Darkest hour is a Real Time Stratagy game in which you can control any nation in the world through either a World War I or World War 2 campaign scenario. The deep gameplay allows you to build and manage your countries technological progress, economy and diplomatic relations as well as your military forces as you play through each scenario. The game offers you the freedom to either play a historically accurate game or change history to your liking.
The game plays over a stategic world map which shows players a tactical view of their forces and provinces and allows them to plan and manage their forces through each of the wars. The game tries to give an accurate representation of military forces and conditions of the time leading to an extremely deep, complex and simulation style experience.
Full and Light Versions of the Game
There are two separate versions of the game. The light version resembles the Europa Universalis Series and features a more simplified tech tree, fewer territories and a less geographicly acurate map, aswell as some other twists that try to make the game more beginner friendly. The full version feels like Hearts of Iron 2 and is more complex and feature-rich. They are both included in the game, and cannot be bought separately. In addition, the light version has alot more campaigns in it than the full version which only has two, so it makes sense to play both even if you're a seasoned veteran of the genre.
There are 5 major resources: energy, oil, metal, rare materials and supplies. You need 2 energy, 1 metal and 0.5 rare materials to feed a factory and that powers your Industrial Capacity (IC) rating. Each factory gives you 1 IC point which can be augmented by researching tech that gives you better modifiers. giving you for example +5% to your total IC.
IC is the what drives factions. The more IC you have, the more units you can build at the same time, and every 20 IC points you have you gain acess to a new research slot which you can use to employ a tech team and research new tech simultaneously. Supplies are consumed by your organic units and the more of those you have the more supplies you need. IC is also needed to produce supplies. Oil, like energy, metal and rare materials, isautomaticly extracted from your territories, and can be transformed into energy in order to balance your economy.
You can control 3 types of units in this game: land, air and sea units. These include everything from airborne to mountain troops, seals, bombers, fighters, carriers, submarines and tanks.
Land units usually have a soft attack rating, which tells you how many attacks they have against organic units, hard attack rating (against non-organic units), defence ratings and toughness ratings aswell as movement ratings.
Sea units have shore bombardment, sea attack, convoy attack, defence, toughness and movement ratings.
Air units have tactical bombarment, strategic bombardment, defence, toughness, and movement ratings.
Unique to Darkest hour is the decision events. These events can be randomly triggered or scripted to happen at specific dates or when requirements are met. These decisions can vary from issuing currency, censoring the press or even declaring war on a nation. The decision element helps keep historical accuracy by offering the player decisions that happened. An example would be a decision to occupy the Rhine area as Germany which is a decision which leads towards World War 2.
PC System Requirements Minimum
- Operating System : Windows 98/ ME / 2000 / XP / Vista / 7
- Processor : Intel Pentium III 800 MHz
- RAM Memory: 128 MB
- HDD Space: 1 GB available
- Video Card: 4 MB DirectX-compatible Video Card
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible