Darkstone

"It's fun, in a PC to PSX port kinda way"

Darkstone, the spawn of Diablo, which is (as I understand) the spawn of Nethack. This was a nifty little diversion for the PC and a slighty more annoying, but equally divering, game on the PSX. Although the game is priced at 10 dollars, and other reviews have admited this affected thier review, I am going to look at this game and review it just like any other.

Ok, first a warning to console fans. This is a PC Action-RPG and on the PC gameplay is much more important to the story (as it should be, IMO). If you think the primary focus of an RPG should be the story, you won't like this game and you can stop reading this now.

Ok, now to the reviewing. As I implied before, gameplay is the dominant factor in Darkstone. Basically, it's a Diablo clone. Gameplay moves in circles. You enter the dungeon, you kill things until you can't keep yourself alive or your inventory is full, you go back to the town and sell some stuff, heal yourself, buy more potions, get new equipment (sometimes), and then go back to the dungeon. Between every four levels of the dungeon you usually have to get some kind of objective from some type of friendly character. Why is this sort of thing fun? I don't know, but I know it is.

Before I can really explain the problems that affect the game, I think I should explain where the problems come from. As I said before, this is a PC to PSX port. Anyone who has ever played a PC to PSX port knows what that means. Long load times, insane amounts of memory card space (Examples. Diablo: 9 blocks. Darkstone: 6 blocks. Hexen: ENTIRE MEMORY CARD), sub-par graphics, and changes in controls. Most of these speak for themselves, but let's go into the controls.

Darkstone for the PC was played with a mouse and a keyboard. A simple comparison of the keyboard + mouse to the PSX gamepad will make you see the problems. You have a lot of buttons on the keyboard and a lot of precision with the mouse that you don't have on the PSX gamepad. As a result casting spells, targeting specfic enemies, and inventory management are more tedious that on the PC. Spells can be cast with the L1 and R1 buttons, so if you want to cast another spell besides the two you have set, you have to go to your inventory and set that new spell up. The same holds true with quick items (L2 and R2). It's annoying because you want to use a scroll of town portal and to do so you have to unset your potions, set your scroll, use the scroll, go back to your inventory to set the potions back, then go on your way. The targeting system works like this: the nearest enemy is the one that is targeted. That's fine and good if you are a fighter, but an archer might not want to hit the nearest enemy.

Something else that needs to be said. In the PC version of this game you played with two characters. You controled one and the computer controled the other (you could switch between them). The amount of monsters does not seem to have changed in the PSX version where you play just one character. This doesn't make things harder though because you'll have one person getting all the experience instead of two people spliting it. What does happen though is you get levels up every five steps in the beginning.

Graphics and sound are....there alright. Graphics aren't terrible and don't take away from the game, but they don't help either. The sound is ok, although some sound bytes seem low quality. The music would be nice except that everytime you go to your inventory it stops and when you leave it's a good 10 seconds before the music gets going again. I'd rather have no music than music that only plays when it feels like it.

This is a good game, but nothing anyone would go crazy over. It's what I call a rainy day game. It's the perfect game to play when you are bored or need to burn some time, but when you set time aside to play a really good game, you'll push this one aside.

If you've decided to get this, let me go ahead and explain twp things (if you are a purist, stop reading now. These are just little facts that I wish I had known). First, yes your character does age, but you'll have ways to stay young by the time age is a factor. Second, yes you do need to eat food to statify your hunger stat, but that's no big deal at all.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/19/01, Updated 03/19/01