Dungeon diving community service: A Din's Curse analysis.

The action rpg genre has been a favorite of mine since the time of Diablo 2. Din's Curse is a well designed game and in several ways takes things above Diablo 2 and other action rpgs.

Let's get the story out of the way, you were a useless member of society in your previous life and it did not go unnoticed by the supreme god of the world: Din. He has decided that you won't be able to rest until you've done some good in the world. It seems that every village in the known world has made the same mistake of being built on top of a dungeon full of monsters, demons and of course shiny loot. Your task is to go into these dungeons and make the town safe again. Before we talk about the dungeons themselves we have to create a character.

Character creation from the outside looks fairly simple but its complexities are subtle, you have six professions to choose from, such as warrior, thief, wizard, etc. Within each profession are three skill trees, which you could say represent sub classes. The trees are made up of class defining skills shown all the way at the top and skills you can learn.

The class defining skills determine weapon and armor proficiency, any bonuses you receive from increasing certain attributes and anything special like receiving extra mana from enemy deaths. Learn-able skills are any attack, defense or passive abilities that you can use to survive the dungeons. Unlike most action rpgs skills are not set up as a tier. You don't need to learn "small fireball" before you can learn "large fireball" for example. Instead the only restrictions for learning skills are money and skill points. Skill points are earned at each level up and at any time you can redistribute your skill points as long as you have the money.

By setting up skills this way it allows you to pick the skills you want and focus on them instead of being punished by not getting your class's ultimate skill quickly. This also allows each skill to be unique compared to the other ones in the same skill tree. With three different trees for you to pick and choose from there is a lot of flexibility in character creation.

One other option you have is to create a hybrid class, in which you pick any two skill trees from any profession you want to create your own class. If you want to be a warrior who also dabbles in necromancy, go for it.

Before you start your adventure you'll have a chance at altering the parameters of the world. You can make the world easier or harder by adjusting the starting level of monsters among other things. Once you're set the game generates the town, dungeon, quests and monsters you'll run into.

In each town you'll meet the usual suspects; Din along with other important town members will issue you quests. To save the town you'll have to complete every required quest (some quests are optional). However things are not that simple and the next mechanic elevates Din's Curse from the usual fare.

In most RPGs you are not in any hurry to do your quests, even if the world is going to end in 10 minutes. That is not the case in Din's Curse; as you are exploring the world, time marches on. When someone says that the boss of the dungeon is preparing something it is really doing that and if you don't stop the boss's plans you'll have another quest in the dungeon.

Sometimes the bosses may even send monsters to attack the town forcing you to stop what you are doing and go back and defend, if enough villagers are killed the town will not be saved. These events are just a few of the many consequences that can happen forcing you to weigh the options of exploring the dungeon or making a bee line for the quests.

Monsters in the dungeon are varied, some will split into smaller monsters when killed and others will summons monsters to aid them. Like other action RPGs you'll run into different classes of monsters such as champions and elites. Higher ranked monsters have buffs which are randomized as well. If you're unlucky you may run into an extra strong, extra fast, life stealing elite which is not fun to fight. Of course bosses have the most buffs and at higher levels their list of bonuses can stretch from one side of the screen to the other.

Even the dungeon itself will give you trouble, cave ins can happen at any time and barrels can be set on fire to create an inferno in the dungeon. Traps are aplenty with just about any kind of trap you can think of is set up to give you trouble. To aid you each floor of the dungeon has a portal which allows transport between the town and back to the floor. Monsters will also respawn over time, especially on quest floors and a returned visit may have different monsters to greet you.

One great detail that I like about Din's Curse is that the monsters are not buddy-buddy with each other. Different species of monsters don't get along and will fight each other before they go after you. The undead and living monsters especially hate each other and if you are not careful you may walk into a middle of a massive fight. One moment that made me laugh was when I walked in on the two bosses of the dungeon fighting each other, I just stood back and waited for one to be beaten before finishing off the other one.

There are a few issues with Din's Curse that have to be mentioned. As it stands right now other then the dungeon fighting there isn't anything else you can do, such as crafting new weapons. The town's themselves are static and currently every quest in the game revolves around either collecting something or killing someone.

While things are randomized in each world I wish there were more world modifiers to deal with. Other than your character nothing persists between towns, which on one hand gives the game a more personal journey but on the other does make your accomplishments in one town seem hollow.

The random world generator can also give you trouble. The big advantage of a RWG is that you don't know what to expect, the problem with a RWG is that you won't know what to expect. Sometimes luck is the greatest determination of success in Din's Curse. If you enter a world that has all the bosses on the first few floors next to the town portals you'll have an easy time.

On the other hand if the boss is 12 floors down and you have been cursed (lowers your stats by 20%) and every floor's entrance is surrounded by enemies then things aren't going to go as smoothly. To be fair to Din's Curse this problem is seen in other games that have randomized settings and it is part of the charm. I've had my fair share of easy worlds and tough worlds and it does keep you on your toes.

The more I play Din's Curse the more subtleties I see that make this above your usual fare. I like how you are free to build your own character how you want without being penalized for taking certain skills. The game has that one more play feel to it as each new world offers different challenges and rewards.

Currently you can buy Din's Curse from most digital distributors or from the company itself, Soldak. Right now they are working on an expansion titled Demon Wars which adds more monsters, a new class and several improvements. You can pre-order it and can try it out with beta patches or wait for the full release.

I've been playing the beta for the last few weeks and things have been relatively smooth, however there are still some bugs when it comes to quests and balancing out the new features. Still for lovers of the action RPG genre that are waiting for another game that begins with D you'll find a lot to like with Din's Curse.

Josh.