One of the least known, most unique Role-Playing Games ever created. Hardcore, but intensely satisfying.
In 1992, MPS Labs made a very bold move. They woke up one rainy day and asked their players to forget everything they knew about fantasy role-playing up to that point. They issued a very strong challenge, and then proceeded to meet it, with one of the most controversial and utterly divergent attempts at taking the concept of serious role-playing out of the lands of elves and magic, and into the realm of 15th century cathedrals, feudal mentality, and the great myths written during our own history. They moved the playing field from the land of Krynn and into the land of the Holy Roman Empire's last days. And to top this bold move off, they made a game which could easily challenge the level of mechanical wizardry displayed by the most innovative games of the 21st century. This is Darklands - one of the most fascinating games ever produced, and possibly one of the least understood. Well, here I am to explain.
WHAT'S MEDIEVAL, ANYWAY?
-- Butch (Pulp Fiction)
Moving fantasy games into real world history is a bit of a conundrum. History, after all, is a bit of a boring subject to most, and is certainly not as awe-inspiring as magical realms. Actually, Darklands proves that notion wrong, right off the bat. It does so by taking the setting itself, 15th century Germany to be exact, and combining it with the plethora of superstitious occult influence, real religious mythology, and even alchemy, that were prevalent in the writings of the period. These fill in the gaps left behind by magic and monsters, which are therefore still here but in a different guise. So yes indeed, you will be playing a historical game, but do not expect it to be akin to the stuff you read in history books - it looks and feels much more like a fantasy novel!
The player's adventuring party starts out with very humble beginnings - most of the characters will be relative newcomers to the adventuring business, not much more adept than simpletons. Character creation is a spectacularly elaborate process, as it doesn't just boil down to putting points into skills and traits. In fact, you have to construct the character's background, taking into account his parentage and age, his various life experiences and past jobs held, and the emphasis on some skills can be dictated by those experiences much more than by the player putting points into choice skills.
There are MANY skills in the game, ranging from Crafting to Religious Etiquette to Polearms; and most of them are very useful too - you'll want a party that covers at least the majority of those skills, giving you the ability to tackle a whole range of different situations which you WILL encounter. There are very very few "dump stats" (skills that can be ignored so as to save points for others). Any skill could be sorely missed at the proper moment.
SOOOO... HOW HARD IS IT?
From the get go, it should become obvious that party resource-management and time-management is a very important part of the game; Unlike other games that ignore the day-night cycle and basic human needs, in Darklands you will have to find a place to sleep every night, which usually means the local inn, at least at first. That means you need money, and the most assured way of getting it is by sending your characters to WORK for it (yes, JOBS, actual mundane gritty jobs like we hold in real life. How many RPGs can claim to allow that?). They'll automatically find the best paying job they can hold and will hopefully earn a bit more money from the affair than they spend on lodging!
The characters might have to do this for quite some time actually, since leaving town is downright DANGEROUS, there are all sorts of troubles waiting in the wild ranges between cities. Still, that doesn't mean your first few hours of gameplay should be boring - there is a ton of stuff you can do around town anyways. Aside from scouting out for good deals on equipment, your characters can seek trainers in their specialty skills, and they can spend their nights hunting for bandits around town, to gain some respect with the locals, skill experience, and of course a good deal on the leather armor they pry off those dead bandits. The cycle of day and night is very important in most parts of the game but especially in the cities, seeing as there's a curfew, and city guards can be very unpleasant if provoked. These sorts of small details that don't often appear in other roleplaying games are nonetheless extremely helpful in establishing good immersion in Darklands' 15th century setting.
All of your actions around town will be handled rather seamlessly through a multiple-choice interface. That is, the game describes occurrences and events, and you get several choices on how to react. The success of many such choices depends greatly on your party skills, and you can usually choose which character will get to apply those skills. On the "easy" difficulty setting (which is NOT easy), you'll at least get a rough estimate of your chances of success, in percentages. The multiple-choice interface makes everything so much easier as it removes much of the frustration that modern, 3D, fully interactive games suffer from... although this menu is probably the only interface in the game that does not cause undue confusion. Still, it simplifies things into straight-forward choices, so you usually have a good idea of both the situation and your options for getting out of it alive.
WHEN DO WE SKIP TOWN?
