Darkeden is a classic MMORPG with a dark and horror theme. The game depicts a war among 3 major races, Vampires, Slayers and Outsters, which is set in a fantasy eastern European location. It is primarily a hack&slash game, which requires players to kill outstanding amounts of enemies, much like in the original Diablo. It is one of the oldest MMO games still available today.
To enter the game world you need to create a character. You get to choose from the 3 distinct classes and you can even further customize them a bit. Each class is unlike the others. Everything from the skill progression system, to the items they are allowed to use, and even the interface design is significantly different. This is a very nice feature even for today's standards, and considering that the game was first released in 1997, it is simply outstanding.
The game mechanics and overall artwork are almost identical to that of Diablo, one of the most popular hack&slash games of all time. The bad part about all this is that, everything is seriously outdated. The gameplay feels slow and the experience rate is even slower. A lot of grinding is required to get to higher levels. The good thing about the game being this old, is that over time the developer has added loads of new content to the game. There are a lot of different items, quests and creeps, meaning that you can spend a really long time exploring some new stuff. The bad part about all this content is that the game doesn't have a quest helper, or a guidance system. After you accept a quest you'll be left on your own with nothing but a description of where you're supposed to go. This is how it was done back in the classic time of RPG's, players were left to do it all by themselves. It makes questing rather difficult, and when you combine that with the experience grinding, it doesn't make the gameplay fun at all.
Darkeden was at one point in time one of the best MMORPG's, however new players might find its features obsolete for today's standards. It is however a pretty nice game, and old-school players who enjoy these types of games will most likely like this one.
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