Nintendo Famicom

Dark Lord

This is the first entry in the Dark Lord series, kicking off a trilogy that continued on to the Super Famicom. Structurally, the game works a little like Falcom’s Sorcerian. You make a party of three characters and get dumped into a menu town. You can pick up quests here, of which there are twelve total in the game. Accept a quest and you’ll be taken to the relevant location, where you’ll have to complete a mini-scenario of sorts. Finish it and you’ll be sent back to the town with some experience, money, and maybe even an item or two in your pockets. You can do the quests in whatever order you like, at least in theory. In practice, you’ll have to suss out the proper order if you want to survive the battles found in each quest. Exploration in those quests happens from a top-down perspective similar to many other JRPGs. When it’s time to fight, it becomes a turn-based tactical strategy game.