Throne of Darkness

by Vivendi Universal

Product Features

• A power-hungry warlord named Zanshin has unleashed a demon
• Control a group of seven mighty samurai who have pledged to destroy this demon, and save Yamato from darkness
• Search perilous wastelands for wepons, armor, artifacts and magic
• Struggle through 10 lands full of bone-crunching battle
• Haunting graphics steeped in Japanese legends and lore -- you'll marvel at the beautiful historical details combined with the amazing monsters & creatures out of Japanese mythology

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004YKW3
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: September 26, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,717 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Throne of Darkness is the first game from San Francisco-based Click Entertainment, a company founded by two of Diablo's original developers, and the game shows its pedigree. Like Diablo, this is a click fest, featuring hordes of monsters, treasure, weapons, and magic items all set against a medieval fantasy Japanese backdrop. You play as up to seven powerful samurai warriors on a quest to rid the lands and castles of the evil hordes, with the ultimate goal of invading an evil demon's castle and ending his reign of terror.

As in Diablo, you control one character at a time. Each character has weapons that degrade from use, health and mana potions, and the ability to cast spells. Characters gain experience as they battle, eventually achieving higher levels and skill points that you can add to various attributes such as strength, vitality, and dexterity. While you're controlling one character, the computer is controlling the rest (up to four at one time). As your characters are damaged, you can teleport them to the sanctuary, where they can heal and rest up while you teleport in alternates. This is accomplished by using an interface toggle that opens the Daimyo screen at the bottom interface bar. Your Daimyo can teleport characters in or out, and even resurrect fallen comrades for you. But his power to do these things regenerates slowly, so a fast hand at the Daimyo screen is needed to teleport the wounded out (before they die) and fresh guys in (there are seven samurai total).

This system works well, but something feels missing from the gameplay. Perhaps it's the cartoonish graphics, or the somewhat uninspired enemies that make combat seem a chore rather than a nail-biting adventure like in the Diablo games. The story is thin, but told well, and there's always something to do and creatures to fight. Multiplayer is especially fun, so maybe that's where this game will find its audience. While it isn't as good as Diablo or its sequel, Throne of Darkness is a reasonably fun romp, especially if you're a fan of samurai fantasy. --Bob Andrews

Pros:

• Unique setting
• Plenty of interesting characters
• Lots of monsters and plenty of combat

Cons:

• Cartoonish graphics
• Less fun than Diablo

Product Description

In Throne Of Darkness you must quest to defeat a powerful demon who is destroying the mythical land of Yamato! Intense 8-man multiplayer games will test your battle skills to their limits!

See all Product Description

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, involved, expansive, and just better than DII, single p, September 29, 2001

By 

K. Lee - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Throne of Darkness (CD-ROM)

Diablo II fans will love Throne of Darkness. The designer of Diablo moved onto work on ToD in San Francisco based Click in order to move some of his ideas along, I suppose.

The game plays very similar to Diablo II, but makes the game more customizable and gives the user more power to take different paths. My biggest problem with Diablo II was that players basically were forced along in their quests, and that there simply was a "best character." However, ToD will not have this problem since there will be four out of seven characters playing. This creates *infinite* possibilities.

An important note: the demo is quite fun, but does NO JUSTICE to the real game! There are many things missing in the demo that make it seem like a weaker game than it is.

In terms of graphics, ToD represents the samurai age quite well, considering the game is a fantasy game. The style is very fitting and look right. There could be some more detail in characters, but I'm not complaining :)

Listening to the game was pleasuresome to my ears. The music is generally good, and the fighting and speech sounds are also strong.

The tactics system really comes through, though it is a little bit annoying when your wizard runs out of ki (MP) and runs up trying to kill that massive elder kappa (a turtle?). However, death is by no means permanent, and really isn't that big of a deal, unless everyone dies. :)

The magic system doesn't really look that special, but I haven't really gotten far enough to tell for sure. My wizard has been weak, but he's definitely getting stronger with each level. I expect him to be a powerhouse pretty soon!

As for an item system, this is where ToD shines. There is so much customizability that its ridiculous. It's like Diablo II with up to 24 gem slots, but with a larger variety of gems :) I can't wait to have a 24 slot 75-150 damage sword with whatever customizing items in it... Also, no item is wasted. Junk is not junk anymore. These can be given or offered to the blacksmith or priest of your temple which then are put into a material point system which can be used in junction with gold to build up better items with more customizing slots. It makes you want to pick up EVERYTHING! :)

Well, I believe ToD is one of the most innovative games in it's genre since the original itself. I haven't anticipated a game this much since Diablo II! And I'm not disappointed either.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This game is damn cool..., September 13, 2001

By 

Steve (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Throne of Darkness (CD-ROM)

Okay, not only did they get me by the japanese setting alone, but once I got my Beta test CD in the mail and installed this game i was instantly blown away by the beautiful artwork that was put into this game... I still can't get over how pretty it is...

