Darklands Review
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- čas přidán 27. 08. 2024
- Darklands turns 25 year old this year and I made this video to celebrate it
Darklands on GoG -www.gog.com/ga...
Matt Chat about Darklands- • Matt Chat 78: Arnold H...
CRPG book review of Darklands - crpgbook.wordp...
From wikipedia - "Darklands is a role-playing video game developed and published by MicroProse in 1992 for the PC DOS platform. Darklands is set in the Holy Roman Empire during the 15th century. While the geographic setting of the game is historically accurate, the game features many supernatural elements.
his type of gameplay is an early example of open world in role-playing video games. The player is free to complete quests that will give them a positive reputation, or to pursue a negative reputation by performing evil deeds. In Darklands the player's reputation is limited geographically, allowing the player to be simultaneously hated in one region and exalted in another.
The setting for Darklands is medieval Europe as the inhabitants thought the world was at the time. All the cities that one's party may visit in the game are real places that existed in the Holy Roman Empire of the 15th century. Most are in modern-day Germany, but some are within the modern borders of other countries including Denmark, Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland. The city names given in the game are old German names of the cities, some of which are now exonyms; the new local names are given in parentheses.
There are no other species available in character creation - all players are human and are differentiated by occupation. Any party member is capable of performing what are known as class-based feats in many other role-playing games, but skillful players usually improve the party member's skills only in the appropriate area. Thus, the equivalent of a cleric in this game would be someone who specializes in religious studies as well as healing skills. Because the character specializes in the above, however, does not preclude him or her from learning artifice skills, such as lock picking. Age is a factor, as characters will begin to lose physical prowess as they age. However, the older the player is when the character is generated, the more skills and better equipment he or she starts with.
While the majority of the game uses text-based menus-enhanced with hand-painted illustrations describing the player party's available actions, the party's movement between cities and during battle uses a graphical user interface. The real-time combat is dependent not only on the characters' skills, but also the type and quality of weapons used against the enemy and its armor. For example, using swords against plate armored foes would be less effective than using flails or maces."
![Claw: Monolith's Pirate Platformer for Windows 95 [LGR]](/img/n.gif)
I got kicked out from my high school for not going to school and playing this game. This is how immersive it was
I was lucky enough to track down and chat some with Arnold Hendrick who was integral in making the game. He appreciated the small cult of loyal fans the game had and was working on a new modern game in the same vein set during the 100 year war. Sadly he passed away June of 2020 at the age of 69. I would love a modern remake of Darklands but there are many, many PC games I've never played... must be something similar. Not sure what it would be.
Darklands turns 25 years old this year. . I wanted to show some appreciation so here is the first episode in a new series "Forgotten Gems" and I know I forgot about 2 skills when I talked about it ...just a minor fuck up ..sorry! Deus Ex review coming soon
Darklands on GoG -www.gog.com/game/darklands
Matt Chat about Darklands- czcams.com/video/I30dzwiNxLk/video.html
CRPG book review of Darklands - crpgbook.wordpress.com/review-index/1992-darklands/
retrospective please review daggerfall
Its on my list :)
I played this game for several hours a day, several days a week, for my entire 13th and 14th year. I probably had over 400 hours of play time by the time I realized it was possible to actually meet and fight a dragon. I'd seen signs many times, and heard rumors, but I was completely blown away when I actually tracked one down and fought it. This game and Mechwarrior 2 tied for fondest memories I have of playing games as a kid. I wish I was somehow able to hear the soundtrack of Darklands again the way I'm used to - on a crappy PC speaker.
My brother and I used to leave a weight on the keyboard when dinner was called
Maximum training and cash flow!
@@ShawnKavanagh Wow that reminds me.. After I had played for a while I started a new game, made all my dudes old scholars, then set them up with side jobs and used heavy thing on keyboard just as you describe... And left it there for 7 hours while I was at school. Then I simply replaced my party members with the actual guys I wanted to use. I think I had like 6k florins, enough money to go to Nürnberg and buy high quality armor without it even making a dent in my wallet 😅
I had completely forgotten that detail, your post made me remember 😃
I played it for hours a day for months or more like you said just slowly immersing myself in the world, never got so far as a dragon, nowhere close but had a hell of a time. Mechwarrior 2 you say? Sounds like we had similar tastes, two of my all time favourites.
This game deserves a remake.
