Have you ever wanted to get into Skyrim or the later Diablo games but were intimidated by their depth, time commitment, and complexity? Tale of Dark Lands has you covered as it is basically like a linear Skyrim-lite. The purposely low-poly visual style, which is designed around humorous tones, is also the same as Drunken Fist 2.
Playing as a mercenary, a local village calls upon your aid to thwart some invading orcs. Overtime, you learn a dark power is threatening the land and of course you are the one to stop it. The story is just as simple as the gameplay.
Using twin stick controls, one button attacks, another jumps, and another dodges. Combat is nothing more than button mashing, maybe with an evade or two at most, but the character only swings in the direction the camera is facing. This can get annoying and will cause some unintentional damage along the way but is never game breaking because the player always has access to a million health potions, just like in Diablo. However, it is odd there is no d-pad support. Constantly pushing left and right on the stick while in the menus is tedious.
When the game starts, the player can easily navigate the hub town thanks to a marker/directional system like Skyrim’s. When given direction for the next quest by the townsfolk, the player then uses the town crystal to teleport to the next sequential stage. Unlike the town, these combat areas have no marker, radar, or mapping system, leaving the player to navigate a large space without any direction. If you pay attention and look hard enough, there is usually a subtle pathway of some kind to follow. However, it is easy stray from this path thanks to distracting collectables in the distance and common enemies to defeat. Since the low-poly visually essentially all look the same, the lack of landmarks and mapping system is this game’s biggest flaw because sometimes you simply do not know where to go, if you are mistakenly backtracking, or where the objective is. Making matters worse, the only way back to the town is to find another teleport crystal somewhere at the end of the stage. If you wander long enough, these open spaces can be navigated but not having some type of mapping system is baffling.
Combat is little more than button mash until the enemy falls but the gear collecting system has purpose. Like Diablo, all collected items take up squares on an inventory grid. These items can then be organized to make room for bigger things like weapons and armor. Eventually, a blacksmith’s shop will offer upgraded gear which changes in visual appearance which is a nice touch. However, I was unable to get the ruin forge to work. Either I am doing something wrong or there is some sort of glitch, but I was unable to place a ruin on any item, weapon, or armor. Again, navigating these grid-based menus with the analog stick doesn’t help the matter.
I like how the presentation is linear but managed in a way that makes it seem like an open world. Sure, the combat areas are large (and hard to navigate without a map) but I appreciate the one-by-one sequential stage approach. So instead of one large interconnected map, the bite sized chunks are much easier to digest and align better with the lower seriousness levels of gameplay. Even with all the jank and comical presentation, Tale of Dark Lands isn’t anything you have not played before, but it is a respectable and appreciated indie dev’s take on the massiveness that is Skyrim.
SCORE: 7.5/10
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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