Dragon's Dogma is the best surprise in gaming I've had all year. I hadn't even heard of it until a few months before release, and I was immediately interested. I'm ashamed to admit that as a grown man, I counted the days before this game was released, and then booked a day off work so I could play it. And play it I did, all day, and I really haven't stopped playing it since.

What makes this brilliant game so special is it's mix of elements and how well they all adhere together, and of course; the combat. The combat in this game puts in the ACTION in an action/rpg. There is no level scaling, but the world is larlgely open for exploration, so you can just go out exploring with a real sense of danger. While I am not against level scaling, it's refreshing to experience something different that works just as well, if not better in some cases.

You won't just fight wee monsters and then get the occasional boss.

It shows that the developers involved worked on games such as monster hunter and devil may cry. You'll run into random monsters that are uhm... quite large, and difficult to take down. You may even have to turn tail and run away, to come back later when you're more powerful. Oh, did I mention this game doesn't exactly hold your hand, and isn't easy? While not being as punishingly difficult as say, Dark Souls, it won't forgive your incompetence if you don't setup your pawns properly, or don't strategize when fighting big groups, or big groups and their big monsters, all at once (yay!).

What this does of course, is something lacking in a lot of video games lately... It makes you think, and it makes you learn from your mistakes. You know what that does too, though? It gives you a true sense of reward, knowing you botched the first attempt, but then learned, came back, and triumphed. Don't get me wrong, this doesn't happen all the time, at least it hasn't to me. Just enough to keep on my toes and make me learn how to play the game properly. I'd have to say the difficulty so far, is perfect, which is no small compliment.

There's a lot to talk about, but you don't have all day, and I'd rather get back to playing the game than writing a bible about it, so I'll talk about what I like the best. Apart from the combat, which is some of the best I've played since Demon's souls / Dark Souls, I have to talk about pawns.

After you play with pawns for a while, it makes sense, but it may be difficult to grasp at first. You have one pawn that you design, equip and level up as you see it. This pawn is always with you, levels at the same time you do and essentially belongs to you. When you go online with Dragon's Dogma, this pawn gets uploaded to their servers, and other people can choose to use him or her in their adventures as a hired gun, so to speak. So you have your main pawn, and you can hire two more, for a total team of four (including yourself). Hired pawns don't level, but you can select higher level pawns if you have enough RC points. You gain RC points by having your own pawn hired and used. So the better you design, equip and level up your pawn and it's skills, the more it will get used, and the more RC points you'll earn, so you can rent higher level aids that really kick ass.

Get a nose bleed yet? Nah, it's not that bad, just difficult to grasp because it's such a novel concept. But you know what? It works, and it's so much fun!

So basically, it is a single player game, but with multiplayer-lite elements. I really enjoy the idea of being able to hand-pick my team from what other people have designed and nurtured. I am very impressed with Japanese developers as of late. Demon's souls, Dark Souls and now Dragon's Dogma. All are unique, although ironically western-themed, and offering something to gamers completely new concepts meshed with ones that traditionally come from North American developers. I'll warn you now - the opening menu track is Japanese pop-rock, but luckily that's most of it ;)

Dragon's Dogma has a lot more going than it's combat and pawn system though. The skill and class system is also a breath of fresh air. At first, you select one of three classes (fighter / mage / strider) and earn what is essentially job levels. As you level up, you earn ranks in this class, which opens up more skills and augments. The fun thing is, you can change vocations and carry over your augments (passive bonuses basically) from one class to the next. There are 9 classes available, with a few hybrids such as the magic archer and mystic warrior. So for people like me who love to respec and try all the classes, the game basically encourages it, and because you can carry your passives from one to the next, it actually gives you a huge advantage!

Graphically, the game looks great. I will warn you of one of my biggest turn-offs though; letterbox bars on the top and bottom. I can't fathom why this was put in. If it was for performance, they should have taken another approach. Luckily, you get used to it and they aren't that intrusive, but still, it's extremely unorthodox. Despite this, the open world looks amazing in the daylight and the draw distance is generous. At night, the lighting effects are some of the best I've ever seen in a game and really put you in the atmosphere. Oh, did I mention that at night, it's actually really dark? If you're outside, without a lantern, you're basically screwed. Additionally, different and usually meaner monsters come out to play at night, giving the night time a true foreboding feeling.

Another nice thing about this game is how it rewards you for exploring and going off the beaten path. I spent about 2 hours last night just walking around and checking stuff out. Of course, I ended up running into a strange area, and my pawns started saying stuff like, "this place has an odd feel to it" and I just knew that meant something big was going to happen, and it did. A massive golem spawned and it took me a while to figure out that I had to actually jump on it's back and hack at it's vulnerable spots before taking it down. And afterwards, in the vicinity, I found one of the best weapons that cannot be purchased; a sword that's always on fire, and you'll learn early on that fire in this game is powerful.

Anyways, back to playing the game!

Seems to me like Diablo III is taken quite seriously by a lot of gamers. I was told I was "close-minded" amongst other things when flatly told some of my colleagues that I wasn't buying it based on two things: a) I avoid persistent-online games and b) I don't support games with cash shops or real money purchases, etc.

I just shrugged it off and told them they can buy what they want, it's not like my sale (or lack thereof) will break Blizzard's bank... But these guys were almost offended by my response! Giving the situation some thought afterwards, I realized that a lot of people get on the defensive when I tell them I'm not buying it. And mind you, I'm not even bashing it. I'm just saying very plainly, that I'm not getting it, and for those aforementioned reasons. A few facebook friends of mine reacted in a similar fashion as well, which surprised me.

As a die hard fan of Diablo I and II, and basically any lootfest ARPG ever created to date on every platform you can imagine, a lot people are surprised at my behavior... But every gamer has to have a code, and mine shall not waver. If a game I feel should be playable single player, and isn't (regardless of the publisher's reasoning), I simply pass on it. I also frown upon cash shop or in app purchases most of the time. I realize game publishers are there to make money, but guess what? I'm also there to decide whether or not I will buy said game; it's that simple. It's my choice, and there are TONS of good games out there waiting for my hard earned dollar.

While I agree that my approach may be close-minded, I never once assumed it was going to be a bad game. Despite there being no original devs who worked on Diablo I or II on this project, Blizzard isn't in the habit of releasing bad games, and I don't see this as being the exeption.

What's your take on it?

It's finally here.

Sure, I could have played on PC in 2009, but I didn't feel like it. Because my PC is connected to my TV and using a PC on a couch blows.

Anyhow - I've had my eye on the 360 release for quite some time and instantly bought it when I found it out was released. I then spent the next 4 hours straight playing it and it's bloody awesome. If I may offer one recommendation though - play it on VERY HARD if you want a challenge, or even hard core (permadeath). Otherwise it feels too easy. Even on very hard, if you have a brain, it's not SUPER challenging but still tough enough to be fun and kill you if you get too lazy / overconfident.

Then I wondered - why is this the only randomly generated dungeon crawler featuring tons of loot on the xbox 360 to date? Sure, there's titles like Sacred 2 (which I've played 300+ hours of) and Deathspank (couldn't get into that one) - but how is it that this is the first diablo-style loot whoring dungeon crawler released on current gen consoles!? Myself and many other included have been waiting for a game such as this for so long, that I almost gave up. It's rather funny that the only diablo-style (read random levels) to hit the next-gen consoles actually has team members that were on the original diablo project!

As you may or may not be aware, Runic games completely revamped the interface and controls for the console (obviously this was needed as a point and click scheme wouldn't work). What I like about the xbox 360 version of Torchlight, much like Sacred 2, is that the action is much more involved. You don't just click on an enemy and hold down a mouse button. You control your guy manually, go in the enemy's face and hit/hold X. It gives it a much better "actiony" feel to it.

Everything else about the port is great, with the exception of some frame rate / game slow-downs if there's a lot of monsters on the screen at once, but these have been fairly rare.

No sense in trying to convince anyone to buy this - it's a live arcade title which means it has a free trial, so I will try to convince you to TRY IT OUT NOW :)

Seeing as how I recently played the first two worlds (yes it took me several months to be able to manage it), and did enjoy it, after entering a handful of console commands every time I played it, I was quite intrigued with its sequel and have been following it closely.

I wasn't very happy when it was delayed, but apparently it was worth it, as the NA version is now version 1.1 on disc, so I suppose it's better in the end.

Where to start... Well, I've put in roughly 20 hours in it since I've picked it up. I've had a few days off and nothing to do, so it's worked out quite well.

The thing that most impressed me, right from the start, is the engine. When compared to the atrocity that was two worlds (whatever engine they called it), it's night and day. Seriously. Where did these guys get this engine? Granted, they've overdone the blur and bloom effects, but otherwise it runs well on this 6 year old piece of hardware they call an xbox 360.

There are lots of similarities to the first game, such as building your own cl4ss from archer / warrior / mage skills (along with general and crafting skills of course) and the loot is still randomized (unless it's quest rewards). The spell system has had a tremendous overhaul however, and at first I hated it, but now I don't mind it. There's a lot of flexibility, but it seems a tad convoluted; more than it had to be if you ask me.

Thankfully, balance is better than it was. You can't stack a million weapons together and become invincible really early on. I've decided for my first play-through to try the default difficulty (medium I think) and so far I haven't had much trouble. At the point I'm at now, it's even getting a little too easy.

As you may or may not know, there is no level scaling in this game, which is fine for the kind of game it is. It's not a completely open free-world RPG like Oblivion where you can just start wandering around and exploring, not doing any of the main quests.

That's not to say there is no exploration though, Two Worlds II so far is gigantic, but the game is separated into chapters (like Risen is) and moves you on different islands / areas for each chapter. Although, I did create a water walking spell and crossed over to an island (2.5 painful kilometers later) when I wasn't supposed to be there, and it didn't break anything in the game (maybe hurt my ego a bit because I got Stallowned by some nasty monsters).

So yes, you will get 1-shotted if you go in the wrong area, even right in the first chapter of the game. I've seen some people whine on the forums, and I can't help but scratch my head... Obviously, it means you have to return to said area LATER when you're MORE POWERFUL. Death is the lesson, it's not so bad! This is a good thing if you ask me, it puts the element of danger in the equation, and without that, RPGs can become quite boring and predictable.

The voice acting is good, there are a few hitches but nothing that would make me label it any lower than "good". Some of the voices seem to have been recorded much louder than the rest, and others seem like the actors were not of the same caliber as the rest. Nothing to get heartburn over though.

The music... wow. The music. Probably some of the best fantasy game music I've ever heard. Period. I'm not even kidding. I'm not sure which studio wrote the music or how much it costs, but from the sounds of it, it wasn't cheap. And there are plenty of different tunes, and the way they loop isn't annoying (i.e. sacred 2 with the battle music basically taking over every time you raise an arm).

Anyways, I just wanted to write a quick impression, I can't really think of anything else to say, other than the game has really come together well, better than I expected, and it mostly runs well on the 360 (cities tend to bog down a bit, but it's forgivable). All this talking is making me want to go back to it actually, so I'll see yaz later!

Yeah. I was bored, wanted a game, so despite my poor impressions of the demo, I picked this up.

And guess what? I like it! Read on to find out why.

So, what bugged me about the demo? Well, first and foremost was the easy difficulty. I'm happy to say that you can crank up the difficulty to Gothic (highest) right away, from the start, and I definitely recommend this for any people looking for a challenge.

Another thing that bugged me was getting crazy gear near the end of the demo. Well, this portion of the demo is not in the full game, so there's none of that, thankfully. So getting to awesomeness will take you some time, as it should!

Also, when I left what I'll call "tutorial island" in the full game, is when I realized I was going to enjoy Arcania, because I could finally explore in a big open environment, find some dungeons and just do my own thing. I spent about 5 hours doing that, not following any quests, just looking around and killing monsters, and was pleased to be rewarded for my search. If you look, you'll occasionally find named monsters who carry a decent piece of gear, or skeletal remains behind a boulder accompanied by some trinkets to loot.

Combat is fun, but it took me a while to get used to it and master locking on / unlocking on (and more importantly when and when not to do it). I got my butt kicked quite often by not being careful, and this is exactly as it should be. For my character, I decided to go with a ranged / magic build, with 75% of my focus on ranged (so most skill points go there). It works surprisingly well. The spells you can access at level 4 are handy, being able to slow or stun enemies and then pepper them with arrows. Melee is fun too but since I haven't invested many points, I'm fairly weak in that aspect, so I save it for last resort, or if I have no room to kite monsters.

Honestly, I'm quite happy with my purchase, and found it easy to get lost in the game, playing for several hours straight in a single session. It's too bad that the demo turned off so many people (myself included) as many of them are probably not going to pick this up.

The one thing I'll mention though, is graphics. While there are some really nice effects, and draw distance is very good, the texture resolution and frame rate are a problem on the 360. You'll have a good idea of that by playing the demo, but there are areas that are worse than that after the original tutorial island. I got used to it, but it might bother some players more than others.

Other than the FPS, I'm happy to say that load times are rare, and fast when they happen, and I haven't hit a bug except the occasional enemy having pathing issues. So, it's worth a second look if you really like this sort of gameplay (like I do) and can forgive the engine performance.

- Jorlen

I posted this on a few forums I frequent, and thought I'd add it on my blog for $&^$ and giggles.

Just played the demo from start to finish, here are my impressions.

Honestly, the game isn't bad, but it didn't really blow me away either. From a graphical standpoint, much like Risen, it's painfully obvious that this is a PC port and I'm afraid to say it's not an excellent port either. I understand the graphics have to be toned down for consoles, but this seems sort of... extreme. The textures are quite muddy, it almost feels like I'm playing the game in 480p resolution.

The frame rate is decent enough, better than some other PC ports I've played. I've heard some rather nasty complaints about the voice acting, well it's not that bad. I've heard worse, seriously. I didn't mind them. The main character is well voiced, some of the others are a little off, but it's nowhere near as bad as Two Worlds was. If you think it was, please do me a favour, and fire up Two Worlds and then compare them to refresh your memory. I played with subtitles and there were quite a few discrepancies (a quest asks for 6 items, yet 5 are displayed in the subtitles, etc, not a big deal).

I only heard music during the menu at the beginning, it was decent, but strangely absent for the entire demo itself. Sound effects are nothing special, but do the trick.

Combat is mind numbingly easy, and honestly so is the rest of the game, come to think of it. You can hold the left trigger to lock on enemies and just mash X to attack. Hit Y a few times to roll away from danger and you're golden against all enemies in the demo, anyway. Hold Y to block a % of the damage received, but honestly it's just easier to roll and mash X.

For some reason, during combat the enemies I was fighting would sometimes just run away from me, apparently heading back to their spawn points, right in the middle of combat. Pardon the expression, but the A.I. is basically retarded...

Bows and spells are super powerful as well. You can get a zoom skill for the bow, combined with sneak, and snipe enemies from far away and deal crazy damage even with normal ammo types. Spells like lighting allow you stun enemies, and it didn't take me long to figure out I could permanently stun-lock enemies with a lightning strike, followed by melee attacks, and more lightning, etc etc.

The skill system seems very basic, but it allows you to focus on a certain aspect (melee / magic / ranged) if you want or spread it around. Not very complex and quite easy to understand. Honestly it seems to work for this game when considering the overall difficulty and almost RPG-lite elements.

Crafting seems as easy as finding a recipe and combining ingredients, but it's difficult to tell since there wasn't much of it in the demo. Still a decent addition, allowing you to scrounge around for mushrooms / herbs and combine them for potions, etc.

It's quite obvious this is an RPG designed for the casual gamer. It's pretty much the polar opposite of Risen. Now I understand the comments of people who hated risen, and seemed to like this. I'm at the other end of the spectrum; I prefer Risen, by far. In just about an hour+ of gameplay I had several powerful weapons, tons of healing items of all sorts, some armor, shields, a bow, a crossbow, special arrows and bolts, etc. I remember how long it took me to get a freggin vest in Risen (first armor piece) and a decent weapon. Like I said, polar opposites.

This game is devoid of challenge, at least in the demo's playable difficulty levels (easy and normal; I played normal). There doesn't seem to be much exploration involved. The dungeons are A to Z with an exception of having a key found just after you pass its locked door.

Honestly, I was rather bored during the demo. I'm still not going to give up on it, I'll eventually play it being the RPG whore that I am, but I'll certainly put it on the highest difficulty and hope I won't fall asleep. The PC version seems far superior in graphics, but the console's graphics are by no means terrible but they aren't gorgeous either.