Once the party is strong enough, they'll leave the starting city and venture out into the wilderness. The game contains a map of Germany and the neighbouring states (Denmark, Switzerland, Poland, etc.), and you can wander all over them if you wish. There are many cities to reach on the map, and a plethora of other places to visit as well.
The player moves his party manually, across the wilderness between cities, choosing his own path and taking his own risks (like taking a shortcut through a swamp instead of following the main road). Usually, overland travel will be interrupted rather constantly by all sorts of encounters, ranging from monster attacks to meeting merchant caravans, to the odd cabin in the woods or a haunted mine. There are things lurking behind every corner, quite literally, and the sheer number of different events that can happen in the wilderness means you'll still be seeing meeting completely new challenges even after several weeks of playing.
Again, most of the interaction during these events will be done through a multiple-choice menu, which allows you to select your preferred approach to the situation at hand. You'll be able to weigh your options and examine your characters' skills thoroughly before making a decision, or even invoke the help of equipment or special abilities, but the wrong decision can easily lead to an untimely demise. Again I'll repeat that this is NOT an easy game - some events, like attacks by evil spirits or vicious monsters, are quite common and can easily "outrank" the characters, meaning you'll either need to flee a lot, reload a lot, or get used to hiring new party members every once in a while (you can ALWAYS make new characters to add to your party... of course they'll need a lot of training to catch up).
FINALLY SOME HACK N' SLASH... ULP!
Which brings us to combat itself. This is perhaps one of the more annoying points in the game, but is still interesting enough and dynamic enough to warrant a half-hearted pat on the back. Combat is done on a roughly isometric map, in pausable real-time, a lot like the later Baldur's Gate or the much-later Dungeon Siege. You'll set movement and attack orders for your characters, and will have to unpause the clock and watch them carry out the orders. The controls here are quite cumbersome, and could take some getting used to. This is perhaps one of the biggest flaws in the game, but once you do get used to it, battle becomes MUCH less frustrating and MUCH more challenging.
This is because most battles require rather careful management and good tactics, if you don't want one of your characters to die an untimely death. Keep the alchemist or priest away from the enemy, have the rogue dance around with his bow and draw enemies into long chases, and get the fighters to where they are most needed. With a group limited to four characters (!!), this can be a really tricky ordeal, but it means that each battle is quite engrossing, and some can be downright fun to replay in a different way due to the large number of different things you can try.
Each battle is usually rather short, unless the participants need to cover a lot of ground before they can get into smacking range; but arrows, crossbows, thrown alchemical concoctions, as well as the odd handgun, mean that there's usually a lot you can do before the enemy is all over you. And then it turns into a thick furball of slashing swords, where you'll want to micromanage everybody to get the most out of your party. Again, since many of the encounters ARE dangerous to you, you'll benefit greatly from trying innovative smart tactics, and relying on specialty equipment even during combat.
FILLING OUT THE GAME WORLD
As your team gets stronger and more established, travelling between a few close cities and performing great deeds for glory and money, new options will slowly begin to open up for you. Firstly, trading between cities is quite a viable option, especially in alchemical ingredients, of which there are many types and varied prices. To avoid having to trek through the dangerous countryside, you can opt to make part or all of the journey by boat. This is quite costly, and doesn't guarantee safe trips (there are river pirates too), but greatly decreases your exposure to danger. Additionally, your alchemist might feel up to concocting potions from those ingredients, which means you'll have to seek out master alchemists and learn their secrets, especially the recipes to the more powerful potions which would fetch a great value when sold. Of course, those same potions are usually just as useful when taken into combat, and many can act as skill augmentation when confronted with dangerous or potentially rewarding events that require successful skill checks. Oh and, if the brewing fails, your inn room could explode, causing a huge drop in your popularity in that particular town. Again, risks are everywhere in this game, and risk-management is one of the greatest challenges here, and a great part of the fun.
Of course, it wouldn't be 15th century Germany with just alchemy - religion plays an extremely important part in Darklands as well. Christianity is prevalent all over the region, and so are the forces opposing it. Your characters can often visit cathedrals and monasteries all across the land, receiving blessings, tutelage in the various religious and quasi-religious skills,
healing, and even quests from church figures. In the wilderness, encounters with travelling clergy are not uncommon, and could have widely variable results. Of course, the forces of the "Dark Side" (in this case, old Pagan beliefs and the Devil) are everywhere and must be watched out for - all sorts of demonic creatures will harass you during your adventures, and villages full of devil worshippers are ever present (you might get the chance to purge a few of them too).
