I still remember Dark Reign from back in the day, mostly from peering over my Dad’s shoulder as he ripped through level after level. My own recollection of the game is patchy at best, all I really remember is that it was brutal and it had me quitting super early. I do remember thinking that it seemed like a bit of a weird mash-up between Command & Conquer and StarCraft, which on the surface is actually a pretty decent assessment. Graphically, anyway. It’s definitely got its own quirks and features that set it apart from both of those deadset classics, something I’ve only recently discovered trying to get through it for the first time now. There’s something kinda fitting about covering Dark Reign in Real-Time Stratember, Auran who developed the game were actually an Australian company running out of Brisbane. So there’s a little bit of national pride on the line. I wanted to include this one to satisfy a little bit of nostalgic curiosity more than anything. My Dad always spoke very highly of it and I’m pretty sure he’s one of only a small few who actually finished both campaigns. Dark Reign is as incredibly brutal as it is technically ambitious. I went with the Freedom Guard on this run, so let’s get into it.
Dark Reign: The Future of War was released by Auran in 1997. It arrived right in the middle of the genre’s post-Command & Conquer era. Set in the distant future the game follows the last survivors of the Tograns, a human faction who occupied Strata-7, their homeworld was destroyed during a civil war between the Imperium and the Freedom Guard. The main goal is to preserve their remaining people and the teachings of scientist Alpheus Togra and the player is given the chance to travel back in time to prevent his death using a probe he launched before Strata-7 was destroyed. To access the probe, we as the player assume the role of the last Togran and prove ourselves by fighting through thirteen simulations of the most famous Imperium and Freedom Guard skirmishes. These conflicts play out until the destruction of Strata-7, where you can choose to fight as either side. The final mission allows you to travel back to Strata-7 using the Chronomachine. Combining both Imperium and Freedom Guard technology, the Tograns are able to build a force capable of taking them both out preventing Strata-7’s destruction and Alpheus Togra’s death. I think the idea itself is good and there’s a decent amount of cutscenes and story to be had, but the game never seems to do very much with it. Missions feel like they blow by without a great deal of connection to the story. Dark Reign doesn’t feel like it was made to tell a story, it was built to test your patience.
Dark Reign is a unique RTS packed full of features and customisation. There’s a fully narrated set of boot camp missions to walk you through some of the quirkier features so you’re not completely thrown in the deep end. There’s some legitimately forward-thinking ideas here for 1997. Advanced waypoints, camera towers to extend your line of sight, saboteurs to steal enemy tech and advanced unit behaviour menus. You can tweak pursuit ranges, autonomy and retreat thresholds, you can toggle units to automatically head back to a repair bay when they’ve taken damage which was practically unheard of back then. The water economy is an interesting change of pace, harvesting an inexhaustible resource is something else. The terrain system factors elevation into every facet of the game, with hills and high grounds providing the opportunity for a real, tactical edge. The line-of-sight system was ahead of its time, but it fumbles significantly in its execution. On paper, all these features sound unreal. In practice, the game’s engine acts as a significant barrier to using them. Behaviour menus are great, until your low health unit retreats via the worst path imaginable, gets caught on a minor ridge and gets picked off anyway. Setting high autonomy can take your army on voluntary suicide missions while the opposite may result in enemy target practice. Trying to get a group of vehicles to negotiate a hill may just force them into a single-file death trap or send them directly into the enemy base. When it works, it’s great. Unfortunately, most of the time you’ll end up babysitting twice as much to ensure your units don’t sabotage themselves.
Dark Reign is a technically magnificent real-time strategy, but its biggest strengths end up being its own downfall. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the game’s AI and man, the AI is BRUTAL. That in itself doesn’t exactly make it a bad game, but don’t go in expecting any kind of manageable or casual RTS experieince. The AI is genuinely relentless, all-knowing and I’m not shitting you, it consistently knows exactly where you are regardless of what the fog of war is supposed to be hiding. You’ll barely have your base built before you start getting hammered by enemy forces. It’s rough going, it is, but I just can’t deny how impressive the tech is under the hood. I did some digging and Dark Reign’s AI can analyse and assess your base, what you’ve built, your threat level and if it can currently wipe you out. If it determines that it can’t currently blow you into tiny bits, it’ll produce further units and infrastructure until it can. This includes specific resources, buildings and units that will be required. If an attack fails, it’ll actually change gears and flank you from multiple directions. From a small Brisbane-based studio in 1997, that level of reactive AI is simply insane. It’s no wonder that it became Activision’s fastest-selling game at the time. But in the grand scheme, Dark Reign prioritises dense, punishing complexity over actual fun. You can see why none of Auran’s bigger ideas stuck. The RTS genre ultimately thrived on accessibility, not beating the player into submission.
Revisiting Dark Reign has been… an eye opening experience. I can honestly say I’ve satisfied my nostalgic curiosity, even if it tested every ounce of my patience. The ambition packed into this game is something to be envied, the level of technical greatness, customisable unit control and reactive AI isn’t anything you’d expect out of a small studio from Australia back in 1997. It’s pretty easy to sit back and respect the sheer audacity of implementing what is essentially a 3D terrain-based line-of-sight system with the ability to fully automate units and this was long before the competition had even thought to try. Ambition alone unfortunately does not translate to an enjoyable experience. The absolutely brutal, all-knowing AI combined with an overall clunky engine which fights you at every turn manages to turn what could have been a genre defining masterpiece into a series of exhausting micro-mangement tasks. You’ll spend more time making sure your units haven’t headed out for a digital pack of cigarettes than you will executing any kind of grand strategy. While fascinating, Dark Reign is a deeply flawed piece of history that highlights exactly why the genre pivoted towards cleaner, more accessible mechanics rather than this incredibly complex simulation style. I’m glad I gave it a proper run to see why my Dad spent so much time on it, but it mostly confirms that the man is an absolute machine for actually finishing both campaigns. Dark Reign is an absolutely brilliant concept, flawed by its own execution.
Verdict:
Dark Reign is an interesting piece of real-time strategy history. An Australian-made technical beast with reactive AI and systems well ahead of its time. Unfortunately, ambition doesn’t translate to an enjoyable experience and a clunky, unforgiving engine turns what could have been a genre defining masterpiece into a super rough test of patience. It’s worth playing to understand its place in RTS history, just don’t expect to have much fun getting there.
Deck Compatibility: 7/10
Overall Game Rating: 5/10 – Ambition Over Fun
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