Dark Sun: Shattered Lands: Summary and Rating

 

The box showcases a mul gladiator, a race and class unique to the setting.

       

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands

United States

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Released1993 for DOS

Date Started: 2 October 2021

Date Ended: 2 January 2022

Total Hours: 37

Difficulty: Easy-Moderate (2.5/5)

Final Rating: 64

Ranking at Time of Posting: 441/444 (99%)

    

Summary:

    

Dark Sun is an axonometric, continuous-movement, multi-character RPG with turn-based combat. It is set in the Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting of the same name, with rules drawn from AD&D's second edition. A party of four characters must escape life as gladiators and survive on a post-apocalyptic desert planet ruled by insane sorcerer-kings. The main quest involves uniting three villages of escaped slaves to defy the city-state of Draj, but there are a couple dozen side quests, both long and short, offering some of the most complex NPCs, dialogue options, and roleplaying choices of the era. Poor sales and corporate politics prevented this game from enjoying its rightful legacy, which draws from SSI's previous Gold Box games and anticipates the Infinity Engine titles of the end of the decade.

 

***

 

Perhaps the most notable thing about Dark Sun is the degree to which I would like to replay it. Among the previous 433 games, I've encountered some that I've identified as "replayable" and a few that I've actually replayed, but the former cases were mostly theoretical and the latter ones were so short that the replays didn't significantly delay my progress (e.g., Quest for Glory). Dark Sun is different. The game is enjoyable and varied enough that I don't really want to leave it, yet long enough that I must.

      

There are three things that make me want to stay with the game for another round. The first is to experience it again with different classes. Some commenters have criticized my party composition. Some of these criticisms have been worded a little obnoxiously, but the point is fair. The setting offers an entirely new race (thri-kreen) and an entirely new magic class (psionicists), but I decided to go with a more traditional party composition that would have been at home in the Forgotten Realms. Normally, I wouldn't do that. I'm not sure why I was so conservative this time.

    

The second reason is the enormous number of spells that I never cast. The developers did an admirable job programming dozens--perhaps hundreds--of spell animations and effects, and I must have only used about nine of them. I don't feel that I've achieved anywhere near the expertise with the magic system the way I felt after a couple of Gold Box games. The game itself discouraged a lot of spell use by making melee classes so powerful, so in a replay I suspect I'd try an all-spellcasting party.

   

Third, and perhaps most important, Dark Sun offers probably more role-playing choices than any other game to date. There is a nice mix of them, too. Some are about good and evil, but others are about combat versus noncombat solutions to problems, or aggression versus guile. Even the large-scale choice about the direction you choose to explore the game world makes a big difference in how you experience the game. Alas, I have to substitute your experiences for my own in these areas. 

         

Role-playing dialogue options (rather than simple information-gathering ones) are not a wholly new concept, but I think Dark Sun is the first RPG to fully realize them.

      

There are three major areas in which this otherwise-excellent game left me unsatisfied. The first is with, of course, the level caps. Two of my characters had no room to develop for half the game. I frankly prefer it when games have no level caps at all, but I recognize that's hard to do with a ruleset like Dungeons & Dragons. If there are level caps, then, I want them to be unachievable for all but the grindiest of players. If even that isn't possible, then the level caps should not be hit until near the end of the game. Multi-classing should confer an honest penalty rather than serving as a strategy to ensure the character will always have room to grow.

   

The second negative area is the economy. One commenter opined that I might have thought it more useful with a psionicst, as you can apparently purchase psionic rings to enhance your powers. I'm not sure I agree that would have made a huge difference, as you also find plenty of such rings. What frustrates me the most about the economy is that there were at least a couple obvious solutions: first, have your man on the plateau sell spell scrolls. I've never played a D&D game so stingy with its mage spells. In both the Gold Box and Infinity Engine games, you can always count on plenty of scrolls to teach you the spells that you don't select while leveling up. Here, there are only about six of them. 

      

Another possibility would have been to tie the economy to a survival element. If you're going to introduce a world in which "water is more valuable than gold," then prove it by making us pay through the nose for a drink. I've mentioned the lack of survival elements several times. It's not that I particularly want to have to worry about food, water, and shelter when I play a game. In fact, when these elements are done poorly, they can really ruin a game. In this case, though, the very setting almost demands it.

        

"Shattered" or not, I can spend as long as I want wandering these lands with no fear of hunger, thirst, or exposure.

    

I had mixed feelings about the game's graphics. There's no question that, overall, they were good--a huge step forward from the empty areas and repetitive textures of the Gold Box. No previous top-down game except perhaps Ultima VII has featured this level of hand-crafted detail. Most maps offered at least one set piece worth stopping gameplay just to look at, which is perhaps the very definition of "good graphics." Some of the area- or event-transition screens are particularly well done. And yet there was an extent to which they just didn't work for me. Part of the problem is the perspective, which is neither top down nor entirely angled. The game wants to have it both ways, using inconsistent perspective angles, sometimes on the same scene. Most of the time, we view the action on a single north/south axis of rotation; I think axonometric perspectives are almost always better when rotated on two axes, so you're facing the world from either the southwest or southeast.

