Din’s Curse Demon War Review - Dynamic Dungeon Crawling

Gunther the Demon Hunter ventured into the foreboding depths of the Mausoleum in the city. Beneath the city, he found all manner of hideous creatures fighting each other to death. These creatures are aggressive and show no mercy to anyone. Gunther quickly dispatch a group of them with the dark arts he has learnt from his father. All of a sudden, the ground trembles, the wall collapses. Thankfully he escaped with his life. On the surface, the town is attacked by a group of demon dogs. Such is the tale of a game of Din’s Curse Demon War.

Din’s Curse Demon War is the expansion to Din’s Curse, a dynamic action RPG that pits you against the random events and world the game generates. In Din’s Curse, your objective is to save the town you are in and remove the curse Din, the god of honour has placed on you. You are in servitude to him saving towns for the sins you  have done in your past life. That is…essentially it. Din’s Curse(even with the expansion) doesn’t do much to add a narrative other than what seems like a boring old defend the town at all costs shtick.

‘The best defense is a good offense. Our town’s best hope is for you to go forth into the dungeon and kills the Orcs before they invade our town. We have proof they are planning an invasion.’

Trey, the Warmaster of Ublin

But where the game departs from other action RPG’s is in the dynamic/random nature of the game. Everything from your town, to the NPC’s , to of course the dungeons themselves are randomly generated. Every town will have your main quest givers, from the warmaster(takes care of the town defense), the apothecary(sells healing potions), armoursmith, weaponsmaster and so on. Its citizens and what happens to them can be completely random or you know…you could even purposely do something to them if you wished(yes you can attack any NPC in the game, except Din).

You could even make your own class by combining skill trees from different classes

Apart from the mainstay NPC’s(NPC’s that will exist in every town) your town will be populated by regular residents. The residents and even the main NPC’s can die, starve, get diseased, kill each other(out of hatred) or even might have a quest for you. Before you start a game, you’ll have to pick the level of difficulty(which is based on your characters level). Do yourself a favour and pick normal.

This basically generates a dungeon in your town that correlates to your level and is a perfect challenge for new comers(not too difficult, not too easy). The dungeons are all randomly generated and like other action RPG games, the deeper you get into the dungeon, the tougher the beasties get. Back in town, your dungeon adventure may be rudely interrupted with warnings that demons have invaded the town(the game has a news ticker message box that informs you if stuff happens). If you do not rush back to town as soon as you can to deal with the invasion, you could find your entire town obliterated.

‘As I delved deeper into the dungeon I found Arlas, a weapon smith peddling his wares. While I was inspecting his wares, I felt the earth tremble beneath my feet. I dived as fast as I could. Arlas got crushed by rocks killing him as the caverns gave way.’ 

Tales of Gunther, the level 8 Demon Hunter

Because your town is the main objective in Din’s Curse, the game can get a tad bit repetitive. You’ll go on your dungeon run, go back to town to sell your loot or buy new stuff, or save the town from an invasion, take quests from NPC and get back to your dungeon run. Once you’re done with a town you can start all over again with a newly generated town(with a much higher level dungeon of course). The whole bit in between the cool random bits that happen gets dull and it becomes a wait till the next cool thing happens game.

Ahhh this is why we love games like these. Loot and money!

But when the cool bits do happen, they are awesome. I don’t recall ever seeing anything just this random and dynamic in an action RPG. The demons are retaliating against the undead attacks. It is a Demon War! Expect to see invasions in dungeons and demons fighting it out with the undead. And humans are stuck in between, don’t expect to get much respite even with this ongoing Demon War.

What I love about the quests in Din’s Curse is that they have actual gameplay meaning to them(and a sense of urgency). They may not have much story or personality weaved into them but completing quests will have an affect on your game. Take the quest to kill a bunch of monsters before they invade your town and you essentially stop the invasion from ever happening. Or if the price of food sky rockets due to limited stock, you’ll have to take the lost food shipment quest to bring back the prices back down to normal.

