March 4, 2022

Darkness Rises Review 2022: is the game still alive?

Darkness Rises is a fast pace Action RPG on mobile where you fight hordes of monster and boss everyday. Equip yourself with the best gear and powerful skill to break through in a hack and slash style. The game is still alive for some reasons, let’s find out more about it in this review.

What is the Story of Darkness rises?

The orcs struck without warning or mercy. Cities burned. The Land was soaked in blood. The orcs left nothing but misery and ruin in their wake. This wave of carnage now beats against Iron Guard. This border fortress is all that stands between the kingdom of Losteria and certain destruction. And you my friend, you are helping the Lord of Iron Guard all this chaos like in the intro. This is where your adventure will begin.

How is the Game play of Darkness rises?

After you select your class, you start by the lord’s daughter side in the orc invasion. After some good voice acting dialogues, you start the tutorial. The tutorial will be split into multiple stage to show you different game’s mechanics. You will learn how to move, use basic attacks, skills, execution( Rage skills), soul link, ultimate skill and dodge. Once you completed the tutorial, you should follow the guide.

The Way of the novice warrior will make go between the story and the adventure modes.This will let you progress correctly and also reward you nicely. You will start unlocking more contents and features as you progress. As you advance you will start struggling to clear stages, specially with the boss of the stage.

The stage is split into 3 section, instead of the classic RPG where monster waves comes to you, one after the other. Darkness Rises separates those monster wave in different room, each time you clear a room you will sprint to the next room. Of course the last stage will have a Mini Boss or a Boss waiting for you depending the stage.

You may have notice that difficult stages will have orange or red color on the battle power(power score) between your power and the recommended power. So you will need to raise your power score by different ways like enhancing your stats, upgrading skills, get better gear and costumes. Note that your character level doesn’t really contribute to battle power and it only adds more keys(stamina) pool.

PVE

The game have multiple activities in PVE, if you like hack slashing monster all day. You will be serve with a variety of modes and a huge selection of different enemy size. Those mode are challenging enough to keep your attention for several hours. Of course having too much power may ruin a bit the combat in stages but you can always handicap yourself from removing some gear to match the power score. Here’s the list of PVE content available.

Story – The main and side story of the game
Adventure – Basic maps with 3 star stages for grinding experience and essences
Raid – Easiest way to obtain good gear, polish, runes and jewels
Gate of the Dead – Skill point dungeon and may drop S++ gear on a special boss encounter
Gold Dungeon – Daily way to obtain a certain amount of gold
Daily Dungeon – Obtain uncommon special rewards like Pet Berry
Infinity Tower – 200 floor of challenge awaits you with better reward as you climb

PVP

Darkness Rises has one of the best PVP combat, real time fight that needs some skills and timing when fighting opponent with same amount of power. You can try your best and try to rank as high as possible, rewards are worth it(gems). Here are the mode you can access in PVP.

Ranked Match – Select a poor soul with lower power to steal his rank
Duel PVP – Real Time 1 vs 1 combat
Team PVP – Real Time 3 vs 3 combat
Brawl – Battle royale between 8 player
Skirmish – Practice 1 vs 1 with a buddy

Co-op

If your a bit tired of playing alone, you can get in the Co-op and fight together with another player. Those raids have limited entry but you can play together to obtain a good amount of reward. Here’s the list of Co-op mode available.

Duo Dungeon – Real Time duo dungeon
Immortal Raid – Real Time Raid with some penalty(no Rage Skill)
Demonic Raid – Real time Raid which reward awakening stone
Four Guardians – Help defeat the guardians with the rest of the player

Stats

One way to raise your power is through Raise max level. Remember that your getting permanent stats increase, this will make your character way stronger on the long run. Here you can select between different 6 stats :

ATK – Fire Essence + Mystical Essence
DEF – Earth Essence + Mystical Essence
HP – Water Essence + Mystical Essence
Crit Activation – Light Essence + Mystical Essence
DMG Reduction – Dark Essence + Mystical Essence
DEF Pen – Wind Essence + Mystical Essence

Each time 5 level you upgrade them, will increase the max level to next 5 but will have to redo the process for the next max level. Essences will be the material needed for the upgrade which you can easily farm in adventure mode or obtain them as reward chests.

