"I wanted to like Darfall, I really did, but after spending a considerable amount of time with it, I must admit it is just not worth my time."
When attempting to break into a new market, it is important for developers to stop and consider a few simple but often overlooked points:
If a game fails even one of these tests, its market viability should be questioned. If it fails two, its failure is all but assured. And if it somehow manages to fail all three, it would be far better, and arguably more ethical, not to launch it at all. At that stage, releasing the game risks nothing more than wasting players' time and money on a product that was never going to meet expectations.
Before moving forward, let us examine each criteria a little further.
"Better" is admittedly a subjective term, but as a general rule, any new game hoping to compete should at least be comparable to what has come before in terms of quality. More importantly, it should match or exceed the market leader in content, performance, and visual fidelity.
Unless a game offers radically better gameplay, vastly more content, or is so unique that it effectively becomes a new product category, developers should aim to price their game below the current market leader. This is even more critical when that leader already benefits from wider awareness, stronger word of mouth, and significantly more content, quality, and replayability.
Developers must understand that there is little incentive for anyone to buy their product if it is fundamentally a lower-quality version of a better game. Slapping together a few asset packs or adding a cell-shaded aesthetic is not enough to make something unique. True uniqueness requires meaningful improvements or genuine changes to how the game is played, and those changes must feel like they belong.
It is easy enough to pile on a handful of extra mechanics, but the market leader is successful for a reason: they found a winning formula. There is a fine balance between adapting that formula into something fresh and straying so far from it that the result is unique, but simply not fun.
Darfall is in no way better than any of the major players in the genre, and while it is not massively worse than many of the more established titles, in no way is it better than titles such as Age of Darkness: Final Stand, let alone genre defining titles such as They Are Billions.
While Darfall retails for around $5 less than titles such as They Are Billions and Age of Darkness: Final Stand, these are both far more complete games which have benefitted from many years of consistent development, while Darfall unfortunately appears to no longer be in development, with the developers having maintained near complete radio silence since July 2025.
While this is unfortunate, it is to be expected. Darfall sold very poorly, and at the time of writing this review only 9 players are online, with a daily peak of less than 20.
While I love the World of Warcraft style visuals, it is very much a bog standard survival builder, and while the developers have tried to incorporate some changes to core mechanics, the result is ultimately not positive, with unbalanced progression and a general feeling of being limited by rudimentary unit caps and resource generation limits that essentially limit endless runs considerably due to a hard and relatively strict limit on the amount of consumable resources present on each map such as trees and rocks, ironically two of the most abundant resources on earth.
I am a huge fan of Paradox games. Paradox have been the muscle behind some of my favourite games, and I understand the need to expand, but many people will see Paradox Arc and assume that it means the game is a full fledged Paradox title that will enjoy the same level of support that Paradox games traditionally enjoy.
Unfortunately titles like Darfall prove that is not the case, and I would caution Paradox to avoid risking their good name on titles that ultimately will not live up to the reputation that Paradox have carefully curated over the last 26 years.
Darfall is a 4x strategy game developed by SquareNite and published by Paradox Arc, it released on 8 May 2025, and is available exclusively on PC.
Darfall supports the following peripherals:
Darfall is unrated and contains:
As a huge fan of survival city builders, wave defence games, Paradox and World of Warcraft, Darfall should be my ideal game. Unfortunately that just is not the case, and I must admit I fully regret buying it.
While it is not a terrible game, and for those who have not played better games such as They Are Billions or Age of Darkness: Final Stand ↪, there is some fun to be had.
However as someone who has played those games, and many other similar games, I just cannot find a reason to spend time playing Darfall when so many better games deserve my time and attention.
Ultimately not a terrible game, but not one that I can recommend, especially when so many better titles are available at a similar price point.
We found Darfall to be a mediocre game, meaning that while it has some redeeming qualities, it's held back by noticeable flaws that prevent it from being truly enjoyable.
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