Darkstone (PlayStation) Review
Hacking? Slashing? Looting? Yes, please!
~by tankMage (April 2024)
Score: 76/100 (Decent)
As a hack ‘n Slash enjoyer, I had a good time playing Darkstone, but it’s not a great example of the genre despite having quite a few strengths. This may be due to the fact that it had to be altered fairly radically from the original PC release in order to run on the PS1 or it may just be an inherently flawed game. Either way, the Darkstone isn’t as shiny as the game’s theme song would have you believe.
Being a hack and slash title, Darkstone gives players four basic classes to choose from, then sends them out to explore dungeons. Predictably, every class has its own niche and plays differently than the rest (which is to the game’s credit) but some of the classes really suck. Hack ‘n slash games are fairly reliant on their class systems, so having garbage classes can really hurt the overall quality of the game. On top of that, there’s a lot of quality of life issues that drag the adventure down.
I can forgive the poor class balance since playing as a “bad” class at least offers a challenge, but Darkstone has a far worse flaw; the camera is terrible. In fact, I’d say the camera was a constant nuisance throughout the game and is the primary reason I didn’t give it a better score. A quick menu for spells would have been nice too, because selecting spells from the main menu every time I needed to cast something was painful.
While Darkstone has its fair share of poor design choices, there’s also a lot to like about it. There are seven areas, each with its own dungeon. Each of the dungeons has a quest associated with it. These quests were handmade by the devs, but the game selects them from a list at random, so it’s unlikely to get two playthroughs with the exact same set of quests. Players will also find a lot of cool weapons and spells. Despite the fact that the classes are badly balanced, all four of them are unique in that they play differently from one another, so there’s a lot to keep players busy if they can get past the annoying aspects of the game.
Draak the Magic Dragon
The story of Darkstone is simple. A good wizard named Sebastian tells the player to go kill the bad Wizard named Draak. Ok, there’s more to it than that. Draak can turn into a dragon and does the usual evil sorcerer stuff like terrorizing the country side. There’s also a bunch of crystals the heroes must collect from six dungeons in order to create an artifact that can kill Draak. The premise is fairly basic and that’s fine by me. It’s nice to play a game where you are the good guy and everything is morally uncomplicated.
While the plot is simple, there’s a fair amount of world building that takes place. Each area has quests associated with it. These quests often have their own sub-plots that are sometimes related to the main quest or totally self contained. There’s maybe three or four possible quests assigned to each of the first six areas and they are randomly chosen for each playthrough, so there’s about 24 quests in total. This also gives the game some extra replay value, since players can discover quests as they go through subsequent playthroughs.
While a lot of the quests are basic fetch errands, the devs tried to make them original and interesting. For example, in one scenario the player has to help a village out by retrieving the Horn of Plenty (the villages primary source of food) from the clutches of an evil wizard who happens to be in the first dungeon. There’s another quest where the player uncovers a murder plot while exploring a dungeon.
If there’s one thing I would have liked to have seen in the story, it would have been an interesting character or two. The player’s character does not have much in the way of personality (which is fine) so it would have helped if Sebastian and/or Draak were more memorable. As it is, both wizards are what you would expect from their archetypes and lack originality. You can pretty much guess what each character will say. The rest of the cast is the same aside from a few of the side quest characters who only make brief appearances.
Cantankerous camera angles.
The camera almost ruined this game for me. I hate it and wish it didn’t suck so badly. PlayStation is infamous for games with awful camera functionality and Darkstone isn’t the worst by far, but it’s still bad. By default, the camera is super zoomed in and you can’t see much. You can zoom out by pressing Triangle and adjust it further by holding Triangle and using the D-Pad to zoom or rotate the camera. There’s three settings to choose from, so you can adjust it until you have an angle you like. This is all well and good, but the camera resets EVERY time the player enters an area. Consequently, I had to constantly adjust the zoom.
Worse yet, it’s hard to see things while in the dungeon, because the camera angle often obscures doors and objects. Once again, I found myself constantly rotating the camera so I could see doors, chests, and switches. There were also times where my character got stuck in doorways, because the camera wasn’t centered properly. The entire ordeal nearly spoiled what was otherwise a good experience. Oddly, the PS1 port of Diablo, which was made two years before Darkstone, does not suffer from this problem at all. Darkstone was clearly inspired by Diablo to some degree, so I’m not sure why the devs couldn’t replicate the camera angle and wall transparency system that worked so well for the older game.
Yup there’s graphics.
Darkstone started life as a PC game, so the devs had a lot more to work with in terms of processing power when they designed it. The PS1 was years behind PCs in an era where a few months meant considerable progress in technology, so porting this game must have been a challenge. To Darkstone’s credit, the entire game is 3D, though this came with a cost. First off, the two player functionality was removed and I’m fairly certain this is because the PS1 probably couldn’t have rendered a second player character without massive slow down. Secondly, the graphics were dumbed down to get the game running, so it doesn’t look anywhere near as good as the original.