Most important however in the religious aspects of this game world is that it contains an array of over 50 different Christian saints, each with his own sphere of influence and effect. Your priest will do well to learn about them whenever he can (yeah, you'll need to find people to teach you!) and to pray to them at the correct moments, for divine assistance and intervention. Certain saints can be very very helpful, for instance a saint that allows crossing large bodies of water without a boat, or a saint that increases combat characteristics. Each saint has a day in the calendar too, so knowing the current game date and whose day it is can result in better-than-normal blessings. To top it off, your virtue and fame may really help you to gain favour with the divine, so good deeds actually pay off here.
GET TO THE POINT!
Of course, there has to be a point to all of this, but since this is one of the first open-ended RPGs, even the point is not really the point. I could say that Darklands has three _major_ goals you'll be wanting to achieve:
A) Fame.
B) Money.
C) The fulfillment of one or more of the main quests, which invariably lead to lots of A and B.
Most of this you do by meeting various people in cities and outside them, and taking on quests. Quests usually require you to travel to a specific place and do a specific thing - there's a whole lot of different quests, and a whole lot of places to get them. For instance, you'll find that there are people hiring travellers to recover lost family heirlooms from the wilderness. Town mayors or local lords could be having trouble with a certain Raubritter ("Robber Knight" or more loosely "Brigand Lord"). Also, every city has at least one guildhouse belonging to an influential European family such as the Hanse or the Medici families - they're almost always looking to retrieve something or defame someone. Naturally, each such quest would require a different set of actions and different skills to resolve. Oftentimes, great amounts of travelling are also required. But the rewards are equally great - There's usually a lot of money involved, or at least powerful items, so taking quests is a great way to get ahead. You might also stumble on some quests completely accidentally, for instance visiting some random haunted mine out in the wilderness.
Fulfilling such quests, alongside your "normal" adventuring activity, will raise your fame in the region or in nearby cities, helping you get your nose into more exclusive circles. I.E., people will treat you better, you're likely to get away with more, and more likely to get an audience with more important people who have more important quests to give you.
Additionally, there are a few "over-arching" quests which will require a long time and much effort to complete. Without spoiling the game, I'll just say that they entail a direct confrontation with the more occult aspects of German culture, and generally involve the fight between good and evil (in this case, Christianity versus Paganism or demonic influence). It could be a LONG time before you actually get the chance to complete one of these quests, and you'll be doing a whole lot of the other stuff (I.E. more minor quests) as you go along, but the greater quests are really worth it, if only for the challenge of actually completing them as they are deviously difficult even when taken on their own terms.
But even if those quests are completed, the game is definitely not over. In fact, you can keep playing the same campaign as much as you want. Your characters WILL get older and may need to be replaced occasionally as they retire from adventuring, but what you've set in motion is not lost until you decide to start a new game from scratch. Again, there will always be something to do in Darklands, somewhere to improve, and you're unlikely to see everything the game has to offer with just one play-through of the campaign, even a prolonged one.
REVOLUTIONARY OR DECADENT? OR... BOTH?
All in all, I think Darklands redefined both Fantasy and Role-Playing at the same time. Many would say that they went too far, producing a game that was so complex and challenging that it stopped being fun. I say, the more you play, the clearer things become, and given the vast amount of content that this game has to offer, not to mention the huge amount of educational value it squeezes in when you're not looking, it can keep one engrossed for a very prolonged period of time. But yeah, you would have to forget everything you comfortably know about fantasy here, and start getting used to a harsh, semi-historical reality. If you can make that mental concession, you'll be headed into heaps of fun.
I give 9.5 to Darklands for the sheer ingenuity and content value. I wish it was a bit easier (both to play and to complete), but I don't think anyone could possibly hope for a game that was this comprehensive without falling into the trap of over-complexity. I think Darklands stands right on the edge of the cliff there.
And who knows, with the wave of remakes that has been washing over the industry these past couple of years, we may still see the flaws knocked out of this beautiful gem, and the whole thing made much more manageable, much more fun, and even more engrossing than it already is.
So the bottom line? If you're an avid RPG player, and you're not afraid of thinking your way out of trouble, grab DosBox and get yourself a copy of Darklands - the most elaborate and deadly contraption you'll have the chance to meet on a PC for a long time.