GamesRelay

Name: Din's Curse

We've had our eyes on Soldak Entertainment's latest dungeon crawler since they announced the title, and from what the developer showed, it looked to be an incredibly rich and progressive world that changed depending on your actions. Well, Din's Curse is finally here and what a pleasant surprise it has been.

Upon first starting your adventure, you'll need to create a character, a creation process that concentrates on the actual class skills and abilities you'll posses. There's six different classes to choose from as default, but where Din's Curse really comes into its own is with its hybrid class system. Each class has three skill trees to progress through, however, creating a hybrid character will allow you to have two skill trees from any of the classes, so you can think up custom classes such as a Necromancer, a Trickster, or a Warrior Wizard, giving a huge number of possibilities to choose from. As you can probably imagine, a custom class can become one of the most powerful characters in the game if done correctly, but since everyone's going to be new at this, and from my own experience, it's much easier to play with a pre-defined class until the mechanics and abilities of each class become more apparent.

After creating your character and loading in to the world of Din's Curse, the story starts with Din, a most angry god displeased with your actions. Much to his disappointment, he does offer redemption by completing a variety of quests and tasks, an offer you'll need to accept if you hope to save the realm and become rich in doing so.

The quests and tasks you're given throughout Din's Curse aren't really crossing territory most gamers have already done before, especially if you've played some of the more popular MMORPG's which involve the usual "go here, kill that" and "collect this and bring it here". What really makes Din's Curse's quests unique, however, is that they are dynamic. Dynamic quests mean you're given a set time to complete them, no longer will you be able to hang around and do your own thing while some captive lady awaits her saviour, nor will you be the only one attempting to complete the quest, because NPC's can also complete them. Yes, you read that correctly, NPC's can complete quests without you, just like a real player would.

The dynamics don't stop there though. Not only can the NPC's complete quests, they can also die, never to be seen again. Throughout your story, and usually when you're far away from town, you'll be alerted to an invasion, a magical gate that has appeared in town, bringing with it a horde of evil monsters hell bent on destroying everything in their path. This may sound like an interesting quest, but you'll probably already be doing one, so the question you'll ask yourself is, "do I complete this quest first and then go back?" If you do wait before going back, you'll certainly wish you hadn't, because you'll come back to a desolate camp of dead NPC's, vendors and quest givers, all killed by your obvious lack of moral compassion to help the local village in need.

If your village NPC's were unfortunate enough to have been killed off in an invasion, all is not lost. NPC's can and will move back in to your local town, bringing with them a set of new quests and wares to barter with, some come from being rescued, others by themselves, but the town will repopulate given enough time. To add further incentive to look after the local townsfolk, they can also die from starvation, kill each other and fall in debt, issues that you, as an adventurer and generally decent and caring person, will need to help them with.

These dynamic features give the game a sense of purpose and urgency, not only because you'll need to complete them in time, but because they can have real repercussions throughout the game world, repercussions that can, as mentioned above, obliterate the population of your local town, leaving you with nowhere to sell all that loot you're carrying. Each of the completed quests will also reward you with reputation which is similar to experience. When you reach a new reputation level the town will reward you with a gift which is usually a powerful item, however, if you fail a quest, you'll lose reputation. The progression of each town requires you to gain in reputation before moving on, so once you hit a specific level you'll move to another town that requires your help, a town that has more difficult quests and enemies to face.

Each of the new towns you move to are randomly generated, making no two towns look the same, although graphically, the world of Din's Curse leaves a lot to be desired. With that said, Soldak Entertainment isn't a triple A game developer, it's a small indie developer that has concentrated more on the gameplay aspects than the game's visuals – you should never judge a book by its cover comes to mind. Unfortunately, characters and monsters give a somewhat stiff appearance, with limited movements to differentiate the different attacks and abilities you can use. The interface also suffers from some lack of originality here and the characters themselves are sometime hard to differentiate between genders.

One of the main concerns is the game's repetitiveness. Each town you move to includes one dungeon, a dungeon that often looks the same, but with an alternate layout and a number of different monsters, while the houses around the town also use the same models, just with a different layout. On the plus side, the monsters you encounter do vary somewhat, one of their more unique aspects being that different groups of monsters will fight each other and gain experience for doing so. If a monster gains enough experience then it'll become a champion, a status which makes that particular monster much more powerful. Most of the monsters are often defeated with some well-timed bashing, a strategy that works well throughout the whole game, this isn't the only way to defeat them, however, but it is one of the easiest, and obviously the most boring.

Regardless, there's a plethora of options you can change within the game, such as a number of different difficult settings, like whether your character needs to eat, or how much experience is gained. You're also able to change settings on the town you're heading to, such as how long you'll spend there and how much you need to do. All these different game settings inevitably place the development and progression of the experience in your hands and while some aspects may become repetitive, there's plenty on offer to make the rest fairly fresh.

Taking quests, saving villagers and slaying monsters doesn't have to be a lone experience thankfully, because Din's Curse does include a full co-op, multiplayer component. Co-op is pretty much the same as single player, except there's now two of you, meaning double the bloodshed. Playing with a friend can make a huge difference when playing through Din's Curse, so much so in fact that it's definitely recommended and encouraged, not just because things can become easier, (unless you change the settings) but because you can both experience the world and its dynamic quests together, even if you both separate to help a town while another stays behind to finish a quest.

With everything considered, Din's Curse is a good game, regardless of its repetitiveness and lack of visual aesthetics. Of course it's going to be compared to the likes of Diablo and Torchlight, even if it isn't on the same playing field. Sure, Diablo had randomly generated dungeons, but it didn't have a fully dynamic world which changes depending on your actions. Now the game does have a high price when you compare it with other titles, and it's really down to you to justify purchasing it, but as long as you can forgive the game's shortcomings, Din's Curse is an enjoyable romp that excels when played with a friend. Ultimately it'll last as long as you want it too since each dungeon and town is always going to be different.