Despite being graphically weaker than the PC original, the PlayStation version of Darkstone still has a lot going for it. Although they are simple, the environments are very atmospheric, especially the dungeons. There’s also lighting effects, which were fairly advanced for the PS1. I don’t think these were “true” lighting effects, but they are functionally similar and fairly impressive. While I appreciate the lighting effects, some portions of the dungeon were way too dark even with the light spell, but this may have just been a result of bad luck as I was unable to find more than one light spell tome for my character.
There’s also a lot of variety when it comes to character skins. Delphine made at least four different armor and helmet skins for each class. This adds up to a lot of different equipment styles when you consider the fact that there are eight base characters. They also made alternate skins for each class, which was all but unheard of at the time. Additionally, there’s a wide array of weapons that range from axes and swords to throwing knives, so a lot of effort that went into the character aesthetics.
About halfway through the game, the world turns dark and stormy. The overworld and town are constantly shrouded in gloom and lightning flashes every few moments. At first the effect added a sense tension to the setting, but it quickly lost its charm after a few minutes. The storm just makes an already gloomy game even darker and it’s overkill at that point. Secondly, the near constant flashing may be a problem for some players. With Nintendo having gotten in trouble for excessive flashing effects years before (to be fair they didn’t realize flashing games could trigger seizures back then) it’s kind of strange Delphine went so hard on the lightning.
Mostly solid gameplay.
Darkstone deserves both praise and criticism for its game design. The game gets the dungeon crawling, questing, combat, and looting aspects of a hack ‘n slash right for the most part. I was always a bit excited to dive into the next dungeon and see what was waiting for me within. The aforementioned quest system added some kick to the dungeons and made exploring the otherwise bland overworld more engaging. With four main classes (there’s technically eight, but the male/female variants of each class are meaningless aside from their character models) and a variety of weapons for each class, there’s a lot of freedom in terms of character building.
Dungeons are certainly the highlight of this game. Players will encounter traps, monsters, and treasure as well as puzzles that add a bit of variety to the action. I’ve only played through this game three times over the years, but the dungeons didn’t feel repetitive even on my final playthrough. Another nice aspect of the game flow is that it’s largely unnecessary to grind, though this is somewhat class dependent. For the most part, you should have enough experience and money as long as you explore each overworld area along with its dungeon thoroughly. If you do happen to run out of cash or find yourself struggling against the monsters, you can just restart the game with the same character and run through the earlier levels again. This is way less tedious than sitting around the overworld bashing monster skulls in hopes of making some money or gaining a few levels.
A variety of spells that range from non-offensive healing magic to deadly lightning bolts keep the gameplay fresh. For more physical characters, there’s plenty of ranged and melee weapons to choose from. Combat is simple and enemy AI kind of sucks, but the devs managed to make monsters tough enough to be challenging despite the fact they just stupidly run towards the player. At least the ranged enemies are usually smart enough to keep their distance, though they will just stand around while the player whacks them once he or she gets close enough.
As much as I enjoyed the core gameplay, I found the classes really unbalanced in the sense that some of them are very difficult to play. This mostly applies to the Warrior and Monk type classes. Both classes are melee oriented (the Monk/Priestess also use magic) and their weapon selection reflects this. For the most part melee characters are at an extreme disadvantage as the game progresses, because ranged enemies become very common. To rub salt in the wound, many of the more advanced melee enemies also have long reach, which forces melee characters to take hits as they step into range to attack spear wielders.
The balance problem transfers over to stat building. I was able to just dump all of my level up points into dexterity or magic when I played a Thief and Wizard. This is important, because spells and equipment have high requirements for a class’s primary statistic. A good bow for a level 30 Thief/Assassin requires a whopping 170 dex, so you need to put almost all of your points into your primary stat if you want to survive. The Thief/Wizard can just buy elixirs and rings to boost any stats they lack, like HP for example.
Sadly the Monk and Warrior do not have this luxury. Monks need to use spells to bolster their damage/fighting skills and Warriors REALLY need HP, so much so that a few rings are not enough to offset a low vitality score. Consequently, you need to know what you are doing if you choose the Warrior or Monk, otherwise you’ll have to figure out how to cover your weaknesses late in the game when things are tough. On the bright side, some of the weaker classes are good for veterans who want more of a challenge.
Darkstone has a few unique mechanics that are worth mentioning briefly. The first of which is a hunger meter that slowly depletes over time or when the player rests to restore HP/MP. To be honest, I don’t know what happens if you run out of food, because staying at the inn to heal fills the meter back up, plus food can be found everywhere. The abundance of food makes the hunger mechanic fairly pointless and I imagine some players may not have even been fully aware of it and still did fine.
