A blast from the past, updated for the present
Many of you may remember playing wizardry on your old home micros back in the 1980's, and then moving onto consoles and forgetting the time when RPGs were hard as nails, and obtuse as all hell. The Dark Spire is here to remind gamers that RPGs can be a challenging genre, and this game does it in style. This package is excellent value for money, with a cd soundtrack worth listening to, and a game that you will undoubtedly sink hundreds of hours into, as you go dungeon crawling and uncovering many, many secrets. The manual is abit obtuse, as it doesn't say anything about the extra classes and races you can unlock, but it's nothing that a short internet voyage, or afew hours of gameplay can't unearth. If you are used to games like final fantasy and dragonquest, then prepare to be reeducated, grinding is far more pronounced in this game than in any other rpg of recent release. You will die, alot, but you will also learn from your mistakes and keep slogging until you have crafted a perfect group of adventurers. Quests are imaginitive and varied, and range from killing bandits to erasing graffiti from walls, theres loot aplenty, but 9/10 treasure chests are trapped, and require the use of a thief to disarm them. The fighting is turnbased, and can get rather strategic and hectic later on, when 20 to 40 monsters are smashing you to oblivion. My favourite addition is the much advertised 'classic mode', which morphs the games passable visuals into an oldschool wireframed masterpiece, with 8-bit style music to match. It also gives one an excuse to play through it more than once, just to see the dungeon from both old and new perspective, although if you get bored or confused, you can change the graphical style at will. The only criticism i can think of, is the brutal difficulty, but depending on what kind of gamer you are, you may love the extra challenge, i know i did. More games like The Dark Spire need to be made, it is perfect for a long trip, or a short bash at the bus stop, and I can't recommend it highly enough, and the fact that you don't have to wait an eternity for a tape to load the game, unlike the bards tale, or wizardry, makes it even better, BUY THIS GAME!
