Wave of Darkness is a hack n' slash action RPG similar to the Diablo series. There is lots of loot, enemies, and exploration. You can craft your own spells with the runes you find. There is also a simple harvest and crafting system where you have to find recipes and ingredients.
At first, the controls were a little tricky, but after I remapped the keys and sped up the mouse, it became much more manageable. The game gives virtually no guidance after the short tutorial, leaving exploration and discovery entirely to you. This can be very fun, but at the same time can often leave the players with a feeling of confusion about what they're even doing in this world.
I love the openness of the game. You can go virtually anywhere so long as you find a way there and are able to survive. After discovering spells, I was leaving town when I saw a broken bridge and some interesting enemies across the river. You will begin to drown in deep water, so I found the narrowest part of the river I could and ran through the river. I emerged on the other side almost dead from drowning when I was attacked by a skeleton. I quickly blasted it with a fire spell, and it went down. I allowed myself to rest before slowly heading forth. The creatures here were 15+ levels above me, so I had to be sure to destroy them with spells before they reached me. Eventually, I came to some sort of shrine where I found a powerful ring which I sold for 1000 gold (at this point, selling an item for 1 gold was a big deal).
Not every location is loaded with treasure, which is nice. I found a frozen grove with wolves and some sort of ice creature. I searched the entire area, and I don’t believe I found any loot. So while most of the time loot seems a little too easy to come by, this is not always the case.
Combat is fairly simplistic. Target the creature and get close enough to swing your weapon. Spells are very powerful; I found myself fighting monsters 20+ levels above me using spells; creatures just a couple levels above me were giving me trouble with melee. It is fun to craft your own spells, though you may quickly find your packs getting overloaded with runes! These spells gain levels with use, and the only limit to how many you can create is the number of runes you possess and how much backpack space is remaining (each spell takes a backpack slot).
While loot is plentiful, after 9 hours of playing, I have only found one or two items that are better than what I started with. This is not necessarily bad; I like the idea that more powerful items are rare. After all, how many fantasy books have you read where the protagonist changes his weapon every other battle?
The crafting system is somewhat frustrating. There appear to be hundreds of recipes, but so far I have only found the ingredients to make a few of them, and most of the time the item is useless to me. I had to start selling a lot of the recipes and crafting components as my packs are getting full, even with over 400 slots! However, I was able to craft a weapon that is better than what I was using.
Speaking of packs, you can eventually get a lot of backpack space. There are 15 pack “types”, each of which can be upgraded to 70 slots (for a total of 1050 slots).
There are some odd visual bugs. Sometimes, after killing an enemy with a spell, the enemy remains standing in place as though I were casting a taxidermy spell. Even when the bodies fall, if they were in the middle of an action when the spell hit, they would fall a few moments later. Skeletons all seem to be female since they let out a feminine scream when they die. It would be nice to be able to jump or climb since I have gotten stuck on ledges and had to reload. However, I have yet to find anything that would break the game or ruin my enjoyment of it.
Overall I would say the game is fun if redundant. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes hack ‘n slash action with strong character development.
