L3ts Pl@y Throne of Darkness

THRONE OF DARKNESS

You know this game. Well, you should know it. Take out your Arcanum manual. Its on the back or on the other side of the front cover or something. I always remembered this game, I always wanted to play it, but I couldn't find a copy. It always stayed in the back of my mind, teasing me... "You will never play this! You will never play this!"

Well, guess what, I'm playing it now, aren't I? Nyah nyah, fuck you, brain.




View Arcanum Trailer

I miss the past.

Alright, onwards, to the game! First up, the logos.



That's Sierra, alright.



A name clearly linked to the gameplay style. No flashiness in the logos here, but it doesn't stand out much either. Its just a cog. I'll never remember that logo, while I'll still remember Heretic Kingdom's weird-ass robot head. Take note, potential devs, burn your logos into my mind.

Opening cinematic kicks in.



Basic is the word. Hand-drawn art with a voiceover. Jap mumbles something about a prince selling his soul, undead armies, can't really make out much over the heavy accent.



Got your ass and titties covered, next?



I would imagine this to be bad prince in question. I guess that wraps up the-



Woah! What the fuck!



Whattehell are you doing?


Oh, right, he's attacking the skeletons.



Alright, overview. You've clearly got a communist surrounded by skeletons on the left, and to his right is a samurai (also surrounded by skeletons).

The samurai pulls some Dragonball Z shit.


Yeah, stabs em straight in his ribcage! Take that!


The Communist hurls his enemies back and sings us the song of his people:







:Cultureshock:

Then we've got an Archer, clearly tripping on some heavy shit:



And a Wizard with the power of vectoring:



Truly a force to be reckoned with.

Due to PC policy they had to hire a chubby one:



However, all of them turn around to witness some more serious asskicking.







TEST YOUR MIGHT!




Yeah, you don't mess with this fucker.

Which is all the more reason not to mess with...



THE A-TEAM.

There's a few seconds more to the cinematic but we'll cut off there.

Next up: The Game!

This thread serves as relief from the FF7 thread.

Continue this, with an opening cinematic that good....

One of the better early Diablo clones from what I've heard. I'm wondering what class the red dude represents. Some sort of bard?

Pussycat669 said:

One of the better early Diablo clones from what I've heard. I'm wondering what class the red dude represents. Some sort of bard?

Click to expand...

Berserker, actually :D

I played and finished this a long time ago. A fun game, sort of a mix between Diablo and Dungeon Siege, and a nice setting, but pretty bland in the gameplay department. Controling one character while the others move on their own is fine for a time... but gets old pretty fast. Another proof that, as far as I'm concerned, turn based is the only way for party management.


Anyway, have fun playing, I'll have fun watching some cool "samurai vs undead" screenshots. :wink:

Throne of Darkness was a Diablo clone that I'd put on the same level of dogshit as Loki and Restricted Area. The gameplay was terrible and everything felt dull.

I played that thing and it was rather meh. Not as meh as Restricted Area though. Restricted Area was so horribly boring that it would be more fun to stare at your desktop for several hours, because your desktop background looks probably more interesting than that game was.
Heck, even staring at the wall is more fun than Restricted Area.

DefJam101 said:

This thread serves as relief from the FF7 thread.

Click to expand...

As a white man, I find this remark incredibly hurtful.

And this first update was incredibly boring. No offense, but if you want to grab my attention you'd better tell me a little something about the game. Just seeing ninjas and samurais and turtles fighting stuff and doing one of the worst hero walks (more like a hero 'rush', btw) doesn't seem to grab me nowadays like they did when I was twelve.

I didn't understand anything about the movie, but I'm going to take a wild guess that shit goes wrong and a bunch of different warriors with different special abilities goes off on a mission to right the shit that went wrong. Meh.

Question: Is there more to the story than that?

Clearly the Arcanum trailer didn't grab my attention because it was just text. I'm a graphics whore.

Andyman Messiah said:

Clearly the Arcanum trailer didn't grab my attention because it was just text. I'm a graphics whore.

Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ImMBWGc_w

JarlFrank said:

Andyman Messiah said:

Clearly the Arcanum trailer didn't grab my attention because it was just text. I'm a graphics whore.

Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5ImMBWGc_w

Click to expand...

View Arcanum Trailer

Click to expand...

haha Kingston enjoy breaking ur equipment

I bought that game when it came out. Boy, was I pissed ^^

I'm starting to think this was a mistake. This game kinda sucks.

So did Hellgate but that didn't stop you before.

Come on, buddy. Continue.

If you're doing the A-Team at least use this for B.A. Baracus

It's a Mr. T teapot. </explain>

flabbyjack said:

It's a Mr. Tpot.

Click to expand...

fixed.

NEVER explain stuff about Mr.T, NEVER.

Alright, let's give this nigger a spin.



Someone needs to explain to me the difference between "Play Online" and "Multiplayer". They're supposed to be the same thing!

I'm gonner click 'ere "New Game".



I guess a Castle means a save slot. So you can have a max of four games and then you're gonna have to start demolishing some 'castles' to make room. Not that anyone would ever fucking fill those up.

Clan Wheelchair Warez is whom we shall be following. Its not called the A-team because I only invented that pun after I had created Wheelchair Warez.



Wheelchair Warez has spawned in a Japanese hut, complete with an old bearded geezer. We appear to have a chubby one and two unchubby ones at our disposal. Daimyo has set us up the situation: There are invaders and they must be killed.

