhaps the third must-have party member, if only because he/she has the greatest reach with her ranged attacks (further than the Wizard’s actually). She has to deal with the defense ratings of enemies, unlike the Wizard, but she has better range.
The Ranger also has special arrows, all of which are guaranteed to hit their targets and they can be fired at any range. She can also set traps, like the Dwarf, but her trap-setting abilities are not as reusable as the Dwarf’s.
Like the Wizard, she has no Defense rating, meaning that any attack coming her way will hit. However, she does have a special ability that lets her dodge incoming melee attacks quite reliably.
MONK:
Most monks are clergymen who prefer to stay in their cloisters – but not this one. Rather, this monk is a darkly-aired character; he heals himself via sucking the life out of enemies and he can whisper encouragement of treachery into their ears, among other insidious abilities (one of which is hurting everyone in the same room, including allies).
The monk is not easy to use however, because the player needs to know about the abilities of enemies; after all, he specializes in turning them against each other.
The most problematic thing about the monk is that he has the lowest hitpoint count – lower than even the Wizard. He does not have a lot of gear choices, though the player would most likely equip hitpoint-increasing gear on him.
LIMITED USES OF ABILITIES:
The player characters have limited uses of their own special abilities. Consequently, just about any romp in the castle is a matter of resource management. If the player does not strike a balance between having characters use only their default abilities and using their special abilities, the player is going to lose characters.
HITPOINTS:
Each character, including any enemy, has a hitpoint counter that determines how close they are to being dead. However, as long as he/she/it has one point remaining, he/she/it functions at full capacity – as is often the case with video game characters.
Hitpoints can be recovered through healing, either through healing powers or healing potions. Some enemies can restore hitpoints of other enemies too; it would not take long for the player to learn to target them first. Generally though, enemies do not have the ability to restore their own hitpoints; as long as the player can manage the rate of attrition, the player is likely to win any battle.
On the other hand, there are a lot of combat encounters, so the player has to be wary about the team being whittled down from one fight to the next.
DEFENSE & ATTACK:
For better or worse, hitting things and getting hit is a matter of luck, i.e. they are decided by RNG rolls. The Attack rating of the attacking character and the Defense rating of the defender are the main factors; however, separate RNG rolls are made against them. Therefore, a high Attack rating is not going to help against a character with high Defense rating.
The Attack/Defense RNG rolls only apply to default attacks, however. Any offensive special ability will always land.
MAGIC POTS & GOLD:
The main measurements of the player’s progression through the game are the total acquired amounts of gold and magic pots that the player has collected. These happen to be found in most of the places that the player’s party would be going to. Presumably, they are things that had been left behind in the castle, for whatever reason, or resources that the evil sorcerer has gathered for himself and his forces but did not keep close to him.
It should be mentioned here that there are rarely, if any, other things to be found in the various official maps. There are not even potions to be recovered, which is perhaps a peculiar difference that the game has compared to other fantastical dungeon-crawlers.
Gold is, of course, a currency. It is used to purchase consumable supplies and to commission the creation of gear for the Heroes. It is also used to resurrect slain Heroes, though this is not the best expenditure of such a precious resource.
Magic pots are rarer than gold. They are used to pay the local town’s magician in return for the training of individual Heroes. It is perhaps understandable that the magician could train the Wizard and even the Monk, though it is unclear how the magician knows things like setting traps, swordplay and archery. This part of the game does not have a narrative explanation, and probably never will.
Anyway, training allows the player to unlock special abilities for the individual Heroes. The first rank of any special ability is cheap, but the later ranks require more magic pots.
CONSUMABLES:
Each individual Hero can carry two pieces of consumables in addition to whatever gear that they carry into a level. These are typically potions, which can be bought from a lady in town. The potions are rather varied, which makes the limitation of having just two potions (of any type, including of the same type) quite dissatisfying. On the other hand, the right potion being used at the right time can ruin enemies.
In addition to the usual potions, such as healing potions, there are potions that restore one use of any single-use special ability; these are perhaps the most tactically valuable potions, especially for the Wizard and Knight. There is also a potion that lets a character take two actions in a turn.
Consumables are never found in the various places that the team would go to. Therefore, what the player gets at the start of any dungeon run is all that he/she gets.
TURNS BY INITIATIVE:
Every character, including enemies, take turns to move. The player usually gets the first turn in any combat encounter, but sometimes, the level design lets the enemy moves first – more often than not, this is to simulate some kind of ambush.
