Dark and Light in 2022 : Full In-Depth Review!

---Timestamps ---
0:00 Intro
0:58 What is "Game"
1:57 Character Creation
2:49 How game starts
5:02 Exploration
6:54 Survival
7:54 Building / Crafting
9:56 PVE
16:11 PVP
16:36 Story Delivery
000 How the Story is Written
16:58 Endgame
18:04 Modding
18:33 Activity
18:57 Bugs
20:03 Over All Score
My name is Excalligator.
#survivalgame #review #steam #darkandlight
I review Open world, survival, sandbox games from Steam. From well known games, to lesser known games. I'm here to tell you if the game is worth purchasing or not, based on my full in-depth reviews of these games.
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[@leshasta9652]

I have owned it since 2017/2018. I still return to a yearly, with the sadness knowing that it's just fading away. The dev kit is on epic. I keep hoping that more and more people will make mods. Believe it or not there was such a huge community that loved this game. It's just been well 4 years since any communication. I still hope that someday the company will either release the game to be continued by the community or by another studio ambitious. I think with some love time and polish this game could be something really special. I love this game. It makes me so sad that the devs just abandoned it. I feel it has so much potential

[@malpherian9459]

On the quests, You can travel between maps/worlds. You may not have figured this out, but yea. So you can in fact complete all quests. It's what the portals are for. You need to cast a spell/item to transport you through them. Otherwise nothing happens.

[@reljamrkic2663]

The original Dark and Light I played for maybe a week, back in the days. The ressurected DnL game I played for a while even had a couple of scythes from the wraits I killed but got tired of goblins stunning me with one hit and taking all my stuff 😊

[@MamaKhan_MarvelAvengers]

I still love playing this game, the server im on has a lot of players on it

[@leshasta9652]

The only active community right now is through private unofficial servers. There are still a few that are active and have some players. I agree with your beginning statement of being conflicted. This game has a special place with me, which always brings sadness that it's not been given the opportunity. Every year or so I go back to playing it. And I'm always sad when I go back to the steam page and see that we're still on the 2020 update

[@KyoshoLP]

I remember when this came out, and a lot of people rallied around it and talked about it like it was going to be amazing. I was interested but decided to wait a while to see how development went. Sad that it ended the way it did, based on this review. Oof. As for game suggestions, have you ever played The Long Dark? It's been around for years but still gets updates. I only recently finally played it. I'm addicted. I've only played the survival mode and a few of the challenge modes (I haven't touched the story mode, "Wintermute," yet). It's really fun and intense at times. There's not a lot of crafting - mostly just useful tools and items. There's no building construction at all. It's just you vs. the elements. Desperately wandering the frozen world looking for buildings to loot for resources, then deciding on a location to use as your main base. Dealing with wolves and bears, trying to hunt once your scavenged food runs out, etc. etc. If you haven't played it, you should give it a shot. It's kind of its own thing. It has a lot of stuff in common with other survival games, but there's nothing else quite like it.

[@excalligatorreviews4088]

I really loved this game when it came out as well. Unfortunately it had the ending as it did. I really was tempted to give it a 3/5 because the pros and cons leveled out but i bumped it slightly down because there will be no chance of redemption from an abandoned game stuck forever in a 2020 update. As for long dark, its deff on my list. I have a whole 3 page list of survival games! It wont be in the next few but its on there. Im looking to do conan exiles next because they have 3.0 update coming out next week

[@juliemuz1]

I played this game with my best friend since 2017 we loved it so much and honestly it breaks my heart that it’s abandoned, but on top of that had to ruin the OG map with that stupid questing system that only works on one map 😣 if it weren’t for that I might still have revisited it from time to time

[@MrKalidascopeEyes]

Installation completed. I don't know why i keep going back in

[@tdbcustoms704]

This could be such a good game

[@ThisPirateShip]

man i miss this game. stil rmb back when we can put away weapon on your back and spam spell bug. also that one time they patch the game and mess up with the spawning rate turning the world a outright war stone golem vs griffin haha

[@zelge_]

MAAAAAAAN never have I played a game knowing it was dead and hoped that one of these days I look at the updates and see a new post the game that I can only assume lost support to focus on Ark 1k hours havent played in 3years now and i still refer to this game as the "if a game comes out like D&L I'm only ever playing that" sigh at least when I played I tamed all the tames from the original map, never did get the Gaia (i think that was the dlc map) legend tames because the server transfers had my character lost in the void for like a month trying to figure out what server she ended up on. If a game like this with the building taming and fun weapons comes out, feel free to comment. Playing D2 and Warframe mainly is starting to get boring again

[@corymassey1]

Thank you for at least playing again.

[@smilosabercat]

Thanks for putting this together. It is very tempting for me to defend this game; but, since it is abandoned it is really pointless to do so. All quests that I found are completable, however, not easily on lower levels. It takes quite a bit on the original world to get the mats to travel to the newer one. Once on the newer one; however, you are still yourself, with the same quests so you can indeed complete them. In addition, prior to venturing far from a town prior to being able to take on those skeletons and wraiths, you can flee towards a town and let the guards help you take them out for some powerful loot. I always found these creatures a treasure trove and not a creature to complain about. I liked the game better than Conan or Ark. My only real beef with the game is that creatures can spawn in your base when you are off line. Multiple times I found a wide range of hostile mobs in my keep with no gaps in the walls, sometimes even town guards found a way inside. The game is far from perfect, yet I keep going back to it. Usually I play on an off-line manner any more, as I am quite fickle as to what I want to play and when, and always found the decay rate on buildings high enough that often my work was all (or mostly all) gone when I decided to pop back in. Single player freezes time when you are not playing so that is not an issue. However, with time frozen like that growing crops is a bit of an issue... Cheers, and thanks again for reviewing this abandoned game.

