Operation Darkness
Operation Darkness X360
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Werewolves? Where? Wolves?
In spite of what a lot of game sites proclaimed, Operation Darkness does not suck. It has issues, definitely, but overall, it’s been a blast to play. Of course, SRPGs are not for everyone.
The premise is a cool mix of Nazi / Occult / Werewolves / Vampire lore and after a while, your crew develops some pretty interesting powers. However, getting to that point is half the battle.
First, the camera is really annoying. You cannnot see the entire battlefield, the enemies sometimes start off a million miles away, and you have to manually move the cursor all across the map to find your targets. You can use the triggers / bumpers to scroll through your targets and allies, but you cannot assign action, i.e. attacking, from this mode. You spend most of the time just scrolling across the giant maps.
Occasionally, the menus are wonky as well. More than once, I’ve gone to enter the ‘attack’ command and I accidentally locked in the ‘finish turn.’
As for gameplay, it’s about what you’d expect from a SRPG. Starts easy, but the difficulty ramps up quickly. Some of the missions can be 2 hours long, and there’s no saving your game until the mission is over, one way or another. As an added bonus, your squad mates can die during the missions. Forever.
You can carry a modest supply of medicine, and you do have one specific mate who can raise a fallen comrade. However, the fear of losing characters sticks in your mind and changes how you proceed through the missions. ‘Run & Gun’ is a bad idea in this game.
As for the good: It’s a war game featuring Nazis and monsters. That’s a pretty cool premise. And the combat, in spite of it’s flaws, becomes addictive. Also very tense. I did a lot of fist-pumping and / or cursing during this game.
I’ve read mixed reviews about the voice-overs. Personally, I thought they were great, exceeding what I expected from your typical RPG archetypes. Basically, your team is made up of Cloud, Aeris, Tifa, Barrett, Red XIII, Vincent and Cid (or insert your favorite JRPG names here.)
As for the enemy bosses, they’re all cool, and not that difficult to beat. The only problem is that they summon hordes of lesser enemies with them. Sometimes, you have to adjust your fighting strategy on the fly.
The missions are hard, but even with all the camera problems, they’re not cheap. The only times I’ve failed missions is when I did something stupid, like when I rushed a low-level character into the mix, hoping for some quick level-ups. Or when I shot one of my own guys in the back. Yeah, that was dumb.
Actually, the game is pretty forgiving of certain blatant screw-ups you might make: I brought my fire-starter up next to a tank, hoping to take it out quickly. But by moving, I blew my chance for her powers for that round. She was a sitting duck. Then, however, the tank rolled off in the opposite direction, allowing my character to fight another day.
It’s difficult, it’s fun, it’s clunky and sometimes nerve-wracking. But it’s exactly what I expected. If you like SRPGs and you are a patient gamer, you’ll enjoy this one.
5 Stars I had been looking for this game for years and didn’t know it
To set the stage, Final Fantasy Tactics is quite possibly my favorite game of all time. If turn-based strategy/tactics/RPG is your cup of tea, then I think you can work through the problems with this game (which there are some) and will love it.
The problems have been discussed in other reviews, so I won’t go into too much detail. The camera is pretty annoying. Thankfully it’s turn based so fiddling with the camera a bit doesn’t really hurt you.
I missed this game when it first came out, but am certainly glad that I found it now.
5 Stars Ignore the bad reviews…this game is fun!
After the numerous negative reviews by video game authorities, I hesistated to purchase this game. The demo from XBL held my attention for a few days but I wasn’t able to pass that level. When the price dropped to $30 I finally picked it up and regret not getting it earlier. It definetly has its faults (map,camera issues, not knowing which enemy goes next, etc.) but i think that takes very little away from the core of the game. Try it out, it’s weird but who wouldn’t like vampires and wolves fighting in WWII?
5 Stars under the radar great game
First off it’s true the camera is bad. It’s not gamebreaking bad, it’s more of a flat camera than anything. Just hit Y and you bring up the mini-map and that helps a lot.
The game is hard, but if you like difficult tactics games like Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1) you’ll love that anyway.
Overall I’d say the game is excellent. You get to fight vampire Nazis in WW2 with your Werewolf clan using WW2 weapons in a sweet tactical RPG game. It doesn’t get any better than that.
2 Stars Way Too Frustrating
Fantastic scenarios and character designs, however, this game is way too frustrating to recommend, even to the hardcore tactics fan. Even with the “cover” tactics giving you extra turns, the AI is designed to gang-up and destroy the weakest member of your Wolfpack.
This is not good, because you have a limited number of slots in your inventory for healing items per individual. And you have no healing magic, much less revival magic until late in the game. And of course, it’s instant game over once that weakest party member dies, with no “Quick Save” resume available. So that’s 1hr.+ of lost work with nothing to show for it, plus the added insult of no way to skip the dialog scenes for a second or third time.
Repeat this process until you memorize the enemy AI’s movement and tactics for the upcoming map and load up almost all your inventory with healing items.