The brilliant thing to me about Darklands is that it's one of the closest games out there I can describe to a PnP RPG experience guided by a dungeon master. The randomness does start to become a tiny bit repetitive with long playthroughs in ways that starts to make it obvious that we're dealing with a computer rather than a human DM creating brand new scenarios with each new encounter, but the range of scenarios and wide plethora of options it presents, along with skill checks performed across the entire party, is about as close as I've ever seen to that PnP experience.
It's unrivaled as I see it in terms of the number of unique situations you can encounter while rivaling games like the original Fallout in terms of the number of ways you can potentially handle the situation successfully, only it incorporates the skills and weaknesses of your entire party and not a lone character.
It's criminally underrated in my opinion since the things it does well is arguably unrivaled. I put it up there with the likes of Fallout 1&2 and X-Com.
Meanwhile the thing I liked least was the "most digital" aspect of the game, and that was the pseudo-realtime combat relying on players to pause and give orders and resume. I actually think turn-based tactical combat would have been a superior choice for this type of game.
IMO CK2 & Darklands are probably the two games that resembles the PnP RPG experience.
Imagine a modern remake with HEMA-based combat system.
For fans of the franchise, this might be the closest thing to an early (and unintentional) version of a Berserk video game. With the Medieval setting, Black Sabbaths, fighting demons, and whatnot.
Microprose made Civilization, Master of Orion, Pirates!, Xcom, and more. Easily one of the most influential developers in video game history.
Blow up the tavern while doing alchemy, pray saints for evil baron to take you in as his guest and burn his castle while he sleeps, your old monk dies as he tries to climb a wall, sure a witch could make my character strong -what could go wrong... There is just nothing like Darklands out there.
R.I.P. Arnold Hendrick.
Player: I have succeeded on my quest and now request a promotion into the next higher rank in this guild!
Guildmaster Hans Heinrich: That's gut to hear, initiate. *gives 150 groschen* I will promote you "Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitän", wear ths title with proud!
Tarik Lol ..i will wear it with honor
Sweet review , I've never heard of this game before , please do more really old school reviews , was a cool watch .
Okay so this is a cool series idea. I'm ready to learn about a bunch of forgotten gems like this. This is a type of game that I don't have a lot of experience with, so I'm really interested in trying this out now. Cant wait for more showcases like this!
Creator of this game passed away last year sadly. I wonder if he got some ideas from Berserk, the manga was published first in 1990 in Japan, its story is based on a dark medieval fantasy setting, it also had demons.
What has berserk to do with this game
What similarities?
I don't see how that makes it similar just because it has demons they are in a lot of fantasy media.
I find the extremely low resolution font really jarring and I've been gaming since the end of the 1970's
I still have the map the game with the diskettes, I framed it since it's so neat.
How big is the map? ..was it a cloth map?
It's paper and about 2' square. If you bought the game on GOG it should have it in .pdf
loved this game. Got me really into computers. I didn't have enough ram in my machine. Had to buy 1MB or ram that was around 69.00. Ran on DOS or a version called "brown bag" if i recall. 386sx baby!
darklands was released in 1992?
You have to remember that.
@@SJPauzolis Nothing like it in the last 29 years!
Wow, this game looks really good, great review! The oldest game I ever played is Fallout 1 but now I might try this haha
:) thanks Sixpounder and ..Fallout 1 is always good to play
Saw this on Steam, thought it looked interesting, now I am even more certain I'm buying it!
Was really great game at the time. Very deep. Bought the box game
I am a big fan of Ultima, so I played Ultima VII when it came out. I didn't discover Darklands until later, but I immediately got drawn into it once I found it. I have always loved history, and I like this game's unique take on history. It is a historical setting, but all of the folklore, supernatural stuff, and religion is actually real and has immediate effects in this game world. Witches and demons exist. The saints will answer prayers. Alchemy exists and is a powerful tool, and the party has its own philosopher's stone that can be improved during the course of the game. It is a concept that I would love to see explored for other historical settings and cultures. It has a few problems. There are a lot of repeated tasks, and random calculations can get frustrating after a while (and can encourage save scumming). People only accustomed to modern games might have some difficulties with it, but it is a classic that the younger generation should check out.
Only thing wrong is the advice to take your own party first time out. This is something you should absolutely NOT do. The first time you play it you MUST use the pre-made characters or you'll get totally lost really quickly.!
Kool Retro showing this. I played this back then still have the discs for it and the manual that came with it..Brings back some memories👍
I enjoyed your review of Darklands. I just picked this game up at the thrift store for $1, including maps, manuals, install discs, and even dot-matrix printer paper printouts of a walkthrough someone downloaded on Prodigy (pre-Internet dial-up bulletin board). The box art, manuel, and maps look great! I did play Ultima but never heard of this one.