Skills

Skills will allow you to perform extra damage to enemies and can be a useful way to evade enemy attacks. They are divided in to 4 parts.

Normal Skill – those skills are your bread and butter for combat. You will have 6 normal skills in total but i would say 12 more exactly as your normal skills are link to a combo skill. After you use a normal skills, you will have a small window to perform the combo skill. Note that you can only equip 3 normal skills at the start.
Rage Skill – When your rage bar is full, you can execute normal monsters, elite monsters and even bosses. Keep in mind that boss need to be a low on hp for it to work whereas normal monsters can be executed no matter their amount of hp.
Ultimate Skill – This skill is your trump card, deals huge amount of damage. Have a large area of effect(aoe) and make you invincible for 5 seconds. Although you will have 2 ultimate skill, you can only equip 1 at a time.
Awakening Skill – Skill that you will unlock on awakening at level 100. Deals huge damage and have large range but does not make you invincible for the duration.

All your skills can be upgraded, you will need gold, skills points, rage points and ultimate scrolls. You can obtain them as reward as simply playing your dailies and weekly quests. Do not forget that you power score also increase when you upgrade your skills.

Gear

Gears are an easy way to get a huge amount of power. They can be farmed or pulled from the Gacha. Each gear set looks very unique and look good, 10 parts of gear in total that includes your weapon. Gear comes in different set, and having at least 2 parts of the set gives you a bonus. The gear does have a rank base like this

N Rank – Lowest Rank – Don’t bother keeping them just sell it
D Rank – Lower Rank – Don’t bother keeping them just sell it
C Rank – Low Rank – Don’t bother keeping them just sell it
B Rank – Middle Rank – Sell, disassemble or use as fodder to level up gear
A Rank – High Rank – Disassemble or use as fodder to level up gear
S Rank – Higher Tank – Upgrade them to S++ for L fusion
L Rank – Highest Rank – Use to transcend L gear

Some gear will have a + sign after the rank, showing it’s superior to one without +. Here’s an example S+ gear will always be better than S gear. Those gear can be upgraded and transcended to become even more powerful. They also have the option of fusion, we will come back to this subject in the upgrade section.

Costume

In Darkness Rises, costume are not just for cosmetic purpose like in other games. They are also another source to obtain more power. They share some similarities to gears, 10 different parts and a rank system. However they do not share the set bonus like gears, but those costume can be upgraded,fused and dyed. They give less power than gears and is a low priority to pull in the Gacha. Unless you really want a specific costume for your character to look unique.

Other power source

If you want to step up things even further and obtain more power, you will have to rely on those 3 to get the edge. Although they don’t give as much power as gear and costume but they are important enough to get that extra missing power needed to clear a stage.

Runes – Socket these bad boys on your gears and costumes
Magicite – Equip magicite of each element, unlock in mid game
Pet – Miniature version of boss and animals that follows you

I didn’t mention collection reward for costume as they are only one time reward that will give you a small amount of power. And also Emblem as it’s more like a title that you get for clearing a specific task, they also give some power but is mostly for showing off. Lastly you also can also reroll the traits on your gear but be careful not to lose good traits while rerolling.

Upgrade

Nearly all the things in Darkness Rises can be upgraded in a certain way. Each of them will have different means of upgrade,

Refine – upgrade a weapon to +2, giving better stats
Transcend – limit break a gear to next max level, for example max level 60 to level 62
Fusion – sacrifice 2 gear of same rank to obtain a higher rank
Upgrade – increase the level of runes by feeding it fodders
Enhance – increase the level of gears by feeding it fodders or polish(recommended)

All upgrade will be your gold sink. While it can be use as a method to free space in your inventory early but it is not recommended. Better you upgrade on days that they give a discount on upgrades. Also use polish as they were created to upgrade gear, this will make you save so much gold on the long run.

Crafting

Around mid game, you will start getting materials for crafting. Crafting is rather simple, get the required materials then select what you want to craft. It does cost some gold and you are done. Now you just have to wait that the blacksmith finish it. You can craft polish and other handy materials needed for your progression. Crafting is a good way but slow way to get S++ gear, don’t forget to craft from time to time.

