DarkSpore - Reviews @ TTH, PC Gamer, PC Games.de

Here's a small handful of Darkspore reviews. Grinding again comes up as an issue for mixed results. First, MMO site Ten Ton Hammer says 84% and "Very Good":

So we’ve got ourselves a bit of a conundrum here. Darkspore is a wonderful tideover game with solid gameplay, excellent collection & loot chase values, all the varied difficulty and challenge you could want, and a beautiful presentation to back it all up.

But perhaps the developers paid a little too much attention to the enthusiastic beta playerbase and over-estimated the gaming mainstream's willingness to grind. You wouldn't think 15 minutes per level would wear you out, but - as was my experience with StarCraft 2 matches - the intensity of the game wears on you. As much as I wanted to chain missions, I also wanted to take a break, and that impulse won out more the further into the game I went. Perhaps it's the intensity of the gameplay, maybe it's the lack of identification with the characters in the story. But one thing is for sure: the low chance to keep any of your characters in rares or epics without grinding ad nauseum (especially in light of the myriad characters players have to equip) makes the loot chase something of a wild goose chase.

PC Gamer is far less enthused, with a score of 60%:

The big idea is its best: instead of controlling a single hero, you can instantly swap between a team of three cartoony-looking heroes, each with its own set of powers and distinct health and energy pools, and each contributing one power that any team member can use. I quickly assembled a team of heroes with powers I liked, led by Arborus, the self-healing, plant-based tank who grows to several times his size as long as I maintained a steady stream of kills with his club. I even customized his accessories as best I could to make him my own.

Darkspore then goes out of its way to sabotage this by treating Arborus like a piece of walking loot, encouraging me to swap him out by unlocking new heroes as I leveled up. I wasn’t forced to, but it’s the only way to get new powers. Disposable heroes make customization feel futile, and I soon stopped bothering to learn their names—they were just Robot Guy or Plasma Dog-Thing to me.

...and for German readers, Alrik sends in the review at PC Games.de.