Darkness Rises Review: Surprisingly well developed Mobile Game

Darkness rises is a Mobile Action RPG game developed by the Korean-Japanese video game publisher, Nexon. The game was released on June 21^st 2018, and it already has over 10 Million downloads on Google Playstore. It has developed a huge online community with players from all over the world being active on various forums over the Internet. Here is our Darkness Rises review.

About Darkness Rises

At its core, Darkness Rises is an RPG game with a lot of hack and slash elements. It has beautiful graphics for a Mobile game and it manages to create an alluring environment which will easily make players lose track of time. It has surprisingly good voice acting and it can clearly be noticed that the developers put a lot of effort into making the game more immersive.

That said, the game takes a lot of elements from other popular games which makes it feel like the concept art and character design is not very original. There are mobs like Orcs and Lich which feel like they are directly taken from the Warcraft series, and there is also a story element around ‘Sands of Time’ from the Prince of Persia series. It isn’t completely blatant though and it is far from a rip-off, but I would be lying if I said the game isn’t inspired from many other games.

Free to Play

The game is completely free to play, although you can speed up your progress quite a bit by spending money. It is not mandatory however, and you can finish the entire game without spending any money. The game is available on Google Play Store.

Gameplay

Character Classes

There are 5 different character classes to choose from which have completely different skills and gameplay mechanics. They are The Warrior, The Wizard, The Berserker, The Assassin and the newly added Archer. The Warrior is a balanced character with moderate speed and strength, and provides the most default gameplay. The Assassin is a speedy character and has faster, lighter attacks. The Berserker has slower but high damage attacks and is also very durable. The Wizard has a unique playstyle, using spells instead of physical weapons like the other characters. The Archer uses ranged attacks and is moderately agile.

Every character provides a different style of gameplay and all of them have different lines and interactions with the NPCs in the Story Mode. You can create one of each character and experience all the different styles and choose whichever suits you best.

Game Modes

Darkness Rises has a lot of different game modes that can be unlocked as you progress through the game. It has 5 PvE modes, 3 Co-op modes and 4 PvP modes.

PvE Modes

The PvE modes are the primary way to advance your character level, get better gear and learn new skills. The Story mode is the main campaign, where you have to defeat various evil forces which are threatening the city of Iron Guard. It is broken up into multiple chapters which get progressively difficult. The other PvE modes are Adventure Mode, Gold Dungeon, Daily Dungeon and Infinite Tower. These modes allow you to acquire gear and levels to help you complete the Story Mode.

Co-op Modes

The Co-op modes let you party up with your friends and clear dungeons to get rewards or to fight Raid Bosses which are specially designed for Co-op gameplay. The game has a decently functional Social Tab that lets you find your friends and other players that are close to your level in the game.

PvP Modes

The PvP modes are the primary end-game content for Darkness rises. It allows you to battle other players across the world. I advise you to watch a few tutorials about this before you jump into battle, as PvP in this game is absolutely brutal.

RPG Elements

Darkness Rises offers a surprising amount of character growth and customization. The main stat which determines the strength of your character is ‘Power’. You can increase your character’s Power through a lot of different ways.

You can boost your character stats by getting various kinds of ‘essences’ that can be acquired in multiple ways in the game. Once you boost all your stats to a certain level, your Character level increases which also increases your Power.

You can acquire better gear by clearing levels, and you can also enhance and imbue your gear with gems to increase their level which in-turn increases your Power.

As your character progresses, you can learn an array of skills and level them up. This also increases the Power of the character.

Quests and Bonuses

The game offers a massive amount of daily and weekly quests for rewards. You also get a lot of bonuses for logging into your account daily. Keep an eye on your Notifications Tab and Mail Box to keep track of these bonuses.

Character Customization

The game lets you design your character in a multitude of ways and it also provides a lot of pre-sets to choose from. You can also buy cosmetics to make your character look unique.

Settings

Darkness Rises does not provide a lot of options to meddle with. The graphics settings lets you tweak the resolution, the graphics quality and screen refresh rate. There’s also a few general settings you can change, like turning on/off Vibration and Character voices. There is an Account tab which lets you change the account that you are logged in from and change the game language.