Anyway, either side gets to spend all of the actions of its characters, after which its phase ends and the other side’s phase begins anew. The player can also choose to end his/her turn earlier (likely because doing anything else would put the party in jeopardy). However, the CPU-controlled side will always get all of its characters to act – often to their detriment, especially if the player has been putting down traps and other hazards.
“ACTION”:
A character gets to make an “action” during his/her/its side’s turn. This action can be making an attack on an opponent. Regardless of the results of the attack, the action is spent and the character can no longer do anything else that consumes the action.
The action may also be used on movement. Every character has a movement rating; the character can move up to that number of tiles in a single move, and then make an attack at the end. If the character does not make an attack at the end of a move at the maximum distance, the character does not get to make an attack afterwards. Rather, the character’s action is spent.
If the character has not made a move at maximum distance, the player can still have the character move a bit more and make an attack at the end of the move, if possible. This allows the player to work a character around traps.
The CPU-controlled opposing side is not so careful though. In fact, it seems to have a propensity to always move its characters into the player’s traps. (This may have been deliberately designed stupidity, just for the player’s gleeful satisfaction.)
USE OF SPECIAL ABILITIES:
The usage of special abilities is governed through a different kind of limitation. Using a special ability does not require an available action. Even after a Hero has spent his/her action, he/she can still use a special ability, albeit at or from where he/she is because he/she can no longer move. This can be used to the player’s advantage, such as maximizing damage output.
However, any Hero can only use one special ability per turn, even if he/she has more charges or uses of special abilities available.
MOVEMENT:
Movement can only be done along the cardinal directions; diagonal movement cannot happen. Besides, there are only four different sprites for any character model. The player will want to keep this in mind, because this can be used to predict where enemies would move and thus either stay literally one step away from them, or place dangerous things in their path.
LOOT DROPS:
Sometimes, enemies drop magic pots or gold; magic pots are much rarer. The amounts of gold that might be dropped are random, but they are rarely more than 50 coins. Getting a rash of loot drops from enemies can be a much welcome sight in this game compared to other games with gold coins as loot drops, mainly because of the game’s caveat on replayability.
MISSION CONNECTIONS:
According to the narrative, the team is romping through the castle grounds that had been taken over by the sorcerer and his minions. Therefore, the missions follow a progression that is represented with a map. The map shows the missions that have to be completed before other missions can be attempted. Of course, this is the game’s take on the design tropes of difficulty curves.
REPLAYING COMPLETED MISSIONS:
The aforementioned map also shows the number of times that the player has completed a challenge. This is important, because this number determines how tough the next re-play would be.
The narrative of any mission is not changed when it is replayed; if the player has slain some abomination that is the target of the mission, that abomination comes back unslain and the narrative will treat the mission as if the monster had yet to be defeated. The narrative disconnect for the replays does require some hand-waving.
Therefore, the only reason that the player might want to replay a mission is to have the opportunity to loot the treasures found in in the level map again. However, the player would not be able to abuse this convenience so easily.
STRONGER ENEMIES DURING REPLAYS:
The main reason for this is that the enemies in a mission gain more hitpoints for every successful completion of that mission. Therefore, the rate of attrition on the player’s team would be higher in further replays. These caveats mean that the player has to be particularly frugal with his/her choices.
However, the enemies’ decision-making does not improve in further replays. They remain stupid and fairly easy to exploit.
IN-MISSION MAPS:
For better or worse, the map system that the player gets during missions that allow its presence is inspired by the one in Legend of Zelda. To elaborate, the layout of levels is represented by squares and rectangles with lines showing their connections with each other. The actual details of level layouts, such as any barrier within a room, are not shown in the map system. Connections formed by “secret” passages are also not shown, even after they have been discovered.
This limitation is particularly noticeable in levels with convoluted designs, especially the ones that use considerable “secret” passages.
There are some levels that do not have the map system at all. Some of them provide forewarning about this, but some others do not. It is possible for the player to make a map of his/her own, but of course, this is work. Nonetheless, most levels that lack in-game maps have connections that are static, so any map that the player has made would be usable by others.
There is one level where the connections do not appear to be stable; there is a warning about this, by the way. Obviously, this is one of the most unpleasant levels to attempt.
ENTERING AND EXITING ROOMS:
The aforementioned room connections are utilized by using the exits in a room. These are indicated with arrows, though there may be obstacles such as portcullises and locked doors that obscure the arrows. Entrances to hidden passages also do not show these arrows.