Game modes

Darkness Rises does have other contents beside combat, these are the things that you can do beside PVE and PVP stuff. What are those content? They are the

Camp – Sit around the camp fire and relax, while your character will collect resources over time. Those resources are only for upgrading your camp and if you don’t know camp is a way to generate gems. So don’t ignore your camp or you will regret it.
Hot Spring – Remove your armor and clothes and go enjoy some relax time in the hot spring, you can pop a bath oils that will give you a temporary buff for combat. Also this will let your Rest Gauge recover faster.
Fishing yard – Buy some bait and start fishing. No need to smash button just relax and get some okay rewards from fishing. This is a good way to obtain stuffs while you are AFK for a long period of time.

What kind of Graphic Darkness rises use?

A beautiful 3D graphic, the game looks really good. They added a good amount of details for the both characters and environments. You have a multitude of weapons, armors, costumes which is different from each other. You will see the weapon that you equip on your character and will not be a static skin weapon although you equipped a different looking weapon. Same apply to armor and costumes.

Weapon glow in this game after you refine them, i know for some people this might be insignificant but for those who played classic game. A glowing weapon means power and coolness, anyway the game did a good job on those equipment.

Costume

Costume is such a large part of Darkness Rises, i never saw a game with so much costumes. Cool thing that you can extract your favorite costume and keep it in your wardrobe. So you can choose how to look like when going to fight. Mixing part of costumes and armor or weapon is really a good way to make a character unique. That’s not all, you can also dye your gears. This add another layer of customization to your costumes.

Talking about customization, did you know you can modify you character face and body in this game? The customization is on par with good MMO games who have a character customization at the start of their game. You want to be shorter or look beefy or want thicker legs, well all of that is possible.

Combat

The combat will always starts with a little animation of your character and will end with another animation of your character. The camera will do a lot of zoom in and out for those animations, specially for the skills. Skills looks good, some look awesome and some look meh but that will depends on your preferences.

Last thing is that you can interact with your character in the lobby, you can poke them on the head and hands. You can also use emote to make them make special animation for you like saying hello, winning pose, cry, etc… You can also destroy some of the objects in the environment during combat if you did not notice.

How are the Controls of Darkness rises?

The classic control for mobile game with direction on the left, skills and dodge on the right. You have full control over your character movement and when using skills. Note that you are lock in an animation when using a skill, luckily some skill make you invincible for some seconds. But be careful you are not invincible when you doing your basic attack combo animation. This could be a matter between life and death for your character.

The game can be played on :

Auto – Your character will use all the skills including your ultimate and dodge
Semi Auto – Your character will only use basic attack which mean you will need to manage the skills and dodge
Manual – Your character is in full control when you will need to do everything

I recommend playing the game on manual, because auto mode will waste ultimate and skills on small monsters and will get you killed most of the time. Semi Auto is ok, but you will still be lock in combo animation which will make you take unnecessary damage and won’t let you dodge in time. In the end manual will let you enjoy the game at it’s best.

You can’t select a target to aim, you will attack anything in front of you. So no lock on target or boss during a fight, good luck on boss fights with minions spawning. Also you don’t control the camera during combat, a bit of disappointment for an ARPG. But the camera can rotate, zoom in and out in the lobby. Weird they did not implement it for combat.

Sound & Music

The music is good, each stage has different background music including the lobby. Good sound effects for slashing, grunts, skills and monsters. The whole story has good voice actor which immerse you even more in the game.

What is Game Length of Darkness rises?

Daily quest takes around 15 min to complete but if you are playing all 7 class, this may take you 2 hours per day. You can focus on a main character and ignore the other 6 but you will see on the long run that they will be your daily gems supply. If your going all out and want to play non-stop, you can do it as keys(stamina) regenerate quickly and you can just switch class if your out of keys.

You can also switch between PVP and PVE modes, that will give your keys enough time to regenerate. The good thing is you can choose your pace whether you play some minutes or stay for hours. To avoid power score walls, you can either grind materials or simply wait for your daily rewards. You also gain rewards such as experience for staying offline. I think it’s a win win situation for all kind of players.

Is Darkness rises Free to play?

The game is very generous and reward you enough to at least try to fuse for some L gear which is the best grade of gear you can obtain. They accompany you with a quest till you reach 8 million power score. However after that you are left with only grinding and trying to raise the other classes to try to pass power score walls. Gems can be obtain if you climb up the ladder in PVP and obtainable in some other ways.

