 |
|
 |
|
Please support this independent developer!
|
|
|
 |
Din's Curse
Game Name: Din's Curse
Developers: Soldak Entertainment
Price: $24.99
Release Date: Out Now!
Review by Andy Yates
|
|
 |
|
 Din's Curse is a hack and slash RPG adventure game very much in the style of that classic of RPG titles, Diablo. That means starting in a town or camp and adventuring down the local dungeon collecting items and basically building up your stats until you can take on the big boss. Sounds simple eh? But getting into these games can be a bit tricky with the number of options and statistics involved.
Soldak have solved the first problem by adding in optional tutorials, which means you can read them if you want to by clicking on small icons at the bottom of the screen. It's a good idea as seasoned veterans of the genre can probably ignore most of these but check out the information which is specific to this game.
So what is specific to this? I'll start with the feature that surprised me most of all, which occurred while I was happily adventuring away: suddenly the game informed me that the town was under attack! I was a little surprised as in nearly every other game of the genre I've played the town/camp has always been the safe-room of the game where nothing can get at you. Not true here as those nasty monsters can decide to attack at any time, including when you're trying to buy or sell items. During these attacks townspeople will defend themselves and sometimes will die in the process, especially if you don't get back in time to help. It makes the world feel on edge, never safe and, well, awesome to be honest!
 Somewhere the game does fall a bit short is that it lacks any semblance of a real story. There's a brief explanation that Din, the God who the game is named after, has cursed you and now you must complete the quests he sets for you while traveling to various towns and helping them out. Having only limited time and, lets face it this is an RPG so I was unlikely to “finish” it in a week, I can't say if more of a story appears later on but I didn't get the sense that it would. Now it's might be that this doesn't matter to yourself as a player, for many it doesn't. To me it matters a little more as I like to find reason in the massacre of monsters (even evil monsters) in their home dungeons, even if it was a simple "The character is searching for something/someone" reason. But just because a God feels like it? I wasn't completely convinced.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy the game, I've sunk many hours into this already and can see myself continuing over the next few weeks until I reach critical-RPG-mass and have to move onto something less involved. The game-play itself is nice and smooth and fairly intuitive to get your head around. There's a bucket load of looting and treasure hunting involved and a dynamic quest system that keeps things interesting by setting you various tasks outside of just getting to the last level of the dungeon to kill the big boss. These extra quests are especially dynamic to the current town and include tasks such as helping to un-shrink an NPC that has been shrunk due to a random attack on the town. And that makes sense, of course they'd want to un-shrink him and here you are to help! Nicely done I say.
 Din's Curse does of course have a few negative aspects, the first of which is the sound. Musically it's ok, fairly standard orchestral stuff but it's hardly memorable or specific for the game. Thinking back I can't really remember much about the sound at all, the only thing I do remember are the fairly annoying screams from the little imp-like-creatures that litter some of the dungeon levels. There's also not much spoken dialogue, Din talks right near the beginning but aside from that I can't recall hearing any of the NPC's talk save for a few grunts and screams during combat.
Graphically it does ok, it's functional but nothing extra-ordinary and you've got shadows, which certainly helps. But the lighting feels quite basic otherwise and the environments look like they could do with some extra attention, in particular the walls of some of the dungeons and the grass in the town were disappointing. On the other hand everything was recognizable as well as functional and the most important thing was that everything matched
Like anything though it's the game-play that really matters and thankfully Din's Curse delivers. There are plenty of monster variants although it's hard to see the difference between some of the humanoid bad guys at a glance. Defeating hoards of baddies is just as satisfying as it should be and special skills are good fun to use against them in those situations. My only problem with the special skills was that I didn't feel that I leveled fast enough, never earning enough skill points to acquire many new ones. Each class has a range of skills available to them categorized into 3 sub-classes, which basically means loads of skills! But again unless you play for absolutely hours (which to be fair would be quite easy!) you might not get to try out even half of them.
 There is, of course, a huge range of equipment to acquire. It was nice to see sets of equipment that you could collect to give cumulative boosts to your stats and also cursed Armour/weapons which look good at first but probably are more trouble than their worth to make use of. You'll run out of inventory space every 10 minutes, but Din's Curse incorporates a system where you can travel back to the town via a level gate that exists somewhere on each level. This means you can get back to town fairly quickly to sell your stuff or to rescue it from an attack.
The last feature of the game to mention is that the levels, and the towns, are randomly generated which obviously adds a fair bit of replayability. There are a couple of style variations on the dungeon walls and the town which adds to this making each new town feel new rather than someone has just shifted the furniture around!
It's quite easy to see which gamers are going to be drawn to this and that's fans of Diablo or traditional hack'n'slash rpg fans looking for a new challenge and a variation on that theme. Din's Curse throws in some new ideas as well as maintaining the solid game-play that made the genre so successful.
Score: 75 out of 100
Final Words: RPG-Tastic!
You can get Din's Curse from the official site by clicking here
Or click here to goto the list of reviews on the site
|
|
|
|
Thanks for visiting! Please Let me know if you spot any errors (eep!) please let me know! |
|
|
|
|