In any case, it will be interesting to see the reviews, and much like Risen I imagine the PC version will be quite a few notches ahead of the console versions. Definitely not a bad effort, but nowhere near the masterpiece that was Risen or the earlier Gothic games by piranha bytes. Arcania is after all, made by a completely different developer (Spellbound).

If you're like me and you enjoyed Risen and its difficulty, you will be sorely disappointed in Arcania, I'm afraid to say :(

- Jorlen

I consider myself to be a fairly patient person. In the past 5 years or so, only two games have really tried that patience and pushed me to my limits. I'm talking about swearing at the tv at the top of my voice (I swear my neighbours think I beat my girlfriend) or even coming close to tossing the controller across the room. Demon's souls is one of those games, and recently, RoF (Resonance of Fate) has joined the fray.

Admittedly, I fell in love with Demon's Souls immediately. The art style and music, the ambience and atmosphere, the combat system, and enemy AI / behavior, it was all awesome. It was also quite unforgiving right from the beginning, unlike most games these days (read, this is a GOOD thing). With Demon's Souls, once you learn the combat system (which compared to RoF is a walk in the park) it's basically trial and error from there. Of course, many gamers were shocked and hated on the game because they were not used to using their brains and certainly not used to ZERO hand holding. Having a keen memory and remembering the levels and their traps, or figuring out boss patterns certainly helped of course. I'm certain most of us screwed many things up on the first go, such as eating a boss's demons soul instead of crafting with it.

Things are quite different with RoF. Success is this game is largely accomplished by having a firm understanding of the combat system. Sure, you can mod your guns, but if you don't understand how all the elements come together and when to use said elements, certain encounters will rape your soul. The misleading part is that you'll breeze through quite a few fights, giving you a false sense of confidence, and then you get owned at a random spot and start banging your head against the wall in frustration.

First thing first, I find the tutorial to be lacking. It's one of the very few things about the localization that I dislike. The rest though, like the voice acting for example, is superbly done. The problem with the tutorial is that many of the basic elements of the combat system are not properly explained or just plain vague. I had to go on several forums, ask questions, watch a Sega battle tutorial video (which wasn't all that great TBH) and go through random guides in order to fill in all the blanks. Now, some of this stuff may have been obvious to people who reguarly play turn based RPGs with strategic elements. Problem is, this is the first time in over a decade that I stray from my usual action/RPG comfort zone.

Yesterday before my shift, I put the game up for sale on a local website. When I got home, I played after having read tons of stuff and figuring out what I had done wrong, and played for a few hours and honestly enjoyed myself. Many things makes sense now, or at least I think they do. Only time will tell.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the game and I certainly enjoy challenging video games. I just think for me, it was a rather rocky start with RoF, to the point where I wanted to drop it after a few hours. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. But, I'm not willing to give up just yet.

Once again, I found myself craving a new and hopefully deep RPG experience. Now, because of my dislike for most JRPGs, I'm significantly limited. I've tried just about all of the next-gen JRPGs on both PS3 and 360 and I never end up getting into them. As for the Western devs, apart from a very select few, namely Bioware, it seems as though they're all too busy developing the next FPS or action game. Take Sacred 2 for example, I find it atrocious that it's the only diablo-inspired action/RPG ever made for next-gen consoles...

We cannot forget the European devs of course, those great folk who bring us titles like the aforementioned Sacred 2, Divinity II and Risen, all of which I've played and thoroughly enjoyed, despite some rough edges. I loved every minute of Risen and I've logged at least 200 hours in Sacred 2 since its release. As for PC oriented RPGs, I still have yet to sink my teeth in Drakensang, The Witcher and a few others.

Enter Resonance of Fate. I've been interested in it since release, but ended up getting busy with other games until now. I read a few reviews, watched a few vid reviews as well, and people seemed to either like it or dislike it. The funny thing is, even the people who didn't really like it gave it a decent rating. Now, obviously I'm not only going to follow official reviews to make a decision. I read a lot of user reviews and even watch some indie game reviewers on youtube; who most often have much more passion for games because they don't have to review them to pay the rent. I find some of the official reviews sometimes miss out on things and are too quick to judge if games try to go against the grain. Games don't always have to be clones of past creations in order to be sucessfull, well, at least IMO.

