I just finished Darghul

[MF]

I remember playing the demo back in 1993, I was 8. It was on one of those free demo cd's you get when you buy something at a certain store. I hardly spoke any German back then and didn't even realize I was stuck in Naramanca because I didn't have the full version of the game.

I played Teudogar and was somewhat disappointed that it wasn't as good as I always imagined Darghul must have been. It was a great game, but no match for an 8 year old's imagination. I knew about the remake Wolf was doing for Darghul, and was waiting for that to see what the full game would be like. Anyway, I had some time to spare this weekend and decided to fore go waiting for a remake and played the MS-DOS version of the Darghul demo.

I've since become fluent in German, so I finally discovered what the game was actually about. In what can only be described as an impulse buy, I immediately registered the full game when I got stuck. I just finished it and I have to say, it was great. Despite the plethora of geheimtueren, some of which required me to take a quick glance at the walkthrough to figure out, I liked the game. The hillariously cliche plot, the stab at Lord of the Rings, it was all so silly yet so enthralling.

It might have been bottled-up 8 year old's nostalgia and anticipation -which, I must admit, was of a much grander scale than the game turned out to be-, but the old graphics and dead-simple combat actually provided me with an experience much more pleasant than any (relatively) modern games have recently.

Now, I've gotten curious about the remake. I've read Wolf's comments on a continuous world and countless of villlages, ruined cities etc which implies a lot of new content for the remake. How is it different from the original game apart from the obvious interface and graphics overhaul?

 

[Wolf Mittag]

Well, some of the main additions are:
- rpg system: much more differentiated character-, skill- and reputation- system, different roles and alignments (not just generic good hero), more alternative options for many game situations.
- game functions: bartering, haggling, producing/building things, trade & managing/transporting goods, founding shops/mines/workshops, hiring people, far more magical spells, more differentiated (but still easy-to-use) combat system, and many others.
- game world: new game world is continuous and has about 185 locations with a total of over 12 million fields, with almost 3 million objects. The old MSDOS version's game world had only about 25 locations and about 400,000 fields; i.e., the new version's game world is about 31 times larger. Besides, hundreds of random-generated caves; many dozens of unique magical objects to search and acquire; seers and other people to consult in different corners of the world; lots of books and ancient bits of knowledge spread all over the world; temples and altars to call on the Gods; treasures and random generated treasures to find; etc.

The plot remains mostly unchanged (though a bit lengthened with some additional episodes and sub-plots added in between). The main changes are about what you can do besides following the plot. In the original DARGHUL, there was hardly anything else to do. In the remake, you can do lots of exploration, or search for magical objects, or go dungeoneering, slay monsters and hone your fighting skills and equipment, or seek knowledge or tuition, and become a powerful wizard(ress), or build and furnish your own house(s)/palace, or learn different handcrafts, or start business enterprises, or set up a net of trade routes, or steal or cheat or beg, etc. And you are fairly free to go about these and all other quests in good or evil, lawful or chaotic ways. You can play the game in a different fashion, and develop a different type of character every time you play it anew.

So while the original DARGHUL (and Teudogar even more so) was pretty much like a novel you could read once and then put aside, the new DARGHUL should be a game you can enjoy playing almost indefinitively.

 

[k_bits]

"I just finished Darghul"

Damn you and your deceptive thread title