In addition to needing to eat, your character also ages. Every hero starts out at the age of 20 and gets older as time passes. While I’m not sure how the game tracks time, it seems to take an hour or so to age a year. Once again, I was able to buy and use Elixirs of Youth, which de-age whoever imbibes in them by five years, before age became an issue. However, I have read about characters passing a certain age (maybe 60?) and suffering stat penalties. I’ve come to the conclusion that the age mechanic was probably designed to keep players from grinding too much, since Youth Elixirs are not available at low levels. The 100,000 Gold price tag also makes me think they served as a gold sink in the PC game, but I’m not certain.
Finally, while every class can equip whatever weapon or armor they want and can learn every spell (given they have the prerequisite stats) they also have a set of skills which can be trained in town. These skills include extra melee damage, the ability to steal items, increased mana regeneration, and even the ability to turn into a werewolf. There’s a lot of skills in total and some are unique to certain classes while others pop up in a number of them. I really like Darkstone’s skill system, because it’s a lot less constraining than the skill trees that started popping up after Diablo 2. At the same time, it makes every class that much more unique and I wish more hack ‘n slash games used similar systems.
Let’s talk about Audren.
One of the interesting things about Darkstone is its soundtrack, which featured a song from a rock band called Audren. The song is really good despite being kind of typical for its time. One of the interesting things about this band and its inclusion in Darkstone is the fact that I could not find much info on it. Maybe it’s because they are a French group (I thnk) and I was looking around on the English speaking side of the internet. Fortunately, I was able to find her on YouTube and she even released a song called “Gamers Only” where she directly references Darkstone, which is a really cool follow up to the “Darkstone Shines” from the game. There’s also an entire discography of their music floating around out there, so fans of the original song will likely find years worth of music to enjoy. Personally, their music didn’t click with me, but it’s worth listening to nonetheless.
The rest of the soundtrack is the sort of ambient, spooky music that was featured in Diablo, though it has its own style. Once again, it was well done and fits the game, but I hate how the music cuts off every time I brought up the inventory, though this can be blamed on the devs and not the composer. I’m also not sure if the rest of the soundtrack was done by Audren or if it was composed by someone else. My fault for not paying better attention during the credits.
There’s also some voice acting, As you may have guessed, it’s the sort of cheesy acting you usually get in PS1 games. I’ve come to love this sort of voice acting, because it’s entertaining by itself. Your hero will go “Wow” every time they learn a new spell, shout for help when they need HP, and say “Yes!” when they level up. It’s very campy, but not overused to the point that it’s obnoxious.
Ever hear of a “quick spell book” Delphine?
In many ways Darkstone’s UI is a lot less fiddly than Diablo’s. There’s no need to shuffle around items in the inventory and a lot of the items have convenient little command windows associated with them. That said, equipping spells/skills is a pain in the ass and the automap is annoying to use.
To use a spell or skill, the player must assign it to one of the shoulder buttons. This is all well and good, but there’s only two shoulder buttons available for spells, the lower two are for scrolls and potions. Many classes rely on magic to attack and/or defend, plus the Light spell is a basic necessity unless you have the brightness on your screen cranked up. Consequently, you’re going to have to go into the inventory and swap spells a lot depending on your class. A Thief or Warrior can get away with using one or two spells. The Monk and Wizard likely need to swap between three or four spells depending on the situation and it can become a headache doing so.
The map is also a miserable experience, because it does not align with the way your character is facing. Players also have to essentially pause the game to view the map, which is another nuisance.
The worst part about the map and spell book is that whoever ported Diablo years before Darkstone came out figured out how to do this stuff without torturing players. In Diablo you merely had to push a button to bring up the quick spell book and equip a spell in a second or two. The Circle Button was used to switch between spells. The automap could be brought up immediately and was layered over gameplay. I’m not sure why the people who ported Darkstone didn’t copy this system or make something comparable to it, but it would have made the game ten times better.
I almost forgot to mention Darkstone’s teleport system. Players can bring up the system menu and use the Teleport command to warp to places they have already visited. It’s a really nice touch, since walking back up through dungeons can be time consuming. Too bad they only got this feature half right, because you can only warp to places in the immediate area.
Mash or pass?
Darkstone suffers from a few poor design choices, but there’s a good game underneath the grime. I remember being hooked on it for a few weeks after borrowing from a friend back in 2003 or so. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how many hack ‘n slash fans will want to play this one when there’s so many better games out there, both old and new. With that in mind, I recommend giving this game a try if your interested in it. If you can get past the camera and UI, you’ll probably be happy you played Darkstone.
Thank you for reading my Darkstone review!
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