Haha, so you envision yourself as a fat medieval priest? One thing that's really aged the worst in Darklands is most likely that horribly pixelated font. It's also the only thing always tempts me to turn on some kind of filter in DOSBox. Good stuff as usual.
In medieval times I would be the holy priest breaking all the rules behind closed doors ...ha! ..and yes the font sucks in this game if they ever remake it or enhance it ..fix the fucking font
Great vid, thanks ! I played the original back in '92 or '93 when I was in college. Remember making it as far as the templar's "hideout", or something like that. Geez, that was a long time ago. Wish I would have kept the original box, etc. Thank goodness for GOG.com :-D
No problem ...thanks for watching! Its interesting reading comments from people who played the game when it came out or soon after
Took me a while to search for the name of this game. Played it quite a bit when it came out. Didn't remember much, but I recall it being a fun game.
Wow, such a wide variety in skills!
Hell yeah! ...I've never seen "Speak Latin" in a CRPG before
great video Che! this looks really interesting to play
Thank you Josh
Amazing game! I played it as recent as 2019. A game where you can just hang out in town and work a job indefinitely
Wow. This is one of the first game that I puchased on 3.5 disks. The water colored paintings images were simply beautiful and it had some very cool missions/stories. At the time EA and Sierra delivered very popular games but I always "felt" Microprose developed more unique and interesting games.
all thees great games and nobody to play them
this just makes me sad :(
im playing planescape torment and just wondering where did all this story,complexity,humor,etc. went?
i cant find any of it in modern games do people really not care anymore?
or did we just let the developers get lazy?
Milan Judák they're too focused on making the game "fun" to make it unforgettable
i played Fallout 1,2 and i had fun
i played planescape torment and i had fun and unforgettable stories
then i played fallout 4 and skyrim and i did not had fun
i had hordes of bandits that did not haw anything interesting to say
did not haw some epic loot
did not haw some interesting proposals
it was just bands of enemy NPC for you to kill that is it
Planescape Torment is on my list of games to review :)
that is great to hear :)
Just bought the game, and have been playing it for a few days. This game is amazing, and I'm gonna be getting some serious hours in. Thanks for the review!
No problem thanks for watching! ...I'm happy to bring some attention to Darklands
This game seems like exactly what I'm looking for. A sandbox RPG with no (apparent) main quest set in a historically accurate Holy Roman Empire with light fantasy thrown in. i already bought it on GOG but I'm nervous about playing it since I've never played a CRPG before and I've heard that it is hard to play both because of it's "out dated" design and because of bugs.
Also, Wizardry 7 also came out in 1992.
I loved this game for its open-ended nature. As you say, it's much better than the countless linear games that don't let you deviate too far from the path.
I found this game on cd around 97, i really loved playing this game for years until I found a way to give them more money and weapons but soon after I stopped playing.
Nice video Che!! Can't wait for Deus Ex review, I played it a few months ago and it became quickly one of my favorite games, only surpassed by Fallout New Vegas.
Awesome! ...Deus Ex is a classic game
Man this game was the shit! but in the time I knew the game existed (1994~1996) many of my friends didn't liked it because it was "too boring". I personaly loved the idea of a complex game and I wished to have a PC to play it. Loved the damn music and the art in the backgrounds (also at the time as a kid I dreamed to play a game with the those graphics xD). But it was buggy and if you did the mistake of installing it under Windows 3.11... well... you wouldn't do the same mistake after the first crash xD.
By the way this game was forgotten for the reason you described but also you have to remember that in the day CRPGS where for a very specific kind of people and the gaming on PC was STILL on it's infancy (not to mention it was BELOW the console gaming). Fallout survived only because it came right after the era of the 3D accelerated video cards that marked the birth of modern PC Gaming (at the same time the technology put the final nail in the coffin for the superiority of the consoles over the PC), so more people was paying atention to those games.
For example another ground breaking game that came in the same year as Darklands and gave birth to the survival horror jandra is now "almost" forgotten, of course I'm talking about Alone in the Dark developed by the French studio Infogrames. That game was Lovecraft to the max! with beautifull pre-rendered backgrounds an impressive writing and music that will make you shit bricks.
