Throne of Darkness Had Whole Team Fighting and Risking Death. It Was a Diablo and Diablo 2 Clone That Wasn't Afraid to Experiment
Throne of Darkness is a forgotten Diablo 2 competitor with more of the „Devil” DNA than it appears.
Diablo 2 reigned supreme for many years, and even Path of Exile needed multiple updates to gain similar acclaim. Which doesn't mean that over the years there were no attempts to dethrone Blizzard's hit. Some of the more notorious contenders from the early years of the game's reign were Sacred and the slightly earlier Throne of Darkness. This last position is interesting in that studio Climax that developed it was made up of former Blizzard North employees.
They evacuated the legendary company before the release of Diablo 2 to create a game that would do something unique within the hack'n'slash genre. It must be admitted that in some places they achieved extremely interesting results.
Diablo in Japanese
Although in terms of general presentation Throne of Darkness strongly resembles Diablo - through its color scheme and isometric view - it nevertheless sets the action in feudal Japan, when the local nobility fought for power and influence. Generally, the plot turns out to be as simple as a sledgehammer - an evil Daimyo transforms into a demonic creature, causes a permanent eclipse of the Sun, and unleashes an army of the dead on the land. Our lord's castle is being attacked, we are gathering a team of seven samurai, like in Kurosawa's movie, and we are setting off to save the surrounding lands.
There's enough story to keep the combat from feeling like it's floating in a vacuum, but I feel like more could have been squeezed out of its simplicity. Although many NPCs – as well as our samurai, although they speak little – have been fully voiced, the NPCs lack the charisma we encountered in Diablo and Diablo 2. And it was that very charisma that made us more imbued with the mood of danger and more concerned about the events in which we participate or which we clean up after. Here, you won't feel the intensity that is important for some hack'n'slash players. Nobody really quotes Throne of Darkness and probably nobody will.
Nonetheless, the game makes up for it with atmosphere. Some people complain that this darkness can be too monotonous, but if you like the first or third act of Diablo 2, you will feel at home here. The audiovisual presentation also holds up after years, if we appreciate isometric games. Even the pixels don't sting the eyes too much. While the animations aren't as fluid and fleshy as those in Diablo 2, the combat is responsive and punchy enough to be satisfying. I would even say that it provides a bit more fun than the much more technologically advanced and generally larger Sacred.
Seven Samurai
The biggest difference compared to Diablo and many other hack'n'slash games is that we lead a party into combat. We have a total of seven killers at our disposal, and at any given moment we actively manage a four-person party. We have 7 character classes available (leader, berserker, fencer, mage, ninja, archer, and the tank-like "brick"), and the appropriate selection of a strike party enables us to cut through enemy hordes faster and gives a certain satisfaction that stems from good planning. Especially if we set up the basic form of behavior well - at once we control one of the warriors, the rest are controlled by the AI.
Here lies the biggest novelty and the biggest headache of Throne of Darkness. On the one hand, it's interesting that we have a whole party of equal heroes to support ourselves, and not just an additional mercenary, like in Diablo, because it increases the number of tactical options. In combat we lose some of the fun of chopping, because if we have well-planned equipment, skills, formation, and tactics - our remaining 3 samurai will take care of things on their own, and sometimes we won't even have time to reach the target.
Sometimes there is such chaos on the screen that we don't know what to click, especially when at this pace of combat we have to watch over four characters instead of one. It must be admitted that especially at the beginning, enemies can wipe out most of the party and we have to save ourselves with a heroic escape to fight another day. In the somewhat newer Dungeon Siege, party combat definitely worked more smoothly. Technically, you can play solo, but Throne of Darkness is not particularly balanced for that and most likely we will get be handed a big, fat L.
And it must be admitted that at the beginning, managing the statistics, skills, and equipment of four (actually seven) warriors can be overwhelming, but we quickly learn and get used to it. Especially since the game focuses on compactness and mobility of economy mechanics. We have instant access to resurrect fallen warriors, crafting, and priest services almost at any time from the Daimyo menu (of course, we can sometimes go back to the palace to automatically heal the entire team - this also has its value).
This greatly affects the gameplay dynamic and is essentially a very convenient solution that would also work well in many other action RPGs. A few clicks and you have everything clean like in a Diablo backpack. Especially since crafting has replaced typical weapon trading and the value we get after getting rid of unnecessary equipment corresponds to the value of the equipment we can get from the blacksmith.
It is also worth adding that there are really a lot of crafting combinations for strengthening equipment - we have large and small gems, which enhance our weapon in various ways (the former have a varying number of slots). Mechanically, buffs in Throne of Darkness often present a choice - one big bonus and one tiny one, or five small but diversified ones? The skills unfortunately do not overwhelm creativity, but they provide enough diversity that we want to progress our character to the very end. Either ours or the game's.
Generally, character customization is one of the greatest joys that Throne of Darkness can provide. Interestingly, the characters gain experience for the amount of damage they inflict on their opponents, not just for being present during the massacre. Thanks to this, there is no option for a cheap taxi, where one experienced killer carries a bunch of logs standing far from the action - here everyone has to fight and put themselves at risk.
Is seven already a crowd?
I don't know if with all these really cool and convenient options, the gfame by Click Entertainment wouldn't be better if we were only controlling one warrior or, I don't know, three. Throne of Darkness would probably lose some of its underlying uniqueness. Not to mention that the team balancing the gameplay would probably go gray - if, for example, a game was made so that the difficulty level scales to the size of the active party.
Throne of Darkness also offered intriguing multiplayer options – a sort of “king of the hill” game. Each of the players (up to four) chooses one of the clans, which overall is a cosmetic decision. Then we try to defeat the evil Daimyo from the original campaign as quickly as possible. Whoever succeeds becomes the new master, who controls the undead counterparts of our samurai. And the others are supposed to defeat him. This type of gameplay is quite long, it's not a typical co-op like Diablo 2, but it brings an interesting change.
As you can see, Throne of Darkness was full of quite interesting ideas that diversified the typical action RPG hack-and-slash formula. Not all of them, however, had a positive impact on the gameplay and they did not always mesh together in a good way. Nonetheless, it's an interesting representative of those times.
How to play Throne of Darkness today?
Today, you can get the game for little money on GOG (it costs $6.22) and it will run without any problems on PCs with Windows 10 (that's what I have). So if you're looking for something Diablo-esque but want it served in a different sauce, Throne of Darkness would be a pretty decent proposition. If you show it a little patience, that is.
