Back in 2010 when the original Darksiders was released it wasn’t something I was too excited about. While it did have the 3D Legend of Zelda gameplay clearly inspired by another Zelda-like series of the past Legacy of Kain, and LoK is one of my favorite series. And it did mix that with more Devil May Cry-ish elements to focus the gameplay more on solid action, rather than puzzles, and I do like DMC. And it did have a very distinct style, with a very comic book meets action figure meets Blizzard design meets whatever else, that looked pleasing. All of that somehow didn’t click for me as much as I hoped it would. But I did enjoy the game. Did I enjoy returning to it in this remastered version? Well…
Just to expand on the quick comparisons from the first paragraph, Darksiders is an action adventure hack and slash game with an interconnected world you can explore and some puzzles to solve. Your progress is often blocked by obstacles that you can’t overcome until you get a new item or ability that might also give you not just new traversal options but also new options for combat. This is a very familiar formula for a lot of Legend of Zelda games and Darksiders is far from the first game to try and follow in its ideas. However, what was rather interesting is the fact that it’s actually been quite a while by 2010 that someone tried to do that type of game. The exploration focused games, both Zelda-like and Metroidvanias, have mostly peaked by the end of the Playstation 2 era and by the time Darksiders were out, some people were excited to see a big project take on the genre at all. Though, the fact that Darksiders tried to do it in style definitely helped too.
It’s surprising that Darksiders really tried to build a proper franchise right from the start. This was meant to be a tetralogy (or even a pentalogy) of games, each focusing on one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. The first game established the central story of the conflict – the untimely apocalypse on Earth and the conspiracy behind it, and the setup for the final battles of the conflict. And the rest of the games were supposed to show what other Horseman were doing at the same time, all stories ending at the same point with the last game bringing the end to the story. The universe was based on a lot of Biblical concepts, but done in an over the top epic comic book style. And the whole thing had so much passion behind it, it really could’ve worked.
The developers weren’t trying to cheap out on the gameplay as well, introducing a lot of cool ideas, cleverly borrowed from other games. There are items familiar to Zelda-like games, but this was also one of the very few titles to include a Portal-inspired device. While the combat was considerably more in-depth and interesting than some of the other Zelda-likes, which used to make combat rather simplistic, as it was not the focus of the games. The setting of the post-apocalyptic Earth, mixing familiar modern times architecture with dark fantasy elements was also spot on and interesting enough on its own. As was the choice of voice actors, who often go over the top just enough to fit the tone of the game, but never too far to become completely camp.
But very often all of that just feels off, just doesn’t work. And revisiting the game made it all too obvious. It often feels as if the developers had way too many cool ideas but didn’t know where to put them in the game, so the pacing of the puzzles and action segments is constantly all over the place. Game starts way too slowly, then repeats the same concepts way too often, then goes in a surprising direction and tries to introduce interesting puzzles, yet struggles with that too and often becomes less “challenging” and more “annoying”. Despite completing the game once before, I still found myself lost on the exact same moments or confused at the exact same puzzles as the first time and in few cases the memory of solving it the first time didn’t help to make this replay go faster. The combat, despite a lot of nuance, isn’t particularly exciting and its difficulty more often comes from how unresponsive the controls sometimes are or how useless some of the moves, that sound great in concept, turn out to be.
And none of that is changed or rebalanced for the remaster, so if you were getting bored playing the game back in 2010, you will do the same here. Surprisingly, quite a lot of minor bugs were left unfixed as well. The audio mixing issues are still there, some of the map marker bugs are the same despite being reported in the first few weeks of the game release 8 years ago. At least the PC port feels a bit more competent now and works with less stability issues. And the achievements actually work this time around, alongside with the only NG+-like unlock, that was completely broken in the original release on PC. And, of course, the fact that story is incredibly tedious and, despite really cool ideas, feels boring and predictable instead of exciting, was not changed as well. It was something that constantly elevated the Legacy of Kain games, which also often had gameplay issues, to the cult status it has today, but Darksiders, for all of its style, feels like an empty cool looking shell.
If you’ve never played Darksiders before and are interested in a solid Zelda-like with a good game universe, stylish characters and care more about exploration and action rather than story, you should give Darksiders Warmastered Edition a go. It’s definitely a better option over the original release, and there aren’t too many choices for similar games in recent years, especially on PC. If you have played the game and liked it, you might want to revisit it now, before the third game lands and the franchise is revived to reacquaint yourself with the world. But if it wasn’t your cup of tea back in 2010, Warmastered Edition does nothing to change your mind. I somewhat enjoyed the revisit, because the game does have a lot of solid ideas. But at the same time, it does make me wish I’d replay Legacy of Kain yet again instead.