Dark Ages

Yes, I decided to review yet ANOTHER MMORPG. Why? Because I'm an idiot- I thought I'd find an MMORPG that cured the cancer of repetitive, un-fun gameplay. I was so freaking wrong.

Dark Ages is an isometric pixel-based MMORPG based on... you guessed it, the Middle Ages. Because no-one has done that before. Hell, even Furcadia had this down better than Dark Ages. You literally start out in a forest with a generic cloak and a staff and begin hitting... s*** that looks like squirrels. Yeah, this is an MMORPG all right.

The game is absolutely horrific to play. To play, you basically move around by clicking where you want to move (irritating and hard) or using the arrow-keys (off balance and slow). As well, to attack, you either have to repeatedly click the "Attack" icon in your abilities menu, or hit space bar. Did I mention the servers suck, so doing any of this takes about 5-6 seconds to process and then act? I could literally move to an enemy and it not be there anymore. When I finally got to it, it moved away before I could hit it. Damnit...



The GUI in this game (The parts of the screen like HP, MP, and other miscellaneous controls and gauges) SUCKS. Trying to find the equip screen (Hint: There is none, you double click items in your inventory. That took me two minutes to figure out..) is like trying to find a pretty woman in Saudi Arabia- they're all covered, you'll never find it. There are no tooltips, so the only way to find out what-does-what is to click it. Just hope you don't trigger and drop your only s***ty weapon, because by the time you figure it out, someone will have stolen it from the floor where you dropped it.

As well, this game is an RP game, so you're always expected to be stuck in Character. That's kind of hard when you and basically everyone else in the vicinity is a level 1 noob-ass with the same old clothing. Because of that, this game is really not for the casual gamer. Even the NPCs have this really stupid acting, kinda like a D&D game where everyone's drunk (The only way to play). Just trust me, unless you're into the heavy Knights-and-Dragons kind of games, then this won't interest you. Actually, if you're into that, there's a game like this that doesn't suck ass: Everquest I or II. And both of those games basically teabag this game into submission.



Dark Ages gets one star for only one small thing- I was impressed by the pixel graphics. While tiled, they look great, which was part of the hook to get me to play the game. Unfortunately, you can tell where graphic designer ended and programmer started, even to the point where program-level stuff (Like the HP bar over an enemy) looks extremely ugly, whereas the stuff they could control (like the GUI) looks like a pixel artist had fun with it. Doesn't help how horrible it is to use, but still.



Overall, Dark Ages was a good idea, and I bet a lot of people who like pixel graphics and old style RPGs would like this. However, the genre is old, the gameplay is horrible, the lag is unbearable, and the people playing it are just plain wierd. You could do much better by paying monthly fees to Everquest and playing it (Ironically, Dark Ages has fees too, so don't think it's the cheaper alternative). Trust me: Everquest does this much better, go play it. This is basically Furcadia with an RPG overtone, and you'll realize it when you waste your time with this game.

1 star(s) out of 5

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