➤ Darkness Rises, the review 🎮

Darkness Rises aims to establish itself within a trend, that of action RPGs, which on mobile devices is very strong, thanks in the first place to some excellent exponents. However, we are talking about the new Nexon production, which means that the development team had the necessary resources available to complete such a demanding task, and this is evident from the very beginning. In fact, the game boasts extraordinary quality graphics, very close to that of current consoles, especially if from iPhone X you enter the options screen to maximize detail and frame rate, thus obtaining an experience that does not move from sixty frames per second and whose visual impact fears very few comparisons on iOS and Android. The accompanying plot is fairly derivative, just know that in a dark fantasy setting our task will be to defend the borders of a kingdom from the attack of evil forces.

To accomplish this mission we will first have to try our hand at some tutorial-style stages, becoming familiar with the excellent touch controls and the combat system, immediate but with a minimum of thickness where it allows, by pressing a button, to perform a somersault to dodge the blows of the enemies. However, this is only one of the many maneuvers available, all replicable only after a cooldown period with variable timing, with the only exception of the main attack. Once the introductory phase is complete, we can really get busy by selecting the class that we want for our character (warrior, assassin, sorceress or berserker) and changing its appearance through a fairly complete editor, which does not give up even a little fan service (yes, it is possible to adjust the breast size of female avatars ).

Gameplay and structure: the army of darkness

The mechanics of Darkness Rises belong to the lore of action RPG mobile, although the approach chosen by the authors is that of short missions, to be consumed in rapid succession according to the terms of a structure that, inevitably, focuses on the replayability of individual stages in order to lengthen the single player campaign and avoid complete it within a couple of hours. It is for this reason that the new narrative chapters are unlocked only after having completely dissected each scenario, returning several times to face different types of enemies and even bosses.

It should be noted: during the first games the experience turns out to be quite trivial and inconsistent due to a degree of challenge adjusted downwards, so you will have to wait to get to at least level 10 for things to get a little more interesting, perhaps stumbling into the first game over against an opponent more powerful and resistant than usual. The suspicion is, however, that we have chosen to proceed in this way to provide a lot of strictly free content, including a cooperative mode with several unlockable options and a competitive multiplayer also divided into various phases. The very rich outline, made up of unlockable and upgradeable objects, features to improve, skills to obtain and consolidate, the inevitable reward boxes and an almost infinite list of achievements also fall into this perspective.

In short, Darkness Rises draws from what is now the tradition of the genre, pulling out anything that allows to capture the attention of the players and make them come back for another game; and it does so in a sensible way, given that any paywalls appear only after a few hours of play, when the user now has clear ideas about what he wants from this experience. A feature that makes it a bit difficult to perfectly frame the gameplay balance, since we often find ourselves faced with situations that are too easy to solve, but the feeling is that a really good job has been done, with references that come a little from everywhere (Middle-earth The Shadow of War, for one thing) but a quality that always remains high, net of the inevitable repetition of the action.

Comment

Tested version iPhone (1.1.1) Digital Delivery App Store, Google Play Price Free Resources4Gaming.com

8.5

Readers (10)

7.6

Your vote

Darkness Rises undoubtedly stands as a reference action RPG for iOS and Android devices. It is an extremely refined and beautiful product to look at, very fluid and detailed on the iPhone X, equipped with respectable numbers on the front of the characters, weapons, skills, upgrades and enemies, including bosses. The rich single player campaign, with all its contours, is also supported by cooperative and competitive modes that contribute to making the experience even more interesting. The game certainly lacks originality and is not easily framed in terms of balance, but it certainly knows its stuff.