Dark Quest 4 – An Enjoyable but Flawed Strategy Romp Through a Hellish Underworld
Dark Quest 4 is a strategy RPG where you must, of course, save the world from an evil sorcerer who’s raising the undead to take over the world. Yeah, raise your hand if you’ve seen this plot before. The focus here is on the gameplay, not the story. You control a band of heroes and set off on various unique quests that have you traversing through dungeons, collecting treasures, and fighting undead chickens. Yes, undead chickens.
Dark Quest 4: Skipping Through Dungeons One Turn at a Time
Developed by Brain Seal Ltd., Dark Quest 4 is a hybrid of a dungeon crawler and a strategy RPG. I am reviewing this game without having played any of the previous Dark Quest games, but judging by their Steam pages, it looks like all the games in the series play similarly. You also don’t need to have played any of the previous games in order to enjoy or understand this game. The story is simple: the evil Gulak is raising the undead to terrorize the world. A band of ten heroes, each of whom has a detailed backstory, set out to stop him.
The gameplay is turn-based, where each character moves a certain number of steps at a time. Fans of tabletop RPGs or strategy RPGs like Fire Emblem should feel at home here. You pick three heroes for each mission and fight your way through various undead enemies such as dwarves, knights, and chickens (yes, chickens), making your way through over thirty unique missions. The game also has card battle elements, since you can purchase various cards that you can carry into battle. They offer healing potions, extra spells, boosts, and other bonuses.
And Speaking of Those Cards . . .
Unfortunately, you need quite a few cards in order to get through many of the missions, and you need money to purchase the cards. This is where the game’s presentation starts to droop. The only way to get money is in treasure chests, and if you fail a mission, you don’t get to keep any of your loot. This means that you might have to replay earlier missions several times in order to obtain enough money for the cards. It can really disrupt the game’s flow. Perhaps if you were rewarded money for completing missions or you could keep the money from failed missions, the game would flow better.
Create Your Own Missions!
One of the coolest elements of Dark Quest 4 is its level editor, where you can create your own missions. I had a great time just playing around with the editor, and it is very intuitive in most aspects. However, the menu for dropping objects isn’t turned on by default. You have to press Tab in order to see the object menu. I seriously thought that the menu hadn’t yet been added to the game before I looked at the Help page and discovered that you needed to press Tab to bring it up. Since people wouldn’t normally think of pressing Tab to bring up the menu, a tutorial would help.
My Final Verdict
I had a lot of fun with Dark Quest 4. The strategy-based battles are engaging, the artwork is appropriately moody, and the soundtrack is great. It’s just a shame that you can’t keep your money from failed battles. The experience would be improved if you didn’t have to replay old missions to fill your coin purse. Still, even with that flaw, the game is a fun time for fans of dungeon crawlers and strategy RPGs. If Dark Quest 4 sounds interesting to you, check out its page on Steam. It’s definitely worth wishlisting.