You have full access to all the game content. Costumes are not locked behind paywall and the game is playable as a F2P but you may take a bit more time to grab those L gear. As you can see the game is very F2P and generous with you. You can also get a chance to obtain L gear in the Gacha but the rate are very low but it’s another way for F2P to obtain it.

Is Darkness rises Pay to Win?

The P2W aspect that many people complains is still available in the game. You can purchase L gear in the cash shop and that ruining the entire balance between F2P and P2W. You can buy as much loot box as you want and try your luck getting L gear or you can buy it on limited special packages. Meaning someone can easily reach top ladder really fast if they are willing to pay.

Making Darkness Rises a P2W game, so what’s the purpose of giving F2P so much things? F2P will have to spend a lot of time to reach the top ladder, of course if they are lucky enough to pull some L gear later on.

Yes, you can watch up to 5 ads per day to get around 200 gems in total. Thankfully those ads are not forced on you, so you can choose to watch the ads or ignore it completely.

Micro transaction

The cash shop does look like the standard shop in mobile with different packages like gear chest, trait ticket, gems, gold, pets, gear enhancement, crafting materials and level up packages. They also have 14 days and 28 days daily gems packages. Price varies between $3 to $100 which is the average price of mobile game packages.

The shop also sell loot boxes (Lucky box) where you will get random items. Those box can be bought infinitely and is one of the most predatory system to make you spend money. Some even refer it to gambling in a casino where you can see all the goodies. But risk of losing all your money not getting any of it. So you have been warned about it.

What is the Life span of Darkness rises?

As all fast pace combat game, Darkness Rises also suffers from being abandon by player after every stages have been cleared. So to solve that issue they added a mechanic where you need to play all the class to get a stats bonus. While the idea is good, lets say it’s not very practical and was implemented incorrectly. They knew that a short campaign with multiple difficulty would not last long.

So you will have to play all 7 class to fully experience the game. Replaying 7 times would expand the life span of the game but it’s not fun at all. After the 3rd character i was pushing skip just to get over it asap, things were redundant and uninteresting as only some line of dialogue was change for the other class.

If they added different story line or alternate route for each class, things would have been much interesting. As i would have pay full attention each class story, knowing a bit more about your character. Anyway Darkness Rises is still alive, partly because of it’s live PVP match and good amount of contents beside the main campaign. Let’s not forget about it’s unique costume and character customization.

Overall, i think the game is still holding on and will be holding on for 1 or 2 years if they can keep up with the updates like adding new chapters, contents or even new class. The game is still very active with a decent player base, not as much when it was release but server does get busy on specific time of the day.

Benefits

Who does not like fighting enemies at very fast pace, the immersive dark fantasy world like lord of the rings, hack and slashing through horde enemies is fun. Learn about combat, combos and dodging enemies attack develops your reflex. Also you have some micro management to do with your characters, camps and gear which is always useful in everyday life. Customization of your character and costume also develop your creativity.

Community

Main website

Facebook

Twitter

Reddit

Youtube

Discord

Suggestions

Make each class feel different from each other
Add alternate story path for each class
Remove the replay story when playing another class
Add better tutorial instead of pop up windows
Give more information on materials on how to obtain them and where to use them
Remove the L gear box in the cash shop
Give inventory expansion slots as reward
Use gold instead of gems to unlock more inventory
More gold from gold dungeon
Remove the fix camera angle in combat
Skip button for the beginning and ending animation in combat
A way to collect resources without going into the camp

Updates

They do update the games every week with events and bug fixes. The are currently working on changing the basic attack of all classes and also will be adding new chapter soon.

Should you play Darkness rises?

Yes, you should definitely play it if your a fan of fast pace combat. It looks good and feels good when playing Darkness Rises. Combat is a bit too short, hack and slashing through your enemy and fighting against boss at the end is really fun. I didn’t like to replaying the story again and again, i felt been tricked and wasting my time. Class didn’t really matter in PVE as long as your power score was ok but was really important for PVP.

The graphic is really beautiful, love the customization and costumes. Darkness Rises have an abundant amount of content for both PVE and PVP players. A good gear system with crafting and fusing gear. Multiple of ways to obtain equipment and gems, even a camp builder and fishing for afk players. The game does not require too much time and attention. It’s a good solid F2P ARPG game with some P2W aspect.