From: JMoylan@cup.portal.com (John Thomas Moylan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Subject: Re: Darklands Review
Date: Thu,  3 Sep 92 20:09:23 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

wait until you hear the people who actually like not having to think about
anything tell you how much they enjoy the character creation system...
Don't ask me why they are so thrilled about, I have seen a similar system
in Citadel for the Macintosh, Atari ST, Amiga, etc. and in another REAL
FRPG, Chivalry & Sorcery by Fantasy Game Unlimited(out of print, pre-AD&D).

Basically, in creating a character, you get a choice of 4(?) class levels,
noble to peasant(I believe), and then from this you choose professions of
the characters childhood, which affect the starting values of skills. Also
you get the typical points with which you modify the basic attributes. Overal
I do not find it that original, or exciting, although it is the only place
in the game that you actually have to think a little...I typically start
with a young party, 20 excepting the priest who is 25, while most other seems
to go for the OLD party of 35-45 year olds, making the game MUCH easier to
start.

Next, you must gain reputation, either by killing thieves in the starting
city, or by entering the countryside and killing thieves.  Once you have

achieved a certain level of local fame, you can apply to one of several place
for missions(typically, go kill this Raubritter, X of this city, Y of some
other city, usually right next to this other city...). At this point, you
exit the city, go on a LONG, boring walk interspersed with boring, repetitive
combats(seemingly endless after you've fought through one ever in the game..)
get to the castle, kill the raubritter, head back the LONG trip to the orinal
city and HOPE that the game remembers your quest(one of the nice features to
contend with, not to mention the walking/movement problems).

Now all of the above SOUNDS like a decent game, however the part that makes
it boring is that, EVRYTHING is centered upon FAME/REPUTATION which, in turn
is COMPLETELY centered UPON combat. There are no pieces of a puzzle to put
together to create something and thereby receive reward and fame, its just
go kill X and come back, or go get Y and bring it here.

This may still not sound bad, until you realize that EVERYTHING has a menu,
and that, that menu remains the SAME for EVERY single encounter, the only
text that changes is the name of the city/"NPC"/reputation title, all else
remains COMPLETELY STATIC(with the exception that some option may be greyed
out if you do not have the necessary equipment, eg. rope to climb, saint to
ask for help(I've gotten to 200 fame w/o a saint's help, and little alchemy!)
(not listing unusable option would have been better, and more interesting for
the starting player).

Now, the witch plot is mentioned, however, once again, it is handled by these
simpleton hand-holding menus, and results in combat(otherwise it's even worse
than boring...it gets to the point that you look forward to combat to get
rid of the silly monotonous menus, or could write a macro to always do
the same thing when it sees one of the familiar menus).

Now, we get to the worst part of the game, BUGS.  This game behaves more like
a beta release than Ultima VII.  With Ultima VII, for example, it(U7) at leas
had the appearance of being a single, coherent package, whereas Darklands
feels more like several pieces hurriedly tied together to me.  Quests are
regularly forgotten(I have only been rewarded for 1 in 12 raubritters, and
other missions), supposedly v6.0 fixes this.  Movement AI is VERY BADLY writt
it is FREQUENTLY befuddle by blocked paths, choosing the longest of alternate
routes(typically right into the enemy, although this is useful against the
computer in trees).  Another fault of the movement system is that it likes
straight lines too much, taking the shortest diagonals then a straight
direction.  In other cases in the wilderness map, you can easily become stuck
against water which surrounds you on two sides.  The movement routine gets
confused, and apparently think that you are surrounded by water, even though
you SHOULD be able to go in another direction. These are the two worst bugs
one, is supposedly fixed in 6.0, and the other Microprose never responds to.
Other players have reported many other bugs, misc. crashing in the mines,

equipment disappearing and re-appearing(this has happened to me once..).

Overall, Darklands MAY have had the potential to be a decent game, however
it is obvious that it was rushed out the door FAR too quickly.  It should
NEVER have been publicly released in this condition.