After much anticipation, I finally got a chance to check out the Xbox Live demo for Atlus’s Operation Darkness, which is due out this summer. I’ve been following this game since Atlus announced that it was coming to the U.S., but I’ve also been kind of wary since I haven’t spent much time playing tactical RPGs. Still, the premise for Operation Darkness—a supernatural, alternate-universe World War II battleground—was just too intriguing to pass up.

First things first: don’t even bother starting this demo unless you’ve got nothing to do for the next few hours. Part of it might have been my inexperience, but I spent at least two hours just clearing the one mission available in the demo. Of course, it didn’t help matters much that I used up all of my most powerful weapons early on, and then a few tanks rolled in, but at least I’ll know better for next time.



The basic formula for Operation Darkness is similar to other tactical RPGs: the player commands a team of fighters that move in turns, and on each turn, a character has certain options, most notably “move” and “attack”. The amount a character can do in each turn is limited, so every action has to count. Also, there is a certain level of strategy involved, as the player must take many other aspects of each level into account. Houses and cars can be used as defense, but tanks can easily blow them away, so you can’t depend on them for too long. The player can also loot corpses left by the enemy for more weapons and health items, which is pretty handy.

Though Operation Darkness sounds like a typical tactics game, it still feels really unique. Instead of a top-down view, like in Final Fantasy Tactics, the environments are fully 3-D. Since it’s a 360 game, it does look pretty, although I felt that the town used in the demo felt a little sparse. Other than some houses, a couple of cars, and a few trees, there didn’t seem to be much detail going on. The characters seem different enough, although not having actually played the game yet, I didn’t know anything about them. A couple of them could turn into werewolves for reasons yet to be discovered. I would be surprised, but this is Atlus we’re talking about.

Overall, the tactical take on World War II seems to work well. Even though I spent a lot of time on the demo, I was so involved in it for the first hour that I didn’t even realize how much time had gone by. The tactical RPG can be a hard genre to jump into if you don’t know what to expect, but it seems like Operation Darkness will be a good fit for tactics veterans and newcomers alike. Whether or not the game will remain fresh, fun, and addictive for its entirety is still unknown, but Gamervision will have a full review when the game comes out in June. However, my outlook based on the demo is pretty positive, so I think this one just might be a keeper.

Related Articles:

Operation Darkness Demo Invading Xbox Live

Operation Darkness Coming This June

New Operation Darkness Trailer