   

The bigger issue for me had to do with the age-old issue of trying to accomplish too much with too few pixels. My colorblindness always plays a role in such assessments, so your mileage may vary. To me, this is the sort of game where I'm always talking to bushes because I mistake them for people, trying to pick up piles of straw because I mistake them for gold. I admire that the game reaches for a next level when it comes to graphical detail, but I don't think it could achieve what it wanted to achieve without SVGA resolutions. I don't want to make too much of this, though, because I agree it's close.

 

This is a really cool statue. Now is that bulge on the ground beneath it something I can pick up or just decoration? Are those people or cactuses in the lower-left?

       

Anyone upset with my using an exploit to win the final battle will be happy to know that I did win it legitimately, although I couldn't do it without losing my preserver/druid one time and my ranger/thief another. I discovered three things in my continuing investigations:

   

• If you don't use the genie just before the final battle, the first wave of enemies is a bunch of daggorans, earth elementals, and scorpions. After you defeat them, you get what I described as the "first wave" last time.

• The game does use dexterity in its calculation of initiative. When I hex-edited my characters to 25 dexterity, they all went first in the final combat. Prior to hex-editing, the maximum dexterity I had was 20, and everyone went last, so the sweet spot is somewhere in between.

• Area-effect spells do remain on the screen in between combats.

    

The "first battle" that using the genie manages to avoid.

     

That last point is what allowed me to win. After the relatively easy initial battle, while one enemy was still alive, I filled the field with every negative area-effect spell I could think of: "Grease," "Wall of Fog," "Web," "Entangle," and a summoned fire elemental. "Entangle," as Wonko offered, turned out to be the most useful of the lot, keeping the elite guards out of melee range. My summoned enemies rarely lasted more than a round, but I kept summoning new ones, occupying the attention of the archers and spellcasters while I slowly picked off the enemies with arrows, spells, and usable items. My ranger/thief had a necklace that cast "Disintegrate," which I under-prized in my last attempt. I managed to nail the army commander with that on the first round. The only real problem was that spell effects on the field prevent you from casting other area-effect spells in the same place, so I could only "Fireball" and "Ice Storm" the fringes of the battlefield.

     

Enemies in the final battle advance over a field of whatever I could throw at them.

      

I expect the game to rival the best Gold Box games in the GIMLET. Let's see.

   

1. Game World. While the Dark Sun setting is not anywhere near as popular as the Forgotten Realms, I found it paradoxically more accessible for that reason. There is an extent to which games set in the Realms expect you to have some existing knowledge of the world, whereas I felt the manual for Dark Sun told me everything I needed from the start. Compare the first paragraph of the manuals for Pool of Radiance and Dark Sun:

   

[Pool of Radiance]: To most inhabitants of the lands of the Inner Sea, the Moonsea and its cities represent the border between civilization and barbarism. The Moonsea sits like a great plug straddling the territory between the Mountains of Vaasa and the Nomad Steppes, protecting the southern territories from the incursions of savage Northerners. To the south of the Moonsea lie the civilized lands of Cormyr and Sembia. To the north lay hundreds of square miles of cold and unforgiving wastes. Even when the southern kingdoms are themselves besieged by orcish hordes, dragons, and fell monsters, they take comfort in the fact that, "It's worse around the Moonsea."

[Dark Sun]: Athas, the world of Dark Sun, was once as pleasant as any other. But, after many thousands of years, powerful mages found ways to gain power through draining the planet's vitality. At their zenith, these wizards caused the sun to transform from a pleasant yellow glow to a ranging crimson fireball on the horizon. The seas evaporated and were replaced by huge basins of silt.

   

The Dark Sun manual starts you at 30,000 feet and zooms in on the city of Draj, whereas the Pool of Radiance manual starts you at street level. There are literary virtues in the latter approach, but it's not very helpful for someone who doesn't know that the Moonsea is on the continent of Faerûn, which is geographically and ethnically varied. Subsequent paragraphs don't help. By the end of the Pool introduction, the first-time visitor to Faerûn is lost, whereas by the end of the Dark Sun opening, the player understands the basic cultural, religious, and political situations on Athas.

   

Of the two, Dark Sun also shows the most originality. I know it's not wholly original, of course; the basic concept goes back to Vance's Dying Earth novels, and many of the place names and tropes are drawn from Mesoamerican mythology and culture. Regardless, we haven't played many CRPGs in such places.

