Rating: 
Summary: Bring a book!
Review: Okay, perhaps I'm a tiny bit spoiled by having played all of the Baldur's Gate titles, expansions, etc., but I found this game to be really, REALLY slow. I often found myself reading while the daimyo healed my characters. The characters would be healed, then hacked to bits within 3 minutes, back to the daimyo to begin the cycle anew. Geez! I agree with a previous critique, the sorcerer is worthless. I do however, like the little dance he does when he dies! While creating new types of armor is slightly interesting, it really drags after a time. I recently saw that Amazon now has this title is cheaper than what I paid for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Complicated and somewhat slow, but rich in detail.
Review: Overall, I like this game. The negatives are: -The game is very slow to develop. -The sheer number of characters, spells, special items and quests make for a somewhat mish-mashed sense of gameplay. -The combat is more muddled than other third-person fighting games (Diablo II, for instance). -The levels, though more expansive than some other games, lack excitement. You're either searching [seemingly] forever or you're getting tooled by unseen (off-screen) baddies who one of your rogue AI players has engaged. -You have to be near-genius to fully utilize the blacksmith and priest options (for making/repairing weapons and learning spells). -The graphics aren't quite as good as Diablo II. The positives are: +The player-character AI is much more advanced than Diablo. +The multi-player capability is refreshing and fairly well-done. +The complexity of the blacksmith and priest gives the advanced user a chance to custom-outfit his/her characters. +It's easy to resurrect players...which is necessary because they tend to die very often early in the game. +There are lots of unique items and *if* you have the stats to use/wear them, they're very cool. +The Japanese flair gives the game a dimension that Diablo II lacks. +I bought this game at *sigh* WallyWorld for $4.77! What a deal! +The manual is well-written and relatively comprehensive. I don't think I'd shell out $19.99 for this game, but at $4.77, definitely check it out!
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty good but true RPGs are better
Review: Pretty good, but more plot and a more complex game would be better. There is no depth it is just kill people who attack. You can only control one person in your group at a time a major weak point.
Rating:
Summary: The Down and Dirty
Review: The influnce of Diablo is quite apparent. The game is in essence what I have wanted D2 to do since it's release which is to allow for total control over mercs. In essence you control a party of each class of character (7 classes, 4 chars may be used at a time). The multiplayer system allows for shared castles (players may control 1 or more char's on the same team) or/and 5 separate forces (competing for the throne). Using the shared castles it is possible to advance one or two characters at a time (for example your amazon and merc would be the D2 equivalent). You can advance each character in this fashion and eventually have a quite powerful clan. Player vs. Player will be what this game is all about (the maps are not as random as in D2)but in order to compete you will have to advance you characters co-op style first. Your looking at a multi-player enviroment with the potential (2 char's per player - no use playing any less) of having around 15 players divided into 5 factions competing for the throne. The game, particularly on single player, is much more strategy intensive than D2 and therefor is not as fast paced but the customization of a group characters is great. Would you like to play your barb, ammy, paladin, and sorc at the same time?
If you answer is YES - this is great game for you!
Rating:
Summary: It's hard, but really fun!
Review: This game has an even better and cooler story than all the final fantasys put together. But not as good as the Diablo games. Just missing by a decimal in a percentage rating. This game is sweet otherwise getting to choose from 7 characters from three calans n' all. You get to use four characters at a time. Three are being controlled by the computer, where you are controlling one that you rotate using the space bar. The game is awsom if you like Revenant (another reccomended game) or Diablo.
Rating:
Summary: great but flawed
Review: This game is awesome, but it runs out of bad guys, weapons, armor, items, and spells long before the game is over. Because of this, you feel like you are just going through the motions for the last part of the game and it becomes really boring. If it had enough "new stuff" to keep you entertained then this could have been one of the best games ever made. I would still recommend it to those who appreciate Japanese Feudal culture though.
Rating:
Summary: a gamer since mid 80's
Review: This game is great! I like the way you can interface with the 7 samurai's and the role playing element. The only drawbacks to the game is getting use to the combat in which you have to keep clicking on the enemy icon while that enemy keeps moving around. Also this game's difficulty is moderate. This game is worth it.
Rating: 
Summary: I would rather play Diablo 2 expansion
Review: This game is not so great. You start off in a shrine room and have to work your way through the other three clans citadels. This game did not have a very good plot to it and they even showed you the trail at which you must travel on to get to the next area which i found too easy for my liking. Once you get to the last citadel you have to fight the last boss which proved to be very simple. I found that the only character that is good is the swordsman, the other characters die to fast and i am very unhappy with that. They made the swordsman so weak taht u can barely even play with him cause you dies so much. It can be fun making and customizing new items but it gets boring after a short amount of time actually. The graphics are pretty clear but cartoonish and the videos in this game are very entertaining to watch because they are so bad. I looked forward to playing this game and the first time i played it i found it to be a waste of time and money. Do not be fooled by the way this game sounds it is not great and doesn't even deserve 3 stars.I woudl reccomend Diablo 2 Expansion over this title any day.