[@fionaline33]

And then theres me who keep coming back to this game even that it seem like they have given up on it and now making a mobile version of this game , i got 1530 hours played in this game and yes im still playing it , however this game is way older than Ark , its from 2006 and snail games bought the rights to it in 2008 and made it early access in 2017 , development on dark and light however started already in 2002 , so i would say shame on snail games as always :/ the game are in a huge need of a graphic overhaul which i think would do a lot for people playing it also, i will say though youve been unlucky regarding the mythic animals , mine have all changed within 6-8 real life hours and yes that is still a lot of time however what ive done is building a taming pen where they couldnt reach me even if it changed, had some chairs and then left the pc doing other stuff irl , taking a look every 2 hours to feed my character however sat in a chair you dont need a lot of food or water as long your characters arent too hot or cold ,after that ofc you need the iron taming hooks and mythical feed , which you can craft at the alters thats around (floating island usually the best imo to craft it at ) anyway keep up the good job the review was good even though i felt the need to pop in that this game actually is older than ark so its more likely that ark got some stuff from this game than dark and light having it from ark

[@acurisur]

That's a different game, the 2006 game is NOT the Dark and Light game reviewed in this video. Snail games only bought the IP, they didn't use anything from the 2006 game. Dark and Light (2017) was built using an older version of Ark.

[@Woef718]

Have you tried green hell yet? It is a great game imo

[@excalligatorreviews4088]

I really want to! That is 3rd one next on my list! I saw the capybara update and that made me happy.

[@Hamoct72]

Snail Games ruined another game? Shocker. Not.

[@princeking1562]

Dude lots of your information is wrong. but most of your ratings are understandable from your perspective.

[@excalligatorreviews4088]

how are they wrong?

[@princeking1562]

@@excalligatorreviews4088 1 You need to play online unless you have a server to use the waypoint/shrines to go between Arkos and Gaia maps, 2 you can change between quest and only certain quest need you to go to Gaia and they only affect the race specific items of Gaia talent tree which is meh for the most part, 3 Creatures you've just tamed are always neutral and will only attack if provoked such as you or your tame gets hit. The horses besides the myth tames are and a few others are the only creatures with collision/trample damage which hits as long as you're sprinting thought myths walking or sprinting can do damage to some structures, this can cause guards to attack you after they receive damage. and if you get off and run past the guards holding sprint you cause your tames to sprint which will hit the guard as well. they were other things also but i don't want to drag on anymore

[@princeking1562]

@@excalligatorreviews4088 im only saying these so you'd know id still play this game again if enough people play cause its not as diverse but with the tame resurrection and stuff its superior to Ark and in the end days they made it so you only drop certain materials on death and not everything so its no longer as punishing.

[@excalligatorreviews4088]

@@princeking1562 first of all. I did play online BEFORE the dlc map came out. That released around the time I quit the game the first time. This second time around there was litterally no one online to play with and i showed that in my video. No your tanes are not default neutral. My fresh tame started attacking a GUARD who are also neutral. I had to manually set my tame to neutral to not attack friendly npcs. My review comes from over 200+ hours. Most of which was years ago. But i played it again to see the new map for this review. But since i missed the elf and dwarf cities i tried playing on the old map again as well. If this game was still being developed or at least in a finished state, it would be my all time favorite game. But its not finished. Its abandoned and left buggy amd empty. That is why i rated it low as people who have not played this game need to know exactly what they are getting. In the end its thier choice. They can play if they want to.

[@princeking1562]

@@excalligatorreviews4088 I'm trying to help so test it yourself and let me know I would gladly play this game again to try to get my all legendary sky armor only had epic at best. Yes the game is pretty much desolated, you don't need to play with others to use the transfer points between the worlds though and they are similar to ark obelisk but far more numerous, Your tames are "neutral" by default but they may be RED named this happens sometimes where you end up taming a creature that another race failed to tame after knocking it out. Even though it's neutral it's hostiles to everyone other than the owner and the first race that tried to tame it in its neutral state which usually sucks but can be good if you have others in your race who were spies following you for other races. Set the tame to passive and abandon it to see the name colour this way it wont move and you can reclaim it after checking. This confused me at one point as well before but after stealing horses from the other races i found out what was going on then.

[@TheCaptDude]

I have almost 500 hours in this game. It was better before the expansion map and wraiths. This game was amazing and better than Ark. So sad they let it die. Very sad it got worse after they aded the new map. And those frikin wraiths.

[@excalligatorreviews4088]

yeah i was really addictive when i first played it. but i left it for awhile and noticed no updates so i never touched it again untill this review. i had quit the game right when the dlc came out. i didnt leave because of dlc, i was just playing other games, but i had to reason to return after that. especially cause all of the servers died.

[@princeking1562]

I had 2900hours and still didnt have stuff they way i wanted yet but stopped 2 years ago Due to a hack raid still got some of my best stuff on the character and killed it so they couldnt steal em.

[@ravenshade73]

Pretty average review overall. Alot of points were repeated in sections which made the vid longer than it needed to be. This is a good game to play casually on with a single player game, I personally found minimal bugs and absolutely no lag or video issues.