   

There are ways in which Dark Sun doesn't make the most of its setting. The presence of the "sorcerer-king" is never really felt in the game (in fact, he's mysteriously absent); the world never felt like a sun-scorched hellscape in which we struggled to survive; and it did seem a little unrealistic that a couple of slave towns could defy the armies of an entire civilization. However, I did enjoy the largely-new selection of monsters, the limited exposure I had with psionics, and typing names like "Teaquetzl." I also appreciated how the game reacted to my party's accomplishment, changing dialogues and encounters appropriately. A strong category. Score: 8.

       

My final "world map." It seems bigger when you're playing.

            

2. Character Creation and Development. It is certainly one of the better Dungeons & Dragons titles when it comes to party creation. Different party compositions face very different games, both mechanically and thematically. I appreciated options like thri-kreen and psionicists even if I didn't pick them. As usually happens during the first nine D&D levels, you do get notably hardier and deadlier as you level up. However, the level caps really hurt my enjoyment of this category, and I'm getting sick of magic-users having the only choices during leveling. Score: 6.

      

My party leader earned 647,744 experience. She hit her last level at 300,000. And you can't multi-class gladiators, so that was never an option.

    

3. NPC Interaction. A great leap forward in this category, one of few non-Ultima games of the era with actual dialogue options and character personalities. This may in fact be the first game with full-sentence dialogue options that are truly options (in the sense that you can't choose all of them), with associated role-playing connotations. There's still work to be done in all of these elements, but Dark Sun was an important stop along the way. Score: 7.

   

4. Encounters and Foes. Dark Sun is great with serendipitous encounters, many of them unnecessary to the main plot, and as I discussed above, most of them have at least a couple of approaches and options. As for the foes, I'm almost never disappointed by the bestiary of a Dungeons & Dragons game, particularly when it comes with a Monster Manual-style description of each new enemy. The variety of special attacks, defenses, and other characteristics always makes for interesting combat situations. Another great category. Score: 8.

       

The manual's detailed description of a "daggoran."

     

5. Combat and Magic. The turn-based system is an excellent showcase for D&D rules and spells, and if nothing else, I appreciate the sheer number of spell effects and animations programmed into this game. The inclusion of the psionicist class means there's about 33% more than a comparable Gold Box offering. I did find the combat a little too easy (until the end), and there is an extent to which I still prefer the Gold Box, where the grid made it easier to identify obstacles, movement paths, and spell effect areas. Score: 7.

   

6. Equipment. It's okay. About as good as a standard D&D game. Upgrades were regular enough. I appreciated extra slots for arm, leg, and waist items, but the game didn't really use them very often. I was never sure whether I was seeing the negative effects of some items (e.g., some characters are supposed to have penalties with metals). Going in and out of inventory was a bit of a pain, but that's more of an interface issue. Score: 6.

       

My ranger/thief's final backpack. I appreciate the clear statistics.

     

7. Economy. Alas, the game follows the SSI tradition by failing miserably in this category. Throughout the game, you essentially keep acquiring wealth without ever having anything interesting to spend it on. As I pointed out, a selection of spell scrolls in some magic shop would have completely turned this category around while simultaneously adding to the character development and combat options. Any number of other options could have worked, too, such as tying the economy to the survival mechanic or allowing me to pay off the sorcerer-king's guards. Score: 2.

  

8. Quests. Dark Sun is not only one of the few games of the era to recognize the concept of side-quests, it gives you role-playing choices within those side quests. The main quest has only one outcome, alas. Score: 7.

9. Graphics, Sound, and Interface. I had small issues with both graphics and interface. I talked about graphics above. As for the interface, it mostly works. It uses the mouse and keyboard redundantly, and I appreciated the map plus little touches like the weapon statistics and the full descriptions of each spell under the right-mouse button. I still think there should have been an alternative to using the right mouse button to change what the mouse does. It so interrupts the flow of exploration to have to use the mouse to switch between searching, using, and talking, particularly since the action pauses as you do so. (This is something that's hard to articulate; you just have to experience it.) As for sound, the game has some nice effects but doesn't otherwise break any new ground here. Score: 6.

10. Gameplay. Good stuff here: The game is nonlinear within a somewhat small map. It is highly replayable for both different character options and for different encounter choices, and it is well-paced. (I've yet to codify this rule, but I think that a game should last no longer than 2/3 its GIMLET total in hours. Dark Sun hits it precisely.) It is perhaps a little too easy, again except for the first and final battles. A fast travel option was completely unnecessary, and I think maybe the party should only have been able to save at campfires. Score: 7.

   

That gives us a final score of 64. That puts it fourth on my overall list, just a smidge behind Pool of Radiance (65) and, surprisingly, one point ahead of Ultima Underworld (62). I don't think I have any quarrel with that. Dark Sun is an excellent debut, offering as much for its interface style as Underworld did for first-person exploration.