When a party member leaves a room via one of these exits, the gameplay actually continues in the current room; the party member that left is practically out of the fight, if there is still any going on. Nothing happens to the party member that has left, however; he/she would be exactly how he/she was when she left. Even if the other room is still dangerous, that party member is alright until the entire team has left for that room.
The first party member also decides which room the others would go to. If another party member attempts to leave via another exit, the player is notified that they have to follow the first party member that left. There is no visual indicator that shows which exit that the first party member has taken, so players with lousy short-term memory has best beware.
If the entire team leaves a room that still has enemies and re-enters it, the player is penalized via having the opposing side goes first. This is not told to the player, unfortunately.
Another thing that is not told to the player is that the order in which team members exit from the room is actually important. The first team member to exit a room for the next one would be displaced by the next team member, and so on.
This means that the first team member would be the furthest away from the entrance of the next room, and, more than likely, closer to the enemies in the next room. This can be unpleasant to learn the hard way, if the player had been sending the most fragile team member out of the current room first.
Perhaps the most annoying problem with this game mechanism is that it makes backtracking even more tedious than it has been in other games. Having to move party members one by one through rooms that had already been cleared can be tiresome.
(On the other hand, there are some levels where re-entering a previously cleared room triggers further enemy spawns. These are not infinite loops, however, so they cannot be exploited to grind loot drops.)
GEAR PIECES:
One of the mainstays of the fantasy setting and of the trope of “heroes” in particular, is the myriad gear that the protagonists are packing. Unfortunately, their gear in this game is unimpressive.
The gear pieces only provide small bonuses, and each party member can only equip two pieces; this is on top of class-specific restrictions. To players that are used to more complex loadout systems, this can seem too limited.
The blacksmith in the town can forge gear pieces. The gear also includes things like magical tomes and other arcane items that a craftsman with an apron and tongs would not have not been expected to make. Yet, this peculiarity is perhaps the only thing that is amusing about the gear in this game.
BROTHEL:
In the old days of fantasy RPGs, especially the Elder Scrolls and Might & Magic titles, adventurers visit temples and shrines to make donations in return for blessings that give them an edge.
In the present day, where dark fantasy is favoured over the old tropes, the “blessings” are either double-edged things, or obtained from dubious sources. In the case of Dark Quest 2, the source would be an obviously impious brothel. It might seem outrageous that having a stint with ladies of the night would somehow empower adventurers, but then, the blessings from religious sources never made much sense either.
Anyway, paying a fee grants a bonus to an adventurer for the next mission. This bonus is randomized, however, so it might not be too useful. Still, it is an edge that cannot be obtained through other means.
INN:
In addition to letting the player hire whichever adventurer that had yet to be recruited, the Inn also lets the player restore the health of party members, for a fee. Party members return from any dungeon run with their injuries unhealed, and would enter the next run with these still around, so the services of the Inn would be useful.
In the earlier versions of the game post-launch, the retention of injuries is broken; the heroes enter the next run with full health.
This has since been fixed, but there are ways to work around this too. The most obvious of these is to use up the Knight’s healing abilities before completing a run, if they are not used already.
TREASURE:
The most underwhelming part of the gameplay is the collection and sale of treasure.
In some missions, there are pieces of treasure that can be found: these are guaranteed to be there regardless of how many times the scenario is played because they are part of the level design.
There does not appear to be any reason to keep these treasures around. They appear to be little more than vendor trash to be sold to the Merchant, whose sole purpose in town is to convert the treasure to gold.
SKULL SHRINES:
Throughout the levels, there are shrines with peculiarly large skulls on them. The heroes have no issues with using these ominous things. Anyway, when used, the shrines may do something small and magical, or nothing at all. When they do something, they give some gold, heal a party member for a few hit points, harm an enemy that is in the same room, or hurt a party member. They are rather luck-dependent.
FATE:
Some enemies, and eventually party members too, have “Fate” points. This allows them to ignore a blow that would have killed them. Each point is spent when a killing blow is blocked, but there is no other way to remove these “Fate” points.
Other than blocking death-blows, there is no other use for Fate points. There may be a missed opportunity here for more gameplay complexity.
ENEMIES:
As mentioned a few times already, the enemies are numerous, but are rather stupid. All of them seem to go after the nearest party member first; this is a deliberately implemented flaw in their decision-making.