To put it into perspective, those games and the Brotherhood of Steel are very similar, both where technological advanced, ambitious and marked the ground for the next generations, despite this bright future, the sands of time carried them until almost no one remember.
Hey, talking about the Brotherhood of Steel, how about making an episode for Wasteland? :3
P.S: Finished Fallout 2 (loved the Deathclaws... and Leslie :V) lml, now playing Fallout Tactics :)
@HardWarUK You're right, I wasn't downplaying the CRPG jandra but at the time I never saw anyone claiming love for an RPG... just the casual FFVII-Sephiro is my waiffu-ish lover. But I never knew that the jandra itself was #2 on the list wich is impressive.
As for knowing how to use the computers back in that time, yeah, anyone with access to a PC would either know how to turn it on or how to install the games, when I was 8 years old I had the beautifull task to configurate the IRQs of a Sound Blaster to make it work properly in my school computer class room, so do not mistake me, I know that gamers at the time were very intelligent. Today a lot of people takes everything for granted but in the 90's... we lived in the Dark Ages (no pun intended) and I loved every single second of it.
from what i remember the characters don't die. They get weaker but my characters was over 200 years old because i didn't want to worry about money so i had my characters go to an inn and then used a macro to have them work continuously for several hours. After doing that for like 2 or 3 hours, i had enough money to kit out the entire group with whatever i needed and never had to worry about money again.
I think my characters were almost maxed out in every improvable stat except riding. I could make any alchemy potion and every time i prayed to a saint, it always succeeded. Being that strong was so fun. You could just randomly throw a bunch of potions during fights, being able to drop a bandit with a single gun shot.
This game was way too fun.
Excellent video, the 90s was a golden age for the rpgs. Subscribed! Sorry my bad english.
Your English is fine! :-)
Barry Clark Thanks :)
Thank you Dioho ..and don't worry! ...Your English is fine :) and I agree the 90s were a great time for RPGs
And music! :-) Game and Rock on!
Barry Clark Hell yeah
I love this game, so fun and difficult. Cool seeing someone talk about it.
When I read the description of this game, I actually assumed it was a purely text based game.
I've never heard of this game, but it looks fun. Great video Che I hope you continue this series.
Thank you Courier Six
as darklands was released in the early 90's, i was not realy impressed, because of the bad reviews in literaly all german pc gaming magazines at this days. but as a medieval fan i have buy it and it have blown me away. it was and will be forrever one of my top ten games and i realy hope someone, someday will make a remake, because its a awsome game.
Remake required indeed. It looks like an endless stream of walls of text and cryptic numbers. If your game makes Betrayal at Krondor seem all-action, you have failed. Reading that shit is tiring as hell, hence the importance of show-do-not-tell. These book-like games were much more like 1980s games i.e. mediocre stories packaged as games with a primitive (Advanced) Dungeons and Dragons tabletop gameplay. Using text to substitute graphics & gameplay is garbage.
there was not more text than in fallout2 or baldursgate2 and like in this 2 games was one of the strongpoints of darklands the exploration and storytelling...... just this single little quest before i go sleep, oh wait i have to travel to Kuttenberg and to talk with a merchant...... and than the fight against the dragon czcams.com/video/J_GivBxuG7A/video.html that all and ofc mutch more was for the year 1992 absolut ok and on some points realy trendsetting. i still love it :)
Loved the game this lvl of freedom and awesomeness
ohhhh buddy this game is 92... I remember having to have the book handy because you had to enter alchemical symbols as their anti piracy thing. it was a nightmare and i had the dang book! granted i was like 7 or 8 when i tried it. really liked watching my dad play it and I got it just for nostalgia sake. Could i recommend you try challenge of the 5 realms. same era and that game was a lot of fun... for 1992 era.
Keep it up, dude! Great job! Like your videos so much! Thank you!
Thank you for watching
Yeah played this game when skyrim was 1 year old already and I enjoyed this. What annoyed me was that I can barely understand the text and I had to squint my eyes to read.
Have you played Castle of the Winds? It was also a great game (at least for me) despite it's age.
Mmm, such a good game.
Too bad it's so unknown.
That late 80s early 90s era of CRPGs is as great as it is unrefined.
Are there any obscure CRPGs you recommend? I made this series to try and get some attention an show appreciation towards good games that got swept under the rug ... I'm just focusing on RPGs for now
The Dark Heart of Uukrul - 1989 (this one's a party based dungeon crawler, but very fun and easy to get into)
Sword of Aragon - 1989 (this is a TBS/RPG with subtle roleplaying.
