Dark Quest 4 is inspired by the old-school boardgame, HeroQuest. It involves a set of characters wandering through a dungeon while an evil wizard throws hordes of monsters at them, and grudgingly gives them treasure now and then. I’ve not played it. Instead, the closest I got was a board game version of Dungeons & Dragons, which I played a lot as a teen. It was a gateway drug into the real stuff. I remember it being quite fun, as it had a ton of little miniatures and all your inventory was done with cards.
Dark Quest 4 hit a lot of the same notes. The cards are back, there are lots of little monsters everywhere, and your dwindling HP is constantly kicking the back of your seat. So the basis of this review is this: Dark Quest 4 has been faithfully translated from board game to video game. On the surface, that seems like a good thing. You can now play it without the impossible task of corralling multiple adults into a room. Unfortunately, this translation is a double-edged sword, as Dark Quest 4 is lacking a certain something.
Dungeons & Dark Wizards
Dark Quest 4‘s plot is rather straightforward. An evil wizard, who has been evil wizard-ing at least three times before this, has created an evil puppet named Gulak. Gulak is half-orc, half-goblin, all-jerk. In order to cut his strings, ten heroes are gathered to work their way through a series of dungeons, beat up all the sub-bosses then face off against Gulak themselves. It’s a pretty threadbare story, without any sort of exploration of the world. I’ve not played the previous games, though, so perhaps there’s more in those.
Anyway, in order to sally forth, we need to pick three of the ten classes (with two of those locked from the start). There’s quite a different range of classes. You’ve got the classic Barbarian, Archer and Wizard. Your basic dungeon-crawler starter pack. But then you’ve got interesting classes like the Prince, who can command other heroes to attack again, or even convert enemies to your side. I also enjoyed using the lancer, whose attacks can pierce through enemies. It encouraged clever positioning and coralling enemies, which was nice.
Which brings me to Dark Quest 4‘s gameplay. Once you pick your three lads, you’re dumped into a dungeon to explore. Everything is turn-based, so you begin by sending your lads out to open doors. When you meet an enemy, you roll for initiative and off you go. Your attacks come in the form of cards, some of which can only be used one per battle. You need to use your skills to complement your fellows and get the upper hand. I usually rolled with at least one blocker, one ranged chap and a damage dealer. So the blocker’s job was to get everyone attacking them, while my wizard and attacker wrecked them.
Getting Dicey
It’s worth noting that Dark Quest 4 does still do the dice rolls, they’re just in the background now. Things like traps have a certain percentage associated with them, so it’s all a gamble. You could easily lose a character to a single goblin, because it won’t stop blocking. It makes for some organic gameplay, as you might squeak through a tough dungeon because you got a few lucky rolls at the end. Or it’ll all collapse in the first battle. The frustration is part of the fun.
I do have complaints with the gameplay, though. For one, the fatigue system is kind of annoying. Once you use a set of characters, they get a penalty to HP until they’ve rested. It’s supposed to encourage character switching, but we also spend gold to upgrade character skill sets. So I ended up just repeating the easiest level with the Z-Team just to rest up my preferred lads. And then towards the end, the combination of extra attacks, potions and powerful passive buffs made the final boss a walk in the park. So balance needs a tweak.
Still, my biggest issue with Dark Quest 4 is that it just feels flat. For lack of a better word. The art is nice, but every dungeon is the same set of assets, just re-arranged. There’s very little animation, so combat is just our character models all bumping into each other. This might have been saved with some interesting story notes, but it’s all basic exposition without any elaboration. We don’t even roll the dice ourselves. It feels like we’re playing with a very bored DM, who’s only there to snack on the bowl of crisps so he’s just listlessly reading out damage numbers.
Dark Quest 4 – Faithfully Flat
It does have a big hooded dude staring at you over the board, which did remind me of something, but he doesn’t do much but spout the same few lines. There is co-op with up to two other people, but that feels like it’d have the same problem. Without us doing the rolling and without an actual DM to shout at, it’s still going to be missing something. A large part of the joy of the board game is the camaraderie of dice rolling, and the look on the DMs face when he realises his elaborate campaign is about to end after just ten minutes.
The result of all this is that while Dark Quest 4 is by no means a bad game, I found it dissolved into white noise by the end. There’s no real ‘hook’ here. It’s just a bog standard dungeon crawler, without any interesting notes in the plot to elevate it. So while its mechanics did generate a few interesting stories, it feels like it was just a quirk of all the mechanics firing at once. If you were a fan of HeroQuest back in the day, and your friends have all moved to Discord, it might be a worth a go. If you’re flying solo, though, you’ll probably find more enjoyment elsewhere.
