Darkstone

by Gathering of Developers

Product Features

• Will run under winXP compatibility mode but this version will NOT install on any AMD processors in XP.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000K2XJ
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: August 27, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,869 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Darkstone is a surprisingly fun action/role-playing game that fans of games like Diablo and Nox won't want to miss. Delivering some of the most consistent voice acting in a game, great graphics, and a randomized quest system that boosts replayability, Darkstone is simply a terrific game.

Players begin by creating two characters. There are warriors, sorceresses, monks, and thieves, and each has certain strengths and weaknesses players must consider. Warriors are tough in hand-to-hand combat, sorceresses and monks wield magic, and thieves are useful for archery and picking locks. One character is controlled by the player, while the other is directed by the computer. Players can switch back and forth between characters on the fly.

Once the characters are selected, the game begins in a town populated with people you can talk to. Some are good only for idle chitchat, some will let you buy and sell goods, and others give you clues to help complete your quests. Everything is rendered in colorful 3-D, from the game's characters to its buildings, and Darkstone's outdoor and dungeon environments possess a great deal of graphical detail. The special effects, especially for powerful spells, are particularly good.

Darkstone offers a little more than a standard hack-and-slash action RPG. Your characters age and must be fed, and interactions with other characters and creatures in the game are more complex than is the case in many similar games. There isn't an enormous amount of depth, but the little touches make the game more entertaining than we thought it would be. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Nice graphics--especially lighting and special effects
• Better than average voice acting and production values
• Controlling two characters at once can be fun

Cons:

• Perhaps too derivative
• Can get repetitive

Product Description

Fully 3D characters and environment. More than 100 evil creatured based on the 30 character types. 32 levels of dungeons. More than 200 enemies and interactive characters. Complete Camera Control - zoom in, and zoom out and rotate 360 degrees. Simultaneors control of two characters. More than 30 types of weapons, many have multiple variations.

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best Action/RPG this year!, September 6, 1999

By 

Carl Rodriguez, [e-mail] (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darkstone (CD-ROM)

Darkstone is the best Action/RPG of 1999. The 3D graphics are absolutely great (Direct3D or compatible 3D accelerator card required), and the 3D special effects are stunning. The player interface is smooth and easy. You have full control of camera angle in 360 degrees.

As you start to play Darkstone, you will have to complete a number of quests. You will have to find several crystals to form the Time Orb which will allow you to defeat the evil dragon Draak. The save/load feature is neat. By selecting a saved game, it shows you exactly where you were when you saved the game, so you can differentiate between different saved games.

In Darkstone, to your advantage, you will have two characters to use. Each one you can command separately, or you can command one and have the other commanded by the computer. Its great to have one character able to resurrect the other if need be.

Darkstone is a very fun game to play. There is a random quest generator which ensures you don't play the same game twice. The storyline is challenging enough so that you will want to play over and over. I highly recommend this wonderful game.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This game is totally addictive - I highly recommend it, November 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Darkstone (CD-ROM)

If you're a fan of Diablo, you will love Darkstone. It takes the great interface of Diablo and adds great new features (like a bank), lots of quests that can be intellectually stimulating, and interesting levels, creatures, as well as beautiful graphics. It's very replayable, and the new patch from Gathering of Developers has a hero level, which is harder than the three difficulty levels the game comes with. I'm definitely enjoying this game while waiting for Diablo II to come out.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars (Diablo +3D) - 99% fun = Darkstone, February 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Darkstone (CD-ROM)

1 1/2 Stars. I bought this after reading PC Gamer's review that gave it a 90% and Editor's Choice award. After playing the game for several days, I went back to the review and saw that the reviewer was the magazine's wargames specialist, who probably never played Diablo and unfortunately has no good concept of how an action/RPG should play.

This game is a tremendous disappointment. While it does contain 3D graphics, the modern 1999 display is actually inferior to the 2D 1996 game that inspired it. The display in Diablo is much easier to see and actually has a better, scarier atmosphere than Darkstone.

The 3D effects in this game would be ok, but for an huge problem, which is that you lose your preset front-forward camera angle any time you change directions. The character ends up going sideways and the perspective is lousy and difficult to follow. I understand that Tomb Raider 2 had this same problem with the camera angles. In any event, it is so distracting that it takes much of the fun out of the game. Ditto with the label on your character - when scanning for treasure near your character after a fight with the cursor, it pulls up a little note with your character's name on it, which is very annoying and makes it much harder to find loot.

The puzzles in this game are boring and the distance between receiving the clue and reaching a point in the game where you can actually solve the quest is far too long - often several different levels in the game.

Diablo had atomosphere and was creepy; when stalkers suddenly appeared and attacked, I jumped. I cringed when the horned demons made a run at me. By contrast, there is little suspense in this game. Most of the early levels feature endless rat killing, which gets old quickly. By attempting to be realistic with the lighting, the display is harder to focus on; think permanent cursed Cap of Night: -75% light radius.

Magic is trickier to use and less intuitive than in Diablo. Although I was focusing on archery more than anything else, I never could figure out precisely how to cast spells, based on the poor instructions in the manual. Although Darkstone allows for acquiring a broad range of skills, rather than just the one assigned to each character class in Diablo, most of the skills are neither interesting nor particularly useful.

Magic items and loot are less interesting than in Diablo and are much more expensive. It takes a long while to be able to acquire enough gold to buy anything useful or powerful (which I never really did, as I got too bored with the game to stick with it long enough to acquire a Big Weapon).

All in all, if you have Diablo, you will have more fun replaying it for the umpteenth time than trying to deal with this lousy clone, while waiting for Diablo II to arrive in February or June or October or Christmas 2001 or whenever. If you do not have Diablo, buy it - it is truly the most fun game ever made and despite the aging technology, is superior to this game in every way.