        

I had been looking for the moment when "engine" became a commonly-used term among non-developers. It must have been before this.

     

Some previous comment had given me the idea that despite its qualities, the game didn't review well in its own time, so I was pleased to find that the opposite was true. Curiously, perhaps the worst rating (3/5 stars) comes from the May 1994 issue of Dragon, but this was after the magazine had transitioned the column from the always-sunny Hartley and Patricia Lesser to Sandy Petersen, who seems to have disliked turn-based combat. "You must walk each of your characters around the screen each turn, select the opponents they bash on, fire their missiles, cast their spells, etc. Then, you wait for the opponents to do the same right back to you." To me, that's just a simple description of how turn-based combat works, but Petersen means it pejoratively, calling it "lengthy" and "tedious." He has a good point I didn't make, but agree with, about the difficulty of finding spells by symbols alone. Otherwise, he had praise for the encounter system.

  

Scorpia had a mostly-positive review in the December 1993 Computer Gaming World, but I was a little irked by it anyway. (This is painful, for as much as I fight with Scorpia, I generally go into one of her reviews hoping that she agrees with me.) First is the title: "Good-bye, Gold Box!" This sentiment continues with the second paragraph: "Players familiar with the [Gold Box] games may approach Dark Sun with deep suspicion, thinking it 'more of the same.' Happily, this is not the case." Whoa, whoa there. Look, I'll be the first to agree that the Gold Box engine had some faults and probably needed to be scrapped by 1993, but that doesn't mean we should be talking about it so disrespectfully. "Deep suspicion?!" The Gold Box resulted in a dozen high-quality games over five years, the closest representations of tabletop roleplaying as we had to date. If SSI had released a Gold Box game in 1993 instead of Dark Sun, it would have been a damned good game. Players should be on their knees thanking Ao for the engine, not dancing on its grave.

   

Anyway, her review opens with a series of complaints about the changes to the system rules, such as the assignment of clerics to elemental spheres, the use of different materials for armor, and the lack of armor for druids and thri-kreen. I don't think she understands which of these changes are AD&D second edition rules and which are campaign setting rules, but either way, I think she needed to give them more of a chance. Many first-edition rules seem silly, too. Just because cleric magic worked one way in one setting doesn't make it worse if it works a different way in a different setting. Anyway, she had praise for other changes including gender equality in attributes (no more comparably weaker female fighters) and not having to memorize spells. She has the same complaint I did about lack of spell scrolls to assuage the difficult choices the preserver has to make when leveling up, and she had the same trouble I did with the final battle (plus an additional technical issue I didn't experience). Her summary:

   

[M]y impression of Dark Sun is favorable. SSI is moving to a more mature form of CRPG. The completely new engine, world, rules, and graphics, along with a new emphasis on story, does a lot to distance them from the Gold Box image. As with all new things, the first steps are apt to be shaky. Still, Dark Sun (with a little overhaul) shows much promise for the future, and promises a good game to play right now.

   

Again, I'm not sure why we have to trash the Gold Box while praising the new approach, but otherwise I agree with the sentiments she expresses. In June 1994, the game was nominated for the magazine's "RPG of the Year," but the prize went to Betrayal at Krondor. I haven't played that yet, so I can't tell you whether I agree.

   

Scorpia wasn't entirely wrong about the "promise for the future," but neither was she entirely right. The Dark Sun engine wasn't a one-hit wonder. It spawned a sequel, Wake of the Ravager, in 1994, plus an adaption to another rare D&D campaign setting in 1994's Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse. There was even a 1996 MMORPG called Crimson Sands. But the sales of these late-SSI D&D titles (and several others) were mediocre, insufficient to repair SSI's increasingly-rocky relationship with TSR. (As for that relationship, I'm not even going to try to compete with Jimmy Maher's excellent coverage from September 2019.) The two partners announced a parting of ways in early 1994, although SSI continued publishing under the license until mid-1995.

    

I have some open questions about the games that influenced Dark Sun and the games that it influenced. In its basic interface--an axonometric perspective with continuous (non-tiled) movement and turn-based combat that takes place on the same game map as navigation--it was preceded by Ultima VI and Interplay's two Lord of the Rings titles. If you're willing to remove one of those elements, you have Ultima VII, Challenge of the Five Realms, and Darklands. Any or all of these games could have influenced the Dark Sun engine, but I've not been able to find specific confirmation that any of them did. Likewise, I haven't found any confirmation that the Infinity Engine developers were influenced by Dark Sun, but it wouldn't surprise me. Most of the elements are there, including interesting NPCs and full-sentence dialogue options. (I would love to experience a game with the interface of the Infinity Engine but the turn-based combat system of Dark Sun.) I'll try to reach the right people in time for my coverage of the sequel.