I am by no means an expert in the action RPG field. Diablo and Torchlight are perhaps the furthest I’ve ever gone. But having played the demo for Soldak Entertainment‘s Din’s Curse, I felt that I should be doing the review for the full game. In a way, it’s a challenge to myself to step outside my regular boundary of genres. After all, indie developers push their creations to the limit and offer up gameplay mechanics that are often familiar but generally desirable. Din’s Curse knows what you want from a game of its caliber: you want action, you want skills and skill trees, and you want some fat loot. I’m here to tell you, Din’s Curse offers all of those.

But that’s not to say the game doesn’t lack in a few departments. I guess this is kind of an outsider’s take on the genre, but having played the game for well over 8 hours at this point — I’m willing to give you a hardcore gamer’s take.

GAMEPLAY

Dungeons are so fucking awesome. It just has to be said. I know this, you know this, and every fan of this genre knows it. Din’s Curse is extremely dungeon-centric. As far as gameplay goes, Din’s Curse has it all — and more. Right off the bat, after you create your character you jump into a randomized new town and undertake a quest- and loot-fest in the dungeons. In the character creation process, however, you’re given the ability to choose what level your opposition will start. So for an extreme challenge you can crank the difficulty all the way up and have fun getting your ass handed to you. I chose to crank it up only by a couple of levels, which is nice because it takes away the hassle of grinding for hours and only slowly building up your character.

Your character classes offer some leeway — play as a warrior, rogue, priest, wizard, ranger, conjurer, or a hybrid of two of these — but you’re also able to advance into 3 sub-classes that come with each of these three. Geoff touched on these topics in his preview, so I won’t bore you with the specifics of character progression, but I will say that battling in Din’s Curse is highly satisfying. You have a wide variety of enemies and a wide variety of abilities to take care of them. For the most part, Din’s Curse was similar to Torchlight and Diablo while I played it.

Multiplayer is an incredibly useful feature of Din’s Curse. Not only does it make things funner to quest and hack-’n'-slash with others, you’ll get some tips along the way and use your characters interchangeably between single player and multiplayer. It’s what Torchlight lacks in, and that’s what gives Din’s Curse an upper hand — but in the gameplay department.

STYLE

Din’s Curse has a very sword-and-sorcery vibe. Like other dungeon-crawlers, there are many familiar themes, but they’re hard to pinpoint as this is mostly gameplay-centric. The graphics aren’t top-of-the-line, but they’re sufficient and run smoothly, which is appreciated for somebody with average PC specs such as myself. Multiplayer fortunately does not lag. and the top-down view is reminiscent of the old-school classics. Soldak’s action RPG also carries some good voicework and tunes. Nothing too extraordinary, but they fit within the context of this title.

STORY

As a reformed version of your main character — who has done some dirty deeds in his/her past life — you are now under the servitude of the god Din (hence it being his curse). This means that your playthrough in a single town will consist of quests assigned by Din and townspeople in need of assistance. The quests aren’t extraordinarily note-worthy in any sense, they’re often the same fetch formula used in so many other RPG oriented titles. But from time to time, you’ll be notified that the town is being attacked and must return immediately to defend its inhabitants. It would have been much nicer for quests to have more continuity but seeing as how this is randomly generated, I suppose some things have to be given up.

Still, what I had most trouble with in Din’s Curse was getting myself to care about the NPCs around me. Only a few are voiced (such as Din himself) and barely any make much of a difference in your progression. The lack of legitimate character interaction and emotional attachment bogs down the credibility of the story. This feels like a missed opportunity; I would’ve liked to have been more enthralled by the experience.

EVERYTHING ELSE

Din’s Curse sits at an uncomfortable $24.99 asking price, but offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. Soldak seems confident in its title and it’s nice of them to do so in case it isn’t somebody’s cup of tea. Perhaps what’s hardest about the price is that it needs to compete with Torchlight — which is generally at $19.95 but often on sale for ten dollars or less through Steam and other distributors. However, let’s not forget that Din’s Curse does have the multiplayer advantage over Torchlight. At $24.99 and with a money-back guarantee, I don’t see any reason for lovers of this genre not to delve into this game. Whoever doubts its level of enjoyment, you’re welcome to try out the demo before making the purchase.

[Buy for Windows/Mac from Soldak Entertainment.]

[DIYgamer obtained a free copy of the game for review purposes. This in no way affected the outcome of the review.]