Video Game Vintage Title: Operation Darkness

Operation Darkness

Operation Darkness is a tactical role-playing game for the Xbox 360 developed and published by Japanese studio Success on October 11, 2007 in Japan. A North American version was released on June 24, 2008 by Atlus. The game is a fantasy conception of World War II, featuring weaponry and events from that time period, but with fantasy elements such as dragons mixed in.

Operation Darkness Gameplay

Gameplay consists of a series of tactical battles; between battles, the player may resupply the characters, purchase new items, and select which characters will participate in the following mission. Battles play out in standard tactical role-playing game (RPG) fashion, with turn order based on characters' speed statistics. During a turn, characters can move, attack, use items, pick up items from dead soldiers, and cast spells. The battle system also includes factors like cover and decreased accuracy from movement. Differing from the great majority of games of this genre, long range attacks tend to be far more frequent than close range attacks, and many characters can hit targets with high accuracy from a distance of more than half of the battlefield. Much like games such as Fire Emblem, characters killed in battle remain dead permanently (unless revived by one specific player character before the end of the stage). Generic soldiers can be recruited to replace fallen ones; however, the death of a story character results in a game over.

Characters possess the following attributes: HP, MS (martial spirit), Attack, Defense, Speed, Hit, Luck, Weight, and Move. Each character also has specific weapon-related and other skills, predisposing them to particular weapon types. In addition, characters can carry up to five weapons and five items. Each weapon and item has a weight value as well, and characters who are overburdened receive penalties to movement.

Two player characters can transform into werewolves, which massively increases their speed and attack. However, maintaining the werewolf form costs MS every turn, limiting its use to short durations.

Reception
Operation Darkness has generally fared poorly with critics, who consistently cite the camera and graphics as fatal flaws. IGN gave the game a 2.5 stating that "Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong". The Official Xbox Magazine gave the game a 2.0 describing the game as "Tedious". EGM gave the game a 28 stating the game should be "avoided like lycanthropy".

The title currently has a Metacritic metascore of 47, indicating "Generally Negative Reviews".