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HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE GAME!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 20
Date: October 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

I cannot describe how boring this game is. I played it for 30 mins and uninstalled it immediately. The idea is good, the graphics are great, but the gameplay [isn't good]. In comparison to Diablo II, its annoying enough to manage the equipment and health/mana for one character, much less for four at a time, then having to worry about "teleporting" your other characters to the healing area and then teleporting them back. I picked up this game hoping it would be a mix between Diablo II and Baldur's Gate II, but its nothing near that. I obviously recommend staying away from this pitiful pitiful game, where you "control four characters", but can only truly control one at a time while the AI takes control of the others, and they go running off at a monster unless you change the stance, although that doesn't always help.

Bring a book!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 04, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Okay, perhaps I'm a tiny bit spoiled by having played all of the Baldur's Gate titles, expansions, etc., but I found this game to be really, REALLY slow. I often found myself reading while the daimyo healed my characters. The characters would be healed, then hacked to bits within 3 minutes, back to the daimyo to begin the cycle anew. Geez! I agree with a previous critique, the sorcerer is worthless. I do however, like the little dance he does when he dies! While creating new types of armor is slightly interesting, it really drags after a time.

I recently saw that Amazon now has this title is cheaper than what I paid for it.

ratings

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 29
Date: September 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I have NEVER played this game, but if you like your characters played by a computer and not have the ability to plan your battles, by all means get this game. I hated Dark Stone and Vampire because of this horrible feature and died repeatedly.

I would rather play Diablo 2 expansion

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: January 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game is not so great. You start off in a shrine room and have to work your way through the other three clans citadels. This game did not have a very good plot to it and they even showed you the trail at which you must travel on to get to the next area which i found too easy for my liking. Once you get to the last citadel you have to fight the last boss which proved to be very simple. I found that the only character that is good is the swordsman, the other characters die to fast and i am very unhappy with that. They made the swordsman so weak taht u can barely even play with him cause you dies so much. It can be fun making and customizing new items but it gets boring after a short amount of time actually. The graphics are pretty clear but cartoonish and the videos in this game are very entertaining to watch because they are so bad. I looked forward to playing this game and the first time i played it i found it to be a waste of time and money. Do not be fooled by the way this game sounds it is not great and doesn't even deserve 3 stars.I woudl reccomend Diablo 2 Expansion over this title any day.

Boring

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Just another Diablo clone with a twist, you get a whole bunch of characters. You can teleport them in and out of your dojo to the battlefield so they can heal or fight. I just couldn't get into it. Played it a few times, then put it away.

Fun, but very little replayability.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: October 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I highly enjoyed this game, but found that little changed if you choose a different Dimayo to play after finishing the first game. Still, I had fun and for the price I paid for the game, you can't beat it.

Pretty good but true RPGs are better

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 10, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Pretty good, but more plot and a more complex game would be better. There is no depth it is just kill people who attack. You can only control one person in your group at a time a major weak point.

So so.....

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: January 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

You move from one place to another (Zzzzzzz). The combat takes place too rapidly to interact with. I like the Japanese influence but gameplay is rather boring. You move your guys.. click on the enemy.. they kill them.. you move on. Whoopeee!
You're really better off saving your money unless you really like Japanese stuff. I'll give it three stars because the graphics don't suck.

This game is damn cool...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 15
Date: September 13, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Okay, not only did they get me by the japanese setting alone, but once I got my Beta test CD in the mail and installed this game i was instantly blown away by the beautiful artwork that was put into this game... I still can't get over how pretty it is...

Anyway, eye candy aside, the game plays pretty quickly and most battles are just a bloody mess... It took me a little while to get used to switching through all my Samurai during a battle to make sure they all cast the right defensive or offensive spells, and then it's a clicking i go!!!

I love the death animations in this game... definitely lots of blood...

The thing that really got me though, is once I had enough money I could take all of these monster parts and gems and such that I had been collecting, and totally customize all my weapons and armor!!! I can't believe how hardcore some of these things can be!!! Can you make a weapon in diablo that inflicts 4 kinds of elemental damage while draining health and mana from your enemies as well as boosting your character stats?!?!! And that's stuff I made before I was even 10th level!!!!

