Dark Throne

As the name suggests, Dark Throne isn’t very colorful and playful, but rather sets a dark and eerie vibe, welcoming you into a world filled with monsters and beasts, where demons and monsters reign terror. You will be the hero in this story, battling all the foes and evil that get in your way. In a world no longer protected by the legacy of God and the protective barrier broken, you’ll be reassured that the evils and foes will be in no shortage.

Gameplay

Something the game does very well is setting the correct stage and vibe with the high quality of the visuals. Not just the world you're playing in, but visual effects and a large variety of items bring the world and your playthrough alive. It manages to set the tone with a dark but comfortable-to-watch scene, although repetitive scenery with little variation in the overall surroundings. With an art style and overall feel of the game similar to that of Diablo and games alike, you’ll be sure to feel right at home if you enjoy those kinds of games.

When starting the game, you’ll be given a range of classes to choose from, and there is enough variety to fit your playing style. One thing I must say though is that sadly, there are no options for customizing your character or even the sex of the character, as every class is locked to either male or female, which I feel is a missed opportunity. Having picked the class you want to run with, you’ll dive straight into combat with the first level of the dungeon.

As we are accustomed by now, Dark Throne, like many other mobile games, offers an auto-battle feature, which is nice if you are having it run while you're busy with other tasks. However, the game does require you to be sharp so as not to miss valuable items and loot that drop along the way. Otherwise, you’ll need to run through the level again to pick everything up before exiting (let's be honest, we can’t be leaving without getting all the money). Something I’d like to add to this though, as you progress through the various levels and deeper into the floors, you’ll find that the simple auto function will not be sufficient enough to survive and clear the dungeon. It is mostly a nice feature for your attacks but requires you to be the one in control to dodge and weave your opponent's attacks, which I think works out perfectly!

With each dungeon you enter, you’ll have to pay an entry fee in the form of scrolls. These scrolls will regenerate over time and are limited in daily usage. Of course, you can also purchase these. Overall, nothing new. Something I dislike about this though, the scrolls are used over the entire account instead of per character, thus limiting you if you want to play multiple characters and level each up as you go, overall limiting your daily playtime.

During your dungeon crawling adventures, you’ll collect loot, gold, and experience, and with that, new levels. Reaching new levels increases your skill levels and thus aids you in battle to take on ever stronger foes. Overall, nothing new to the genre but provided as expected. Leveling up is done at your own pace by going to the shrine. Use this wisely as a level-up provides you with a fresh 5 scrolls, thus prolonging your playtime options. This can thus be done over various classes to further maximize uptime.

Unlockable skills through weapons and upgrades are executed in a high manner that is nice to see for a mobile game and adds to the experience. Something I did find lacking is the skills assigned to your character through the weapons and items equipped are not easily found anywhere to read up on and plan accordingly. The only way I found out was to equip the item, close the inventory, and then hold on the individual skills in the main UI, which felt like it could do with an easy compare option in the inventory screen to make it more user-friendly and quicker to check.

Further down the line, you’ll unlock the option to take skills from one item to another to further enhance your playstyle and preferred skills. Once again, a missing feature is to see what the ability does before you’re extracting it, which would be a welcomed and expected feature here. Once again, it only seems possible by equipping the item, going back to the main UI, and holding the skills, which once again feels like a struggle to go through.

You’ll unlock options to enhance your skills on items to optimize them for your playstyle and play into your abilities' strengths. During your adventure, you’ll pick up a wide variety of items that can be combined to create new items altogether, which is a nice way of going about the hoarding of items instead of just simply selling them to the vendor.

Something else you’ll be collecting along the way are trophies, which will count towards your place on the leaderboard and overall league progression to compete with the best players out there. On that note though, you’ll need to have or rent a totem, which you can receive for logins after signing up or by becoming a member. Progressing up into new league stages will give you some rewards as well as ranking higher within each league. The rewards you’ll receive are in-game currency and can be used to expand storage room, buy scrolls for your dungeon runs, and much more. Once again, nothing new for the genre and mobile game it is. Not bad, but not outstanding either.

As you clear more and more dungeon floors, you’ll unlock more game options as well. Different challenges, crafting, and enhancement options are a welcome addition to the game as it prevents it from feeling stale and keeps giving you a fresh input of options every so often.

Review

Overall, Dark Throne has a pleasing aesthetic, although it could benefit from more variation in its currently limited surroundings and overall theme. The expansion of available content as you progress to higher floors is well executed, contributing to a sense of growth throughout the game. The auto feature is integrated in a manner that maintains player engagement, particularly as you encounter more challenging levels.

This ensures that the game remains interactive, unlike some auto-play titles which lack player involvement. While the game offers a wide variety of customization options for abilities, it lacks an easy way to compare between them. One noticeable absence is character customization, which would allow players to create a unique visual and ability profile for their character.