Rating: 
Summary: worth way more than 20
Review: this game is one of the best i have EVER played, its sad that it gets such little publicity. the fact that you could customize nearly everything to your own liking is great. and the spells in this game...wow!, i mean, if i get bored while playing, i just sit back and start casting spells, just to look at the effects. to be honest, i dont use the tactics system very much, but in the begining i used it a few times, and it helped. the artwork is just amazing, i mean, the characters are so detailed, you could actually see their sandals. i would definetly recomend this game to anyone who likes games. any type of game, not just action or RPG. this is a great game.
Rating:
Summary: Nihon no Diablo
Review: This game merges two of my favorite things on the world: ancient Japan and Computer RPG. Now that I've played it, I'm forced to wonder why it took so long. With a market saturated with sword and sorcery type RPG's, one set in ancient Japan seems like a pleasant alternative. The similarities are obvious enough. Ninja and Samurai are cool enough to stand on their own along with the Japanese derivatives of all those fantasy staples. One reviewer noted that the demo version doesn't do this game any justice. I totally agree with that statement. It was that review which prompted me to give Throne of Darkness a try. It's unfortunate, but the demo doesn't even scratch the surface, and whether the makers realize it or not, demos influence people to buy games. It's almost better to have no demo than a poor or insufficient one. Complaints: First, the interface suffers from a lot of the things that Diablo and Diablo 2 suffered from in my opinion. Supposedly the key creators of this game created the original Diablo, and you can tell. For the most part, combat can be reduced to a furious, cluttered click-fest devoid of any real tactics during battle. This is one of the reasons why I never learned to love the Diablo games. Compared to the Baldur's Gate series and all the Black Isle games, Diablo lacked any real RPG depth. "Click-click-click", Level up, "click-click-click", boring. If it weren't for a few saving graces, Throne of Darkness would suffer the same fate, but the devil is in the details, something the creators went to great lengths to improve upon. Second, I like creating my own characters from scratch, and you aren't afforded that opportunity with ToD. With 7 samurai (an obvious number) to choose from, it's easy to forgive this slight. Also, statistically, there isn't much to the characters. Leveling up provides some variety amongst the characters, but you can only put points in one of 4 stats, so there isn't much strategy or skill to advancing. Again, this was another big flaw Diablo had for me. Compared to the Fallout series and all the D&D based games, there isn't much to the characters themselves. While the major flaws of the game can be compared to Diablo, it's the strengths that make it completely different and a far better game in my opinion. While the fast pace and constant clicking of Diablo grows boring fast, having 4 samurai in the party at any given time combined with a pretty sophisticated tactical editor provide a lot more variety than you would think. There are approximately 12-16 pre-generated tactical formations based on different animals: turtle, tiger, scorpion etc. I find myself toying with them more and more to find that "sweet-spot". Combine the different formations, with the different combinations of characters and there is a lot more variety at play than at first glance. You can also manually create your own formations which you do by altering each characters personal stance, which affects aggressiveness, and weapon or magic assignment. One of the cooler aspects of the game is the Daimyo interface. There are four Daimyo in the game for you to choose from, all of which come from the warring states period just prior to the unification of Japan, but that's where any real historical reality ends. The Daimyo give orders, resurrect characters, and heal the injured while they wait. The Daimyo also has a priest and blacksmith working for him which have a multitude of functions. The blacksmith, by far, presents one of the coolest features of the game. In addition to fixing broken armor and weapons, and the weaker weapons seem to break every 5 minutes, he can also make new weapons, and even customize weapons by combining them with strange objects looted off of creatures. There's actually more strategy to customizing each weapon to each character than you might think, or at least there's as much as you put into it. There are items based on the four elements which enhance the items, and then there are items that enhance the enhancements. You can spend hours finding combinations and can come up with some really cool items. With seven characters to choose from at any one time, over a dozen fully customizable formations, and possibly hundreds of weapons to create, combined with all that fast-action combat (the only good thing to come from Diablo) this is already a game worth playing, but it's the whole "Japan" angle that keeps me involved. I guess if you don't find ancient Japan and things like Samurai and Ninja interesting, or have never seen a Kurasawa flick in your life, you might not be attracted to this game. If you have, it's probably the biggest reason to buy it. The game stands on its own as a premier dungeon-crawler (sorry, there isn't much RPG involved here), but replacing knights with Samurai, thieves with Ninja, and swords with Katana (ok, technically they're the same thing if you've never actually held one) is what makes the game such a blast to play.
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