-I recommend you read the CRPG Addicts post on his blog about the game. It really made me want to get into it.
The Magic Candle series - A lot like Ultima but with a few more life sim elements, like having a character get a profession like a blacksmith to make money. Also from '89.
From the early to mid 90s there's the Dark Eye adaptations Realms of Arkania 1,2,3 they're really hard and involving games.
I have an entire list.
Game looks pretty cool with all that stuff you can do. And speaking of Elder Scrolls, when will you review Daggerfall?
hmm .. I will review it soon ..maybe Fall after I get all the stuff I got planned for summer out the way
Played it when it first came out, one of the best rpg games ever made.
You should review Planescape Torment, excellent video btw.
mattias2321 That is my next review!
That's freaking awesome! best RPG ever made, Darklands is pretty sweet too.
To my regret I never actually finished it. Man I loved playing it but my computer died and for some reason I never reinstalled it right away. By the time I decided to play it again computer I had no longer supported the needed video card type.
My personal top five
Funny how this is basically the type of rpg that people want and games still don't really provide, only relatively major game like this is mount and blade afaik.
I watched the whole video but I'm left with one question
What year did this game come out?
There should be a modern remake with modern graphics but still has the same feel
Modern/today's gaming is so dumbed down, and it dumbed Me down too. I would not be able to even touche Darklands.
I can't even play Baldurs Gate anymore, let alone Planescape Torment! Fuck this modern gaming. And shame on Me, that they manged to dumb Me down!
When Im not be able to play Fallout 1&2 anymore, Im done with gaming in general. Getting older and this industry ruins my hobby.
Another old gem, well done. Have you ever played Divine Divinity? (the very first Divinity game) seems to be a game you would enjoy. I tried it a couple of years ago and was amazed how great it was.
I have Divine Divinity ....I've been meaning to play it for awhile but I always got side tracked ..hopefully one day I will get to it ... I might cover it in a Forgotten Gems episode!
The magic in this game is a mix of alchemy and praying to saints lol
I am finding a name of a pc game made about 30 years ago. I dont remember much but perhaps you know it. Very difficult game. It is a resourse management game. You control a village. It has sheep and cow as resources. You can recruit people. If you recruit vagabond only, it is good because they dont have children with them. You have to choose a choice to respond to some lore which does not really make sense. Graphic is quite bad, on par with dune 1 or xcom 1
P.s. finally i found it. King of the dragon pass
Hey whats the music piece you are playing in the background on this one ? Sounds very nice, and fits very well.
I prefer darklands to ultima, because of the setting primarily.
Check out the game Battle Brothers. It is in EA now, but will be released soon. Heavy influenced from Darklands. Even set in Medieval (fantasy) Germany.
Sounds cool...ill check that out!
Thanks for this video bro! Seems honest!
Thanks for watching!
Am I the only one who absolutely hated this game because of how hard it was
Does anybody know what year this game came out ?
RetrospectiveGaming is a robot and I have a cake to prove it.
Good Review, Imho the best rpg ever done. I look for a reboot!!
Do Fallout 2.
Darklands Unity when
Well said, "I've been playing for 9 months and I think I'm decent at the game." haha It's a game you can play for years and not master.... yes this game was buggy back when playing on floppies, I remember always save before entering caves. And I liked the security they built into the game. No this is the game I would want on a desert island for sure as it's endless.
when i fist say this title i thought it was a nostalgia critic review about dark city
lol
I can see that you truly don't believe in hotkeys
Couldn't get into this game and I feel bad about it...
Witcher 1 2007 was copied from this
It sounds like something I would love, but damn is it fugly. Looks like an Apple IIE game.
darklands never heard before
Darklands is pretty obscure
Ha ha 9mths rookie I’ve been playing it since 1992. And yes it was buggy as fuck so much so we sent off for the patch’s
GROSCHEN!
has any action rpg gem?
Guilherme Porto I will look into it
Bomb ass game i tell you, great vid.
Thank Yandos!...how have you been
RetrospectiveGaming I been good man, how bouts you?
Good man, how bouts you?
I always start with Minimum age Laborers
Can I add u on steam
Sure ...here is mine steamcommunity.com/id/retrospectivegaming
Man, you lost many subscribers.
Edi Muratov Huh? that is not true ...actually I've been gaining more than ever
i though you had 52 million subscribers sorry my bad
Sorry man i was kidding i love your channel and your content
Its not problem dood ...I was just confused lol ...it all good :)