Darkstone Demo

The Diablo series has managed to spawn countless spinoffs and clones over the years, due to its phenomenal success and huge fan base that still stands strong, even today. However, not many of these clones managed to rise to the expectations, whether due to gameplay flaws, or just because they cannot provide the same variety and atmosphere as Diablo did.

Darkstone is an isometric RPG in which you get to go on a lengthy quest against the greatest evil that ever walked the land: Draak, who has joined forces with his good buddy Death. In order to stop them from destroying the world and everyone else with it, a few brave adventurers decide to rise against the forces of darkness, using a combination of power, skill and magic to do so.

Hence, the game tells the story of the many perils your characters must go through in order to stop the villains, since they have to find seven powerful crystals in order to stand a chance against Death itself when the time comes. However, the stones are spread all across the realm, as it is customary with such powerful items, which means that the journey might take a while and it will be more difficult that you might expect.

Gameplay-wise, everything evolves as you would expect it to, considering the fact that everything is oriented toward combat and action, rather than question and extensive dialogue trees. Hence, after you choose two characters between which you alternate over the course of the story, you basically start killing everything that happens to stand in front of you along the way.

Finally, the game may show its age a bit when it comes to visual quality, although it is only fair, considering the fact that more than a decade has passed since the game was released. However, as long as you can get it to run on newer hardware, you can easily get past the blocky characters and the poor texture quality, since most of your attention will be focused on surviving wave after wave of vicious monsters.

Despite the fact that Darkstone is not exactly a masterpiece when it comes to gameplay and story, it can be quite fun and addictive, especially if you are a fan of the genre. The large collection of weapons and items that can be found should give you enough incentive to keep on massacring the mobsters for quite some time.