Din's Legacy Review

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Indie developer Soldak Entertainment returns to the world of Din where a chaotic struggle amongst the various creatures that plague the land stand in your way as you step into the action RPG madness that is Din's Legacy.

Developed 8 years after the original Din, you begin your journey with a character customization screen that will play a critical role into how your playstyle will initially flow. You select from a few beginning classes, yet more will be revealed as your character levels up through violence and exploration. The creation of your map is a rewarding slot machine in the game where you select how fast and how big you want your map to be, along with a few modifiers that will add an effect to your world's layout and a region to your overall game. The game will then generate your world. Beyond that, your Mutated character will stand in the middle of his/her town where they can commence to play the game in their own rhythm: they can add quests from the bulletin to their quest page, venture into the unknown to battle creatures, save people, solve unexplored quests, and obtain progression for your skills and mutations, or perhaps keep adding worlds to your game until you find the perfect one. And the best part about all of this, your character can be transferred to another map you create with the same stats and equipment.

Din's graphics are acceptable overall, but the game suffers from some glitches that tend to get in the way of the animated galore. When the game isn't looking choppy, there's room to appreciate the character design behind the creatures, each bearing distinctive appearances, abilities, and attacks. Some of the NPCs look a bit more neglected than the monsters in regards to design, but the wonderful level and map arrangements make up for that, where the different inner regions outside of your town are either populated or being contested by one or more clans, classified by the texture they tread upon. The game supposedly has an implemented action-to-world consequence for whenever you miss an opportunity or kill a certain target, but it doesn't seem to make that much of an impact on you or the world, until an unfair clan attack raids your town almost warning - though that might potentially be a glitch in the game.

When it comes to the narrative of the game, there isn't much to really go after in terms of an endgame. The god Din has made a pact with you, a Mutated, to go out and become one of his champions by roaming and ridding the land from evil. That's pretty much it until you start packing your quest page with simple quests that range from killing a specific creature out there in the world to destroying demon gates to avenging deaths of NPCs and ghosts you encounter along in your journeys. Almost every creature you encounter should be added into your bestiary, though I've had some issue navigating the page when it came down to learning more about some monster I had just slain. Above all else, the main questline is primarily and actually your stack of quests you obtain through the bulletin and through acts of monster hunting in the land. Still, your character's progression feels like a main questline, as you continually advance their mutations and skills to become a more resilient and badass fighter while taking down an array of foes to save the good from the bad and ugly. It's really all you can do when it comes to shamefully losing your town to some unknown raid you don't recall occurring because you were taking care of a priority 3 quest when you should've been attending to the priority 1 objective. By then, your townspeople are gone and you can't vendor your goods until you meet another NPC with merchandise in the unknown or you create another world.

The satisfactory sound effects imbedded in the game ring a familiar and loving tune that breathes RPG nostalgia, especially when it comes to solving quests and leveling up. It makes the game a bit more engaging until your headphones are overcrowded with monster grunts, spells, and slashes under a mediocre sound mixing system that doesn't flow altogether too well if you want a coherent audio experience. Several of the sound effects you come across are either muffled out and/or glitched at unconventional times as if it's happening far away rather than up close, which could confuse the player and their surroundings. The music, on the other hand, is quite amusing to listen to. It's a nice Runescape/Diablo blend with a deeper emphasis on fantasy, evidently - very befitting for the game's fable-like experience.

The game is surprisingly a ton of fun to play after the initial couple confusing hours on where and how to start. I'm having a pleasant experience consistently upgrading my main character while feeding onto the lesser equipped two I'd just created for the sake of unlocking more classes for a different kind of playthrough - it is here where the game really shines, for its splendid character customization is one I'm constantly excited about working toward. Each world that is created is a unique one, with distinct modifications and a random name generator in the game to separate and identify whichever world that is now stored into Din's Legacy. While I am disappointed that the multiplayer doesn't function as of now (though there is a component that is apparent within the game), players should get a kick out of mutating their characters into a variety of clashing classes that is sure to make them fierce warriors and venture deeper into the game. If you're willing to play through the confusing beginning steps, it's worth a try for $14.99 if you like a game with a similar style to Diablo. It's still in early access so some things are expected to be tweaked out, and while help guides can only so far in the game, there is no current manual to accompany you and your confusion, which sets you off into a lonesome adventure when you can't play with a mate to figure things out. There will be some points in the game that will make us scratch our heads due to missing information in regards to occurrences in the game that force us to go to an non-existent online page that the developers probably forgot about, misused grammar, and the choppy glitches, but the engaging action and little narrative twists sure create one decent experience for an action RPG as you dual-wield magic and weapons to fight off against whatever goblin, scorpion, or giant skeleton that might come after you.