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I’m a big fan of dungeon crawlers. There’s no telling how many hours I put into Diablo II and Torchlight. There’s just something about killing a huge boss and getting some gauntlets with lightning powers. As of late, there hasn’t been a big loot RPG to keep me invested. That is, until I started playing Din’s Curse.
Din’s Curse is an action RPG that focuses on taking quests from townsfolk and then entering the dungeon plaguing the town to complete those quests. After completing a number of quests in, you move onto the next town.
You play as a person that has been cursed by, you guessed it, the god, Din. You now have to do good deeds and help others and towns in order to get into the good graces of Din. This means taking on quests, helping townspeople, and defeating boss monsters.
The combat is your standard action RPG with an isometric view. You click on a monster, you attack it. You use certain abilities and skills that can heal your character, do extra damage to enemies, or buff yourself and your party. If you have played a dungeon crawler before, you’ll be in familiar territory.
The quests are pretty standard, as well. Go fetch this for me, kill this boss, save this guy, and stuff like that. What gets interesting is the fact that the town you’re trying to save is in constant peril. If you’re not quick enough to kill a boss or if you’re in the dungeon for too long, the town can be attacked. If too many NPC’s die, you fail at saving the town and you owe Din more service time.
There are an overabundance of classes and character customization options in the game. Each of the pre-made classes has 3 skill trees to put points into or you can “create a class” that has skills of two classes. The classes have enough differences to make for varied play experiences depending on which you choose. Warriors are your melee powerhouses while your Conjurer focuses on magic. There really is a ton of depth in the character building aspects of the game. It’s possible to make 20 characters and not have a single overlap in abilities or stats.
Another great customization aspect is the customizing of the town and experience itself. Before starting in a new town, you can choose a number of custom stats that affect the game. You can set the enemies’ starting level, how many there are, how they act, how the town responds to certain actions, and many other things. It gives the player complete control over how their game will play out. It’s a fantastic touch for the players looking for a better challenge or an easier ride.
The game offers co-op multiplayer over the Internet with essentially no limit to the amount of players. The unfortunate thing is every time I tried to find a session, there were none available. The game is not very well known, so I don’t believe there are a lot of players playing online. It’s a shame considering the game is so good.
I did have a few problems with the game. First and foremost, the graphics and visuals of the game are not so hot. I honestly thought I was in 2001 again playing Diablo II. The areas and characters just look like an old game. This also makes for a few gameplay problems. For instance, there were a number of times I was trying to click on an enemy and I kept clicking on an item lying on the ground instead of hitting the monster. Its small things like that that will have you constantly readjusting your placement just to do certain things. The last and most annoying part of the game is due to the fact that when you level up, you gain skill points that you can place into your skills to lean more abilities or power up the ones you have. This is all well and good, but the problem is you have to pay money to place points in your skills. At early levels this is a problem due to your character having almost no money, so you’re stuck running around with unused skill points until you earn enough to use them.
An expansion was released for the game called Demon War. It adds a new class, new abilities, new enemies, and new quests. Din’s Curse is already a large game. This expansion just adds a ton more to it.
All in all, I would have to say, Din’s Curse is a pretty good game. It has tons of options to play around with to let the player experience the game exactly how he/she wants to. Character building is just as addictive as finding better loot. The game offers up a challenge in many different ways, and the quests keep the player going. It can get repetitive at times and the game’s looking is very dated, but that shouldn’t stop you from dropping the $20 on the game, and if you’re looking for some more, an extra $9.99 on the expansion.
Review copy provided by publisher.
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