Remember Darkstone? Probably not. It’s one of many Diablo-likes of the 1990s largely forgotten today like Revenant or, er, one of the other examples I could come up with except for the fact I seem to have forgotten them as well.I remember Darkstone because, while a fairly generic fantasy hack-and-slash, it had a few features that marked it out. For starters, while it did have multiplayer, you could also play solo with a sidekick—a full second character with their own class, skills, and inventory, who you could switch to whenever you felt like it. The CPU did a decent job managing them when you weren’t, but as someone who frequently regrets picking the “wrong” class in an action RPG, it was great to know you had a backup choice.In addition to that it had some wonderful music, atmospheric loading screens, randomized quests, and an oddball dedication to realism. As well as managing a hunger bar that would constantly decrease if you didn’t regularly stuff apples and chicken legs into your player-character’s portrait faces, you also grew older as the game went on. Eventually you’d end up with experience point penalties and lowered stats, though potions of youth were common enough it rarely became a big deal. By the time your characters hit 30 they could guzzle a jug of magic botox and reliably de-age themselves back to 20.While Darkstone’s been available on digital storefronts for years, it doesn’t run well today. The music stutters, the framerate drops if you dare…
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