I click on the ground and one of the unchubby ones, aptly named "Leader", moves there without hesitation. The other two move around on their own, seemingly by magic. Well no, you control one character, the rest are up to the AI to play with. Clicking on the portrait of a character takes control of him, or alternatively one can tap the spacebar (yes, tap, pressing it is not allowed!) to cycle between them.



As Hamato Yoshi clearly explained, this Daimyo interface allows you to exchange characters (as there will be a pool of 7, with four on the battlefield at any one time). Characters that have been teleported back to base regenerate their health and mana pools over time. Why is it called the "Daimyo interface", though, whence came all this faggotry. Just call it the exchange panel or something, the teleporter, or whatever.



Down the stairs we go. Open a few boxes for items. Funny that there's an item just called Health. "I picked up a Health." I mean c'mon, you can have a bottle of healing, but what the fuck is Health? Where do you get Health anyway, do you extract it from healthy people, leaving them unhealthy and succumbing to illness? I bet we'll find Mana aswell, enemies might aswell just drop Experience too.



I spotted an enemy but my team already managed to clobber 'em to death before I could hit the screenshot button. Anyway, here's the inventory. I don't really know what stuff to give people, so I'm just going by what the beginning cinematic showed and what their names reveal.

I'm gonna give the bow to the Archer, that's a pretty smart move imho. The weapon on the right is the secondary slot, so you can switch between weapons quickly. I can already see this becoming tedious. Seven characters, all needing different equipment, having to call up all the characters to see which one had that one item you needed to give to the other guy, weapons breaking, managing potions... I know this is gonna be really, really gay.



Awwright, some enemies! YEaha, kill 'em, kill 'em to death!

Combat feels a bit fucktarded. There appears to be some delay between when you click and when your weapon hits. Half the time I'm not sure what's going on, its hard to distinguish your friends from a group of enemies. It looks sensible in the screenshots, but in-game its just a clusterfuck. Add to the fact that you need to be managing your character's health and mana (you can see those orbs aren't very big) and every other character aswell (although I'm not sure if the AI chugs potions or not). Everyone is running around hitting each other and uh, I dunno.



Its a quest log! The speaker button on the bottom left makes the game play the questgiver's quest speech a la Diablo.



Alright, we found the Swordsman. He's going in our party. I imagine we'll find the rest of the crew somewhere down here.



Wheelchair Warez gangrapes some people in a corridoor. The blood effects are alright. You can see part of the problem here though, I'm playing with the chubby guy and one of the unchubby ones is blocking my view of the enemy. I can't really see what I'm hitting.



Oh right, the enemies are called Shadow Soldiers, imaginative indeed. I think they are here on orders of the demon prince. Our chubby fellow looks a bit hilarious, as he is dual-wielding in the wrong direction.

But if you think that combat is the only thing this game has to offer, you are wrong. As a change of pace to the action, the game offers interesting environmental puzzles that will challenge your problem-solving skills.

Example: how will one traverse the following obstacle?



I will tell you that there is in fact a solution, as I successfully managed to get past it:



On this floor we also find the Wizard.



Not content with the concept of Mana, the Japanese have developed Ki. I guess Power is the Mana of the future, and Ki is the Mana of the East.

Down another floor we go...



... and fight some more Shadow Soldiers, as well as a red one with a propeller attached to his back.

I discover that every character can use spells. Yes, everybody, so I don't know what makes the Wizard so special. But there's certainly nothing like a fat dual-wielding asian casting a fireball:





More fighting with more propeller-men. Pay attention to the health of the guy in the middle of the portrait row, for this knowledge will help you in deciphering the next screenshot:



My God, he's dead! Better send him back to the Shrine via our Yoshi panel. Unfortunately I'm too much of an asshat to notice the other people have recovered and I don't add them to my party.

After wondering for the longest time what exactly the green button on the bottom left does, I click it.



??? I guess they are stances or something like that. I dunno about you but I could certainly go with a Frog stance right now.



Click that and...



Lol wut? Am I playing some sort 'a Xbawcks game here? What's with the big green buttons?



O i c. It dictates the people's positions.



To battle, and victory!



Ok, so the other one died. Survival of the chubbiest, it seems. Our fatso only survived because he got a level up in the middle of the fight.



His class is Brick? What the fuck is that? I'm gonna create me a Concrete class when I make a game. I'm putting all the points into Strength because that makes sense to me. I wonder what Charisma does.



I got a spell point too, so I stuck it on Flame Dart.

I teleport the Wizard and Leader into my party. I also find the Map button, and the Tactics Editor. This screen is getting a wee bit cluttered.



What is this Tactics/Role editor? Well, there's a simple tutorial that will explain it all. Let's sit down and listen.



Seems simple enough..?





















WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT ARE YOU DOING! This is a fucking Diablo clone, don't you think this is all a bit too excessive??? You don't think its enough that I have to manage the items, stats, spells, experience, bottles and shit for SEVEN characters? No, let's add some more fucking things, eh? I appreciate the sentiment, I really do, but do I need to customise twelve different tactics, with different characters and roles and all this shit? I'm supposed to be playing a Diablo clone, the more I'm out of the action, the more its gonna suck! Its not like these "tactics" are gonna make any goddamned difference, the AI will still suck, the combat will still remain a clusterfuck, so what's the point?

I need a break.

Also, Nvidia sucks. Whenever I want to play old games I have to uninstall the new drivers and install ones from two years ago because they are the only ones where flat-panel scaling works. If I play this game with new drivers it gets stretched all over the widescreen but with the old ones black bars come up on the sides so its all good.