Anyway, eye candy aside, the game plays pretty quickly and most battles are just a bloody mess... It took me a little while to get used to switching through all my Samurai during a battle to make sure they all cast the right defensive or offensive spells, and then it's a clicking i go!!!

I love the death animations in this game... definitely lots of blood...

The thing that really got me though, is once I had enough money I could take all of these monster parts and gems and such that I had been collecting, and totally customize all my weapons and armor!!! I can't believe how hardcore some of these things can be!!! Can you make a weapon in diablo that inflicts 4 kinds of elemental damage while draining health and mana from your enemies as well as boosting your character stats?!?!! And that's stuff I made before I was even 10th level!!!!

Tons of monsters, more spells than I could ever use, plus the spell effects and sounds are great!

I'm so stoked I'm helping out to make this a better game, but I tell you now this game's gonna rock!!!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nihon no Diablo, November 4, 2001

By 

Jeffrey R. Tilley Jr. "goatman_1" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Throne of Darkness (CD-ROM)

This game merges two of my favorite things on the world: ancient Japan and Computer RPG. Now that I've played it, I'm forced to wonder why it took so long. With a market saturated with sword and sorcery type RPG's, one set in ancient Japan seems like a pleasant alternative. The similarities are obvious enough. Ninja and Samurai are cool enough to stand on their own along with the Japanese derivatives of all those fantasy staples.

One reviewer noted that the demo version doesn't do this game any justice. I totally agree with that statement. It was that review which prompted me to give Throne of Darkness a try. It's unfortunate, but the demo doesn't even scratch the surface, and whether the makers realize it or not, demos influence people to buy games. It's almost better to have no demo than a poor or insufficient one.

Complaints: First, the interface suffers from a lot of the things that Diablo and Diablo 2 suffered from in my opinion. Supposedly the key creators of this game created the original Diablo, and you can tell. For the most part, combat can be reduced to a furious, cluttered click-fest devoid of any real tactics during battle. This is one of the reasons why I never learned to love the Diablo games. Compared to the Baldur's Gate series and all the Black Isle games, Diablo lacked any real RPG depth. "Click-click-click", Level up, "click-click-click", boring. If it weren't for a few saving graces, Throne of Darkness would suffer the same fate, but the devil is in the details, something the creators went to great lengths to improve upon.

Second, I like creating my own characters from scratch, and you aren't afforded that opportunity with ToD. With 7 samurai (an obvious number) to choose from, it's easy to forgive this slight. Also, statistically, there isn't much to the characters. Leveling up provides some variety amongst the characters, but you can only put points in one of 4 stats, so there isn't much strategy or skill to advancing. Again, this was another big flaw Diablo had for me. Compared to the Fallout series and all the D&D based games, there isn't much to the characters themselves.

While the major flaws of the game can be compared to Diablo, it's the strengths that make it completely different and a far better game in my opinion. While the fast pace and constant clicking of Diablo grows boring fast, having 4 samurai in the party at any given time combined with a pretty sophisticated tactical editor provide a lot more variety than you would think. There are approximately 12-16 pre-generated tactical formations based on different animals: turtle, tiger, scorpion etc. I find myself toying with them more and more to find that "sweet-spot". Combine the different formations, with the different combinations of characters and there is a lot more variety at play than at first glance. You can also manually create your own formations which you do by altering each characters personal stance, which affects aggressiveness, and weapon or magic assignment.

One of the cooler aspects of the game is the Daimyo interface. There are four Daimyo in the game for you to choose from, all of which come from the warring states period just prior to the unification of Japan, but that's where any real historical reality ends. The Daimyo give orders, resurrect characters, and heal the injured while they wait. The Daimyo also has a priest and blacksmith working for him which have a multitude of functions.

The blacksmith, by far, presents one of the coolest features of the game. In addition to fixing broken armor and weapons, and the weaker weapons seem to break every 5 minutes, he can also make new weapons, and even customize weapons by combining them with strange objects looted off of creatures. There's actually more strategy to customizing each weapon to each character than you might think, or at least there's as much as you put into it. There are items based on the four elements which enhance the items, and then there are items that enhance the enhancements. You can spend hours finding combinations and can come up with some really cool items.

With seven characters to choose from at any one time, over a dozen fully customizable formations, and possibly hundreds of weapons to create, combined with all that fast-action combat (the only good thing to come from Diablo) this is already a game worth playing, but it's the whole "Japan" angle that keeps me involved. I guess if you don't find ancient Japan and things like Samurai and Ninja interesting, or have never seen a Kurasawa flick in your life, you might not be attracted to this game. If you have, it's probably the biggest reason to buy it. The game stands on its own as a premier dungeon-crawler (sorry, there isn't much RPG involved here), but replacing knights with Samurai, thieves with Ninja, and swords with Katana (ok, technically they're the same thing if you've never actually held one) is what makes the game such a blast to play.