So at the video game store, it was between RoF and Nier. I'll probably eventually pick up Nier anyways because it seems like a really quirky and dark action / RPG with a ton of subgenres crammed in; surely such a monstrosity must be played, right? Anyhow, remembering what I had read or watched earlier about a deep and complex combat system eventually pushed me towards RoF instead of Nier.

I only managed to play about an hour or so, enough to go through the arena tutorials. I have to say, the combat system seems absolutely awesome. Obviously it's still too early to make any statements about it as a whole, but I really like the music, art style and battle system thus far. Hopefully this weekend I'll have a chance to spend some quality time with the game and hopefully fall in love with it.

Like most console owners who enjoy open world games, I'm quite busy playing Red Dead Redemption at the moment. Being a Rockstar title, I of course expected a few mini-games. Little did I know I was going to be playing a full fledged Texas Hold'em poker game, which is one of the only card games I actually play in real life (and high enjoy). The sheer amount of detail and work that was put in this mini-game made me wonder just how much time and work went into this amazing game. With a budget of nearly 100 million U.S., I suppose it should come as no surprise. I didn't really enjoy the min-games in GTA IV (bowling, darts) but this one takes the cake for best mini-game of all time.

As for the game itself, I'm only about 4 hours in, so I can't really comment on it, other than saying I'm having a blast so far. There are just so many things to do, and the random encounters when you're out in the wilderness are a nice touch to keep things from getting predictable.

I'm looking forward to fully reviewing this title once I complete the single player portion of it and spend some time in multiplayer.

Din's Curse by Soldak Entertainment

I'll admit it here and now, I'm a sucker for action RPGs of this type. Nothing cures a bad day like mowing through hordes of enemies and plundering their dungeons in the never ending quest for the perfect character. It becomes a deep addiction, and most of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've been warned; Din's Curse will fuel this addiction.

Din's Curse is a diablo-inspired game, but fear not because it adds several spins and innovations to a fun and established genre. The story is rather lean, but seeing as it's usually not the focus of these kinds of games, I'm perfectly fine with that. If you are too, and love to travel the depths of a dungeon, fighting strange monsters, hoarding loot, leveling up and completing quest after quest, then read on, because Din's Curse is definitely worthy of your attention.

The premise is that you've been a pretty bad dude all your life, and the god Din has summoned you to save some towns from evil in order to improve your bad rep. Obviously, you'll do so by slaying countless monsters and questing for the townsfolk until you save the town itself, and then move on to the next one.

The thing to keep in mind here, is that Din's Curse mainly focuses on randomly generated elements to keep the replay value high. But, in a nutshell, you get to a town, do through the dungeon depths, do the quests, save the town, and move on to do the same thing. Some may see this as repetitive or short, but the game is designed with this in mind to encourage replays and focus on character progression.

A fairly common staple of the genre in question is having randomly generated dungeons. Din's Curse goes beyond that, for each town is randomly generated as well as the dungeons, meaning the layout will always be different, and you'll get different kinds of NPCs every time. In one instance, you can have two armorsmiths and a vendor, and in other, two weaponsmiths, a gambler and no vendor at all. The houses that the townsfolk reside in will be placed in different areas, their names changed, etc. Dungeons within each town will have different layouts, textures, maze st yles in order to keep it fresh.

Another nice feature is the ability to create your own hybrid cla ss instead of selecting one of the 6 main cla sses. You'll want to choose wisely however, because unlike the "pure" cla sses that have 3 skill trees, when you create your own cla ss, you can only select 2 of them. It's a trade-off and works well; one less skill tree for having the ability to make your own combo of choise. This mechanic encourages experimentation and versatility. I've spent at least 15 hours just messing around with the 141 possible combinations. Some work really well, others not so much, and that's part of the fun is discovering these things yourself. Then again, if that's not your cup o' tea, just use one of the pre-defined cla sses with 3 skill trees fully knowing they are well balanced.