The main variation among enemies is how they make attacks. Some are melee combatants, who always try to close the distance; these are the ones that are most likely to step on traps that the player has set. Speaking of traps, indeed, these would be handy for dealing with enemies that happen to have very high defence ratings, like a certain orc with a predilection for dual-wielding tower shields.
As to be expected, the enemies become more numerous, powerful and varied in capabilities as the campaign against the Sorcerer progresses. Some of them happen to be nearly palette swaps of each other, having more powerful statistics but the same behaviour. As always, observation is key to learning to defeat them – it so happens that they have rather obvious moves.
TRAPS & CURSE TILES:
The monsters are not the only threats in the evil sorcerer’s domain. There are traps and cursed tiles, waiting for the heroes to step on them; the monsters will never trigger these, because they can only be triggered by the player characters.
The traps are mainly spike traps that inflict damage when they are triggered. The Dwarf or Ranger can disarm spike traps, and in the case of the Dwarf, even reuse them. However, there is always a chance that they will screw up the disarming and get themselves hurt.
Some traps cannot be disarmed, but their presence would be obvious to anyone that is experienced with fantasy tropes about traps in dungeons. For example, there are ominously huge and chipped axes that are set into the walls on hinges, and the floors below their swing arcs are cracked.
The cursed tiles are a bit more interesting; cursed tiles, unlike traps, are already revealed to the player. However, there is no way to disarm them, and more often than not, they are in the path that the player has to take.
The cursed tiles are the only things in the game that utilize a set of three statistics that the heroes have. (They have names, but their names ultimately do not serve much of a narrative purpose). There is one type of cursed tiles that specifically rolls against each of these when a character steps onto one. Getting the right character onto the correct tile is important, but there is no guarantee that the character can resist the effects of the tile.
Generally, if the character fails the RNG roll, they do something bad, often to the nearest other party member. Since there is no guarantee that failure due to bad luck cannot happen, the player has to position the other party members as efficiently as possible to avoid damage. For example, having the Dwarf with amplified Defense draw the ire of the affected party member is generally a wise choice (unless the affected party member is the Wizard, of course).
LEVEL EDITOR:
The level-making tool also comes with the software package of the game. The tool runs separately from the game, taking up little memory because it reduces everything to just icons on a grid-like display. It is quite easy to use, though at this time of writing, it is not so easy to find user-made levels for the game that is dated after 2017, suggesting that the level editor did not exactly manage to extend its longevity.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
Dark Quest 2 is hardly the first indie game around with spliced and animated 2D sprites. There are not a lot of animations beyond bodily movement, and there is no lip-motion whatsoever during conversations. The artstyle would also seem all too familiar to people who are already followers of dark fantasy.
Furthermore, there are more than a few character designs that perhaps resemble their source material a tad too much (and there is their naming too). There is the aforementioned Barbarian, whose hair is red on the cover, but is dark brown for his actual sprite, not unlike certain depictions of Conan. The most obvious rip-off is the “Chaos Warrior”, who looks more than a little like a certain product from Games Workshop.
Issues of originality aside, the game is much better-looking than its predecessor. Perhaps a third game would bring out more convincingly impressive work from the artist, but there remains to be seen whether there would be a third when the indie scene is already so saturated with turn-based tactical games.
Perhaps the most positively interesting thing about the game’s visuals is the artwork for the environs in the levels. It is static, but some of it does look entertainingly disturbing, especially the artwork at the tail-end of the official campaign.
SOUND DESIGNS:
The first thing that the player hears from the game is the music. It is perhaps most noticeable for its variety of tunes, though not the appeal of their composition. There are some orchestral tracks mixed together with instrumentals, and a track with bass, both of the rock and string types. Most of them sound cheesy.
The sound effects are the usual variety that one can expect from medieval fantasy games: clashing metal, leather boots on stone, the whipping of sinew as bows are fired and, of course, the crackling of magic.
There are no legible voice-overs, though there are utterances for the party members. There are only two sets of voice-overs for party members, however: one for males and one for females, regardless of race and age. This paucity can be a bit disappointing at times. As for the monsters, quite a number of them share the same voice sets too, especially for their death rattles.
The most unpleasant sound clip is perhaps the one that is associated with the Fate mechanic. The chortle and gong ringing can be a bit much.
CONCLUSION:
People who want to have in-depth character development in their hero-centric games with fantastical settings should look elsewhere. However, Dark Quest 2 does challenge players that are interested in games about resource management, if they do not mind the occasional stroke of terrible luck.