Darklands

Darklands is a historical fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by MicroProse in 1992 for MS-DOS. The game is set in the Holy Roman Empire during the 15th century. While the geographic setting is historically accurate, the game features many supernatural elements. Darklands received mixed reviews upon release, with praise for its historical detail and open-ended gameplay but criticism directed at its numerous bugs and repetitive nature. In recent years the game's reception has been more positive. It was later re-released on GOG.com and Steam with support for Linux, MacOS, Windows OS. Gameplay Darklands features an early example of open world gameplay in role-playing video games. The player is free to complete quests that will give them a positive reputation, or to pursue a negative reputation by performing evil deeds. The player's reputation may vary across geographic boundaries, allowing the player to be simultaneously hated in one region and exalted in another. The setting for Darklands is medieval Europe. All of the cities that one's party may visit in the game are real places that existed in the Holy Roman Empire of the 15th century. Most are in modern-day Germany, but some are within the modern borders of other countries in Western and Central Europe, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland. The cities are referred to in the game by their Old German names, some of which are now exonyms; the new local names are given in parentheses.