'Ouurrghhh...urrrghhh...urrrghhh'

Undead Skeleton

One of the more interesting quest ideas are the ones that require you to help the town build a fire totem(or something similar to that). The quest still involves you going through a particular level in the dungeon finding rare building materials(or some other monster part) but when you complete the quest, the town gets extra defenses against monster invasions. It’s almost a tower defense inspired portion of the game. Do more of these quests and your town could hold out much better.

The quests are tied to a reputation system. Solve more quests and gain reputation. If you gain enough reputation, Din will release you from his curse. This is the end game goal. You could also lose reputation if NPC’s die or if you fail quests. End game isn’t such an important goal in this game in my humble opinion. But reputation is tied to other stuff like the possibility of attracting more elite vendors. You also get a nice bonus surprise treasure chest each time you rank up your reputation so it pays to do well.


The classes

There are seven classes in Din’s Curse(counting Demon War in) and with the ability to build your own hybrid class, you could create a combination of many different type of custom classes. You have the base classes such as the warrior(often the most played in games like these but not my favourite choice), rogue, ranger, wizard, priest, conjurer(this is the class of choice for those that liked the Necromancer in Diablo II), and the demon hunter(in the Demon War expansion).

Each class gets three different skill trees allowing you to even customise your class even further

All of them have three different skill trees that you pick skills from once you level up(these also cost money, so you’ll need to make sure you have enough money to purchase that skill). For instance, the Demon Hunter skill tree includes skills from the warden, reaver and demonologist skill tree. What’s really odd about Din’s Curse(but essentially is done for balancing purposes) is that skills cost money. It’s not enough to have skill points to assign them, but you’ll need to have enough money to purchase them.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of melee character in action RPG’s(and the demon hunter is a melee class). I prefer to play are a ranged class or a spell caster who blast enemies from afar and run away when surrounded. Makes for a way more tactical game than just plain old warrior. But that’s just me.

"Din’s Curse follows the Will Wright philosophy of game design. The gamer defines his own narrative in the game and the designer doesn’t try to shove an arbitrarily constructed storyline down their throat."

Conclusion

Din’s Curse follows the Will Wright philosophy of game design. The gamer defines his own narrative in the game and the designer doesn’t try to shove an arbitrarily constructed storyline down their throat. The game designer merely builds the system for the gamers to build their own stories, experiences from.

Din’s Curse dynamic and random world is great for telling amazing tales to your friends and peers. It may not have a deep and complex narrative built in to the game, but that is missing the point. It does suffer from repetitiveness a little because of the narrow scope of the game(dungeon crawling) as opposed to many other sand box game where there is just more stuff to do.

It has a tonne of content, from over 100 levels of creature variations to different towns and dungeon types. You could play this for a very long time as a different class or make your own class… if the repetitiveness doesn’t get to you. Din’s Curse and its expansion, Demon War will keep you occupied for a long time. Its different approach in the action rpg genre is a fresh attempt at making something that stands out from all the other Diablo clones. You can download the demo from over here and give it a try. They also offer a 30 day money back guarantee... which is the first time I've ever seen anyone offer that.


Pros:

• Dynamic/random nature of the game allows for a unique personal narrative. Each player might have a different story to tell. What's the buzz word they call this?... yeah emergent elements
  
• Low stress mode available if you hate town invasions
  
• A host of other options to customise your game with hardcore mode and options to tone the difficulty down
  
• 100 levels of creatures, lots of content and variations
  
• 7 classes(including the demon hunter) plus the ability to create your own hybrid class
  
• Monsters actually level up themselves as they fight amongst each other. They become more powerful if they allow them to get the upper hand.
• The monsters fight back in this game. Keep an eye out for invasions.
• Multiplayer coop available and is a lot of fun.

Cons:

• Sometimes the dice roll screws you up. You might get extremely bad luck and it sucks when upon the first hour of playing the game, your town gets decimated by a demon attack and is left with 3 NPC and everyone is infected with the plague.
  
• Dungeon mazes can be frustrating to navigate. No objective marker/pointer.
  
• Can get repetitive when nothing interesting happens. Quests aren’t that interesting in the grand scheme of things.
  
• Dated graphics and poor animation(especially with melee class).

Verdict: A unique dynamic action RPG world that manages to differentiate itself from the scores of Diablo clones