The Dark Spire
| The Dark Spire | |
|---|---|
 North American box art | |
| Developer(s) | Success |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Composer(s) | Kenichi Arakawa |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo DS |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing video game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Distribution | Nintendo DS Game Card |
The Dark Spire (known as Genmu no Tō to Tsurugi no Okite (幻霧ノ塔ト剣ノ掟, The Tower of Mist and the Sword of Law) in Japan) is a role-playing game developed by Success for the Nintendo DS. It was released on May 22, 2008 in Japan and April 14, 2009 in North America which was published by Atlus.
Gameplay
The gameplay centers on exploring the namesake dungeon known as the Dark Spire while improving the skills and stats of your characters by gaining experience. An alignment system and a class system are included in The Dark Spire. Your alignment affects who can join your party, what skills can be learned by party members of different classes, and even equipment choices. The Spire is explored in a first-person perspective, and many classical RPG elements are included, such as random encounters and equipment. The player is tasked to find and defeat the Archmage Tyrhung at the top of the Dark Spire and to retrieve a necklace from him.
The Dark Spire is a throwback to old first-person dungeon crawler RPGs, such as The Bard's Tale or Wizardry. As a tribute, the game can be set in a mode which renders graphics and sound/music which could have been produced in a game dating to the late 1980s or early 1990s.[1] The difficulty is based on those of said legacy games in that very little is explained to the player and thus the combat system may seem somewhat chaotic (for example, the weapons and armor do not explain how they mitigate or increase damage output).
Races
It offers four races as you create your own set of characters (maximum of four per party).
- Human- common beings in the world of fantasy. They have the most balanced stats in-game and the player can choose an alignment for them.
- Dwarf- small and stubby creatures with incredible strength, but somehow ugly. Just like the description implies, they are specialized in Strength and their starting alignment is always Lawful.
- Elf- a tall, beautiful and smart race. They are specialized in Intelligence and worthy of handling magic-oriented job classes. Their starting alignment is always Neutral. Two additional sub-races for them; Dark Elves and High Elves can be unlocked through game play by meeting a certain Alignment.
- Halfling- another group of small people. They are mainly specialized in Dexterity, but due to that, they have weak Defenses. Like Humans, they can be assigned with an alignment.
External links
- Official US site
- GameFAQs description
- Metacritic summary
- the Dark Spire wiki
- Japanese website
- Kenichi Arakawa, composer
References
- ↑ "The Dark Spire Review". IGN. Retrieved 5 July 2012.