Review by: Brian Rowe

What is the crucial element that molds a standard RPG into a phenomenal one? Is it an emotionally sweeping story, a complex protagonist, awe-inspiring visuals, or a cross-country journey to save the world? If Success has anything to say, these are the garnishes to enhance or mask the meat and potatoes of the main course. The Dark Spire has none of these modern fixtures, and yet, its masterful, nuts-and-bolts revitalization of the genre’s origins makes it one of the most enthralling RPGs in recent memory.

The Dark Spire revels in the days when RPGs were little more than crude replacements for the dice and pages of graph paper for rounds of Dungeons & Dragons (1st edition of course) on the tabletop. You can almost hear your Cheeto-fingered comrades debating the virtues of humans over halflings, but one thing they can agree upon is that no self-respecting adventurer would step foot in a catacomb with a premade character. The classes, spells, and races of your four characters are up to you, but true to the roots, stats are random. After that, it’s off to the tower, without a single plot-twist, grand betrayal, or heartfelt goodbye.

This is a game awash in old-school aesthetics, complete with still portraits of allies and enemies, and grid-like labyrinths of squares that pass for rooms and corridors. If you can’t look past the atmospherically anachronistic textures, you’ll surely wrestle to cope with the textual descriptions of the ornate statues, luscious treasure rooms, and a seedy gambling den that inhabit the tower. To appease the “back in my day” purists who cut their chops on Wizardry and Might & Magic, a classic mode reduces the already sparse graphics to a maze of wireframes and the dangerously catchy soundtrack to a series of beeps and boops. If you’re still with me, you will love the hardline approach to progression.

The Dark Spire is one of the most nefariously difficult games I have ever played. If the first battle in the tower doesn’t send you packing back to town for a rest, the second might do it for you, with a body bag. There is no auto-attack function, if only because every battle can quickly descend into desperation, and every venture deeper into the tower, a calculated balance of supplies versus skill. One wrong attack, one failure in disarming a trap, and taking one step further than you should, can easily change the fate of your party for the worse.

You may have the moxie to enter the tower, but whether or not you have the stomach for long, brutal hours of grinding is another question altogether. The Dark Spire can be as rewarding as it is merciless though. The manual details the basics of gameplay, but it doesn’t reveal the multiple types of attacks, how seemingly arbitrary skills like singing and tree-climbing can be of use, or what function praying at the temple serves. Beneath The Dark Spire’s aura of simplicity lies a rich tapestry of mysteries. Deciphering them, and learning how to manipulate the world to your advantage, is far more fulfilling than anything the vapors of CG cutscenes can offer.

It’s an obvious homage to the earliest days of dungeon-crawlers, and unfortunately, the image has been perfected down to the traits that we intentionally left behind. The conditions for completing quests range from childish to infuriatingly vague; often involving inconspicuous characters and locations you may have interacted with a dozen times already. For this reason, get used to spinning your way through the tower to inspect every wall you come to, including the left and right sides of the hallways. Nothing is worse than exploring an entire floor only to realize that you must have missed one vital section of a wall somewhere. It’s the dungeon-crawling equivalent to pixel-hunting.

In one moment, The Dark Spire is utterly captivating, and the next, it’s aggravation distilled to 200 proof. At least we can take comfort in the fact that this is a fully-fledged RPG, and not a nostalgic knockoff. As archaic and sadistic as The Dark Spire will surely seem to gamers raised on the post-FFVII world of Square Enix, it is proof that luscious graphics and orchestral scores will never oust the foundations of solid, old-fashioned gameplay.

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