Dark Sun 1 and 2 RPG Review: Retro Role Playing PC Games

These games featured an overhead, slightly isometric view to show your party as you travelled through cities and open areas. Its use of the mouse, as opposed to the keyboard, also helped make gameplay much more enjoyable. When combat broke out, it went into a highly detailed turn mode involving fighting, spellcasting, and more. You were required to develop strategies for taking on foes, and this made for an incredibly satisfying gaming experience. Although much of how it worked is elementary by today’s standards, the gameplay tactics employed in this game were far greater than anything you could get in a console game.

Although some issues were fixed in patches, neither of these games were ever fully corrected. When the second one was released on the market, you could barely even play the whole thing because of all the technical problems. You also have to keep in mind that these were released before the Internet was such commonplace, and you couldn’t just go to the SSI website and download a patch. Needless to say, these games left a lot of gamers furious, myself included, and SSI sold out shortly after its release.

I always felt like SSI dumped both of these unfinished games on the market just as way to drum up some extra cash because they foresaw the end of their business. That kind of practice is what made video game consoles so big during the transition from DOS to Windows, because people were tired of trying to play buggy computer games. Too bad some companies today still employ the ‘release now and patch later’ business model that really hurts the PC gaming industry as a whole.