Tons of monsters, more spells than I could ever use, plus the spell effects and sounds are great!

I'm so stoked I'm helping out to make this a better game, but I tell you now this game's gonna rock!!!

Nihon no Diablo

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: November 04, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game merges two of my favorite things on the world: ancient Japan and Computer RPG. Now that I've played it, I'm forced to wonder why it took so long. With a market saturated with sword and sorcery type RPG's, one set in ancient Japan seems like a pleasant alternative. The similarities are obvious enough. Ninja and Samurai are cool enough to stand on their own along with the Japanese derivatives of all those fantasy staples.

One reviewer noted that the demo version doesn't do this game any justice. I totally agree with that statement. It was that review which prompted me to give Throne of Darkness a try. It's unfortunate, but the demo doesn't even scratch the surface, and whether the makers realize it or not, demos influence people to buy games. It's almost better to have no demo than a poor or insufficient one.

Complaints: First, the interface suffers from a lot of the things that Diablo and Diablo 2 suffered from in my opinion. Supposedly the key creators of this game created the original Diablo, and you can tell. For the most part, combat can be reduced to a furious, cluttered click-fest devoid of any real tactics during battle. This is one of the reasons why I never learned to love the Diablo games. Compared to the Baldur's Gate series and all the Black Isle games, Diablo lacked any real RPG depth. "Click-click-click", Level up, "click-click-click", boring. If it weren't for a few saving graces, Throne of Darkness would suffer the same fate, but the devil is in the details, something the creators went to great lengths to improve upon.

Second, I like creating my own characters from scratch, and you aren't afforded that opportunity with ToD. With 7 samurai (an obvious number) to choose from, it's easy to forgive this slight. Also, statistically, there isn't much to the characters. Leveling up provides some variety amongst the characters, but you can only put points in one of 4 stats, so there isn't much strategy or skill to advancing. Again, this was another big flaw Diablo had for me. Compared to the Fallout series and all the D&D based games, there isn't much to the characters themselves.

While the major flaws of the game can be compared to Diablo, it's the strengths that make it completely different and a far better game in my opinion. While the fast pace and constant clicking of Diablo grows boring fast, having 4 samurai in the party at any given time combined with a pretty sophisticated tactical editor provide a lot more variety than you would think. There are approximately 12-16 pre-generated tactical formations based on different animals: turtle, tiger, scorpion etc. I find myself toying with them more and more to find that "sweet-spot". Combine the different formations, with the different combinations of characters and there is a lot more variety at play than at first glance. You can also manually create your own formations which you do by altering each characters personal stance, which affects aggressiveness, and weapon or magic assignment.

One of the cooler aspects of the game is the Daimyo interface. There are four Daimyo in the game for you to choose from, all of which come from the warring states period just prior to the unification of Japan, but that's where any real historical reality ends. The Daimyo give orders, resurrect characters, and heal the injured while they wait. The Daimyo also has a priest and blacksmith working for him which have a multitude of functions.

The blacksmith, by far, presents one of the coolest features of the game. In addition to fixing broken armor and weapons, and the weaker weapons seem to break every 5 minutes, he can also make new weapons, and even customize weapons by combining them with strange objects looted off of creatures. There's actually more strategy to customizing each weapon to each character than you might think, or at least there's as much as you put into it. There are items based on the four elements which enhance the items, and then there are items that enhance the enhancements. You can spend hours finding combinations and can come up with some really cool items.

With seven characters to choose from at any one time, over a dozen fully customizable formations, and possibly hundreds of weapons to create, combined with all that fast-action combat (the only good thing to come from Diablo) this is already a game worth playing, but it's the whole "Japan" angle that keeps me involved. I guess if you don't find ancient Japan and things like Samurai and Ninja interesting, or have never seen a Kurasawa flick in your life, you might not be attracted to this game. If you have, it's probably the biggest reason to buy it. The game stands on its own as a premier dungeon-crawler (sorry, there isn't much RPG involved here), but replacing knights with Samurai, thieves with Ninja, and swords with Katana (ok, technically they're the same thing if you've never actually held one) is what makes the game such a blast to play.

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