Dark Law, for SNES

Rating: 6.5/10; Above Average

Might be worth a play if you like rpgs. Walkthrough is mandatory though

Dark Law is a Jrpg which gets more in touch with its pen and paper roots rather than being a typical Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, and has a more tactical combat system. The game starts by choosing 1 of 4 characters to play as and optionally creating the other 3 as well, though the characters have no personality or background; they are simply an extension of the player. The 2 female characters level up faster while the men are supposedly stronger, though I am not sure what that means. In practice it does not really matter. Stats max out at 25 with 10 being an average score, though the types of stats are unusual. Most of the stats are a variation of dex; aim, agility, skill and finesse are 4 of the stats. Aim is kind of like typical strength in function, and the other stats are int, vigor and luck. The game provides a very handy description of what each stat does.

The core gameplay is a menu based hub town with scenarios that unlock 1 at a time and an optional dungeon with infinite enemies that can be visited at any time. On one hand I like the suspension of disbelief associated with a menu town where you can only visit a few locations; unlike a typical rpg town, you have no idea how large the town is and can easily imagine 1000s of people living there. The actual implementation however is annoying because there are 4 different pages of menus rather than having everything on the 1 page. It is tedious to come from the dungeon or a scenario, press on enter town, then press left to get the 2nd page so you can go to the castle sub menu, then press temple or guild depending on what you need. Then you have to press return to town, press left again to get up the 2nd page and press exit town to get back to adventuring. That is way too many steps! The other incredibly annoying thing is that when using any service in town, you can only press the confirm button to progress dialogue; the cancel button does nothing to dialogue so you have to constantly alternate between the 2 buttons to get anything done.

The most important service in town is the guild, where you can assign a job for each character. Jobs determine what equipment can be used, stat and special skill gains while leveling up and income; each job has a listed salary that you will earn with each level up and this is the primary source of money. Other than this salary, the game provides no info on the classes; you won't know what classes can be unlocked or what can be learned. For example, you would think the thief would be good at picking locks but only the crafter job can learn how to pick locks. More advanced jobs require higher stat scores and skills from other classes, but changes are random. It is random whether you will learn a skill or not (sometimes you can learn both of a class’ skills at once) and stat gains and decreases are random. Yes you can lose stats. Hp and mp are separate stats with considerable variation in the RNG, but at least they never decrease. Any class with ? listed for income earns a random amount. So much randomness! Must be why there is a luck shuffle button in the menu that resets the RNG seed, so you can spend the time needed to properly scum level ups. Or they could have designed a sensible progression system with fixed gains, and even losses too. It gets worse though; you control when to level up by resting, so you can adventure as a fighter type and switch to a thief or magic user just for the level up. Why even have jobs then? Maybe caster jobs cast spells better? Never checked, though combat ability does not seem to change between fighter types, hunter, thief and consul.

Other things to do in town include shopping, donating at the temple for stat gains, researching magic and staying at the inn. A few simple spells are available for sale at the magic shop; in order to get more you must make combinations of runes of 1 to 5 long out of almost 20 different runes. That is a lot of combinations, and each try costs money. So of course the only sensible thing to do is look up the recipes online. Failing that, you can save scum while doing your own trial and error. There are some recipes in the optional dungeon, but they are kind of riddles in old English; as if spells were not already hard enough to figure out. Lastly, both the temple and inn can be used to restore hp and mp but the inn is cheaper. Why have both options? Not only that but the inn costs 5 gold per night while the average job income per level is 20 gold. With tight finances and the ability to restore hp (but not mp) by resting at save points (1 is at the beginning of the optional dungeon), why would you ever pay for the inn? Even if it was 1 gold it would be a bit much. Resting at a save point is a pain though because the amount of hp restored each rest is based on vigor stats; expect to have to rest several to a dozen times to get everyone healed, especially if they lose vigor from being downed in battle.

Scenarios play almost like an adventure game. Combat is rare, usually consisting of a few scripted fights and 1 to a few spots where a random battle might occur. Random battles go by room rather than step, both in the optional dungeon and scenarios. Progressing the plot involves examining specific spots in a specific order. The game will not let you pick up objects that as a player you know will be needed until the game tells you they are needed. Many of the things you have to examine are obscure with no obvious reason to do so, while others have extremely precise “stand in the exact right spot” requirements. Others have obvious solutions that you cannot do because the game railroads you to only the solution programmed by the developers. For example, you find that tears melt a specific stone which needs to be melted for the plot. The solution is to backtrack to the beginning of the scenario to get water from the ocean. Well I can think of several ways that 4 people could produce enough water for a bucket without leaving the room. I appreciate what the developers were trying to do, but most players will not have the patience to figure out what to do, making the game effectively impossible without a walkthrough. You are unable to return to scenarios after completing them and there are hidden minimum and maximum levels for even starting them. If you are too low you are forced to grind in the optional dungeon. If you are too high, too bad that scenario is lost and you will get the bad ending. And the only way you will know either is by checking a walkthrough. Lots of bad game design here.

