New Old Game Review: Darkrise

I’m a sucker for side scrolling retro games. Hook, line, and pixelated sinker.

So while I was burning 10 minutes the other day I went to ChatGPT and asked it what game I should play. My prompt included phrases like, “Recommend something that doesn’t suck” and “It’s ok if it’s an older game I just want something to play.” Rounded it out with “Oh and if it has some dimensionality to it – not the worst thing in the world.”

Bam. Darkrise.

So I thought I’d put thoughts to finger tips and write an initial review. I’m not a fan of hot takes as a lot of them are just hot garbage or hot roasted shit shows. I am a fan, however, of Darkrise.

Sometimes I want to just hold a button down and watch baddies die.

Emphasis on Sometimes. Sure I’m a pixelated mage/witch/caster, but I’m a mean mage/witch/caster. Like she puts some stank on those bolts. The buttons to cast are on the right side of phone, and unfortunately, they get in the way of actually seeing what I’m casting at. If scrolling right to left it’s not as big of a deal as the directional arrows are on the left side and there are 2 buttons to almost 10 on the right side. So not the greatest experience, but it doesn’t detract from wanting to play the game.

Questing is what I thought it would be.

Go here and get that. Bring those things back and talk with someone. It all works. There’s not much depth to the story, and I don’t know why my magewitchcaster has so much hatred in her heart for forest creatures, or why they have so much hate in their hearts for poor little me, but it’s ok because they’re typically dead before I could ask them.

Traveling is fast and I think that’s ok?

I wouldn’t want to have to side scroll through every town or level just to get back to somewhere, so I think this is the right physic. I also don’t mind a traditional loading screen a la Mass Effect. I don’t really know what I would expect differently. One weird thing though is that i was at level 8 and somehow had to fight through a forest of peeps from 20+ to progress. Took me a bunch of zone in/out, spam bolts, run out while grabbing as much XP as possible. But that was ok. Odds are I just missed a beat and jumped somewhere I shouldn’t have. Like Deadwind Pass back in Vanilla WoW.

Having fun so far. I’ll report back more as I find little pockets of time to kill. Definitely worth a download and play if you’re like me and want some pixelated fun!