Darklands

Darklands is a historical fantasy role-playing game developed and published by MicroProse in 1992 for MS-DOS.

The game is set in medieval Germany during the 15th century, featuring many supernatural elements within the game's historically accurate geography. As you lead a group of four adventurers across the menacing landscape of medieval Germany, you face mythical beasts, religious power mongers, and bloodthirsty robber knights. Darklands is an open-world game that allows you to complete quests that will give you a favorable reputation or pursue a negative one by performing evil deeds.

Darklands is set in the late medieval period of Germany, during a time of social and political upheaval. You take on the role of four adventurers in the game, creating your team with no character classes or levels but with unique attributes and skills that you can improve as you progress through the game.

The game features an early example of open-world gameplay 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. The hero's reputation may vary across geographic boundaries, allowing the player to be simultaneously hated in one region and exalted in another. You can travel hundreds of miles by land and sea, visiting over ninety cities along the way, from the Frisian Coast to Bohemia, from the Alps to Prussia. Your quest for fame and fortune can take you through raucous city streets and dark mine shafts or from a robber knight's tower to the terrifying Sabbaths of witches.

Darklands' combat system is in real-time, but the interface allows for an active pause system that allows you to stop the action at any time, giving you the ability to give new orders to your characters or even use items. This feature enables you to create complex strategies and also offers a break for those who need to step away from the game without risking the character's death.

Unfortunately, this system wasn't playtested enough; in fact, some players found the fighting a bit boring, and some have even stated that it ruins the game's open-world concept. It didn't help that at the time of the release, the game had a lot of bugs and glitches often made the game frustrating to play.

Regarding graphics, Darklands features an isometric point of view during the game and hand-painted still images during cutscenes. The still images are excellent, but the isometric view is not top-notch. We have seen better in 1992.

In short, Darklands was an ambitious project. Many other games explored the concept of open-world gameplay after it, but if you want to see one of the firsts, this is a perfect choice, especially if you love historical fantasy role-playing games.