The optional dungeon is confusing because there is no map and most of the rooms look the same. All rooms have random battles, which are set to a single creature type of a random number; it is very rare to fight mixed forces. The enemies get progressively more difficult the further you go and when the lead character (who could be the unused person at level 1) is high enough level for that room, no random battles will occur there. Treasure chests are strewn throughout the dungeon with equipment, however the loot is chosen randomly from at least 2 options. Again, you can use that luck shuffle to scum. Blocking the way are locked doors with one of the lamest lockpicking mini games ever; if the lead character has the unlock ability then a numerical combination is shown. You have to make the spinning numbers (which spin slower with higher skill, I think) stop on all correct values, kind of like a slot machine. While not difficult, it is far from fun and there are so many locked doors. Note that you can still unlock them if you know the combination from outside the game.

Combat is turn based using an action point system, which is represented by a colored bar under the characters. Moving depletes the bar but it is only spent when you confirm the move and goes by minimum distance; you can go around enemies and obstacles but the action points spent will be a simple straight line between your starting and ending position. Enemies that can be attacked in melee will blink when you are close enough, but only if you have enough AP to attack. It works a little differently with bows because you have to move and then go into attack mode before finding out if the enemy will blink. Bows can only shoot in the 4 cardinal directions with a clear path for the arrow, so no shooting through or over allies. Height differences tend to mess up aiming by requiring finicky off center positioning. Some spells also function like the bows and thus suck. This is far from an ideal ranged combat system. Items and magic can be used in battle by pressing their corresponding buttons, which open the appropriate list. The same button is then pressed again to select which item or spell and to confirm the target, a surprisingly intuitive control scheme. The combat system is overall very good but the enemy design and AI are somewhat lacking. Some enemies will just stand there doing nothing until you get close enough, which allows for cheap ranged kills. Other enemies obviously follow a weird AI algorithm. They tend to move around in circles, often run away and end up not attacking half the time. They do have a preference for attacking weaker targets but it is not 100%. Best case for the monsters, all this fiddling around will cause you to waste turns giving chase or spread damage out by switching to a closer target and then forgetting which has low health. If the enemies can heal this proves to be a good strategy for them and makes for a very tedious drawn out fight. For others it seems like a huge waste and battles are not as dynamic as they could be with more mixed enemy teams. Many enemies can inflict poison or paralysis on hit and later enemies can inflict massive damage on multiple targets from range using magic. Both are annoying and potentially devastating but have counters. In particular, caster enemies seem to abandon offensive spells when you move a character close enough for the enemy to move and melee, even if spamming those spells would easily wipe the party. Damage inflicted tends to be low, unless you significantly over level the enemies and many enemies are outright immune to certain (or all) magic. All in all, the worst part is having to waste time chasing enemies down, thus making battles take longer than necessary.

Dark Law is an interesting game with good lore and story that is marred by several poorly implemented mechanics. Chief among these is the obfuscating method of advancing the plot by guessing what specific thing the developers want you to do, followed by excessive RNG and less than stellar enemy AI. I personally disliked the lack of combat in the scenarios and the emphasis on the optional dungeon, but it was a refreshing change of pace to not have to fight 100s of random battles.

Pro

• Great music
• No random character generation
• Good descriptions for stats
• Town represented by menus
• Most money is gained from job rather than loot
• Tactical combat where position matters
• Can move freely in combat without cost until you confirm the turn
• Feels more like pen and paper D&D than most rpg video games

Con

• Series of barely linked scenarios
• Each scenario has a min and max character level. You can be forced to grind or permanently miss scenarios from over leveling
• Cannot revisit scenario areas once the scenario is complete
• Poorly described job system with benefits that pay off during player directed level ups
• Excessive randomization: level up stat gains, job income, treasure chests
• Scenarios are more like an adventure game with few battles and obtuse plot progression
• No transparency in battle to see under walls
• Cancel button does not progress dialogue
• Puzzle system for learning magical spells that costs money for failed attempts
• Poor enemy combat AI