Speaking of hybrids, my last creation was a healer / necromancer which proved to be a ton of fun. The healer tree allows me to heal myself and my summoned minions and regen mana out of combat, and the necromancer aspect allows me to do plenty of damage to one enemy or groups, and summon skeletons or revive a particularly powerful foe to fight by my side. The flipside of course, is that I'm quite weak and can only wear armor and cloth, and my melee skills are definitely not the focus. Suffice to say that being able to create your own cla ss is a most excellent feature, and the only other title I've played that allowed this was Titan quest, so it was one of the main draws for me.

As far as the gameplay goes, it pretty much works like Diablo does, albeit with a few twists. As you'd expect, you get quests, complete them, and kill tons of enemies in the process, gathering loot and experience. Of course, during your adventures, there will be plenty of things to try and deter you from becoming a hero. Things like... Traps! I'm talking about some really nasty stuff, and I'm sure some of you roguelike fans will relate to this. Traps will come in various and nasty flavours. Some examples include teleportation spells that will transport you to random location on the same floor, or even worse, a higher floor in the middle of a pack of ravenous enemies. How about running to that treasure chest only to walk on an almost hidden circle that summons a horde of nasties 360 degrees around your character. If you're not used to using four letter words, there's a high chance you'll be changing your habits, because you will be surprised and you'll need to keep your wits about you and act fast. If you ask me, it's great! Too many dungeon crawlers have relatively painless traps that are just simple distractions, making them free of consequence... and that's no fun, right?

I'd hate to discourage all you would-be adventurers with all this talk about demise. Unless you choose the hardcore mode, death isn't permanent, and you have the chance to get to your soulstone before it vanishes in order to significantly reduce your experience debt. So don't worry, you will thrive and survive to level up! And once you do, you get skill points along with 5 stat points to increase stuff like strength, dexterity, vitality, intelligence, etc. Instead of having to unlock the higher tier skills in the tree, they simply cost more skill points and cash to open up. So if you want them, just save up the skill points and cash. This is a nice touch, ensuring that you're never stuck with skills you aren't going to use. To make this even better, you can remove skill points at any time, as long as you're willing to pay for this privilege. The flexibilty of this system just goes to show you how much experience that Soldak has in creating these gems. This is after all, Soldak's third game, and all three of them focus on dungeon crawling. If you end up enjoying Din's Curse, I highly recommend you check out their other two games, Depths of Peril (2007) and Kivi's Underworld (2008).

Moving forward, another interesting feature is that monsters won't just sit in the dungeon waiting for you to come vanquish them. While you're out there trying to save the town, enemies will fight each other, level themselves up, and often come up to the town to attack the townsfolk. Yes, they can even kill your vendors and quest givers, so it's going to be in your best interest to rush to their rescue whenever the prompt comes up. Not only does this dynamic add to the realism that you're actually on a time line, it also introduces a frantic element to the usually predictable gameplay found in this genre. If you walk away from the game, pause it, because otherwise you'll come back to see your town devastated and monsters running the show. It's bloody brilliant!

Quests will also pop up randomly and some of them have to be done in a timely fashion, else you will fail them. At one point, I caught the plague and it was spreading out to everyone in town. When I went back up to speak to the NPCs, one of them had the quest to cure it as an option. Another time, I got a notification that a thief was stealing items from the vendors. Apparently, monsters setup a recon totem on one of the lower floors that allow thieves to easily infiltrate the town. Once I got back to town I couldn't see the thief at all, because he was using his stealth skill, so I had to be patient. And of course, so long as the recon totem remains, the thieves will keep coming back.

Some of the quests could use a bit of tweaking, however. Escort quests or those that involve finding NPCs in the dungeon often end far too quickly. At times I will just be approaching someone I need to rescue only to have them instantly die for whatever reason. Using Area of Effect spells that target multiple enemies at once tend to cause cave-ins. While we have the benefit of knowing when to run away from disaster, NPCs or your summoned allies do not recognize the urgency and that usually means their death. With no means of controlling them, this does get frustrating at times.

Do not fret however, because if things aren't really going well, you can simply re-create the entire instance (town, dungeon, quests, NPCs) whilst maintaining your character, items and progression intact. Because the world creation system is so flexible, you can choose to level up your enemies for more challenge, or make them weaker. You also have other options, such as slow pace and fast pace. Slow pace means less dynamic events, such as town raids and also a lower monster frequency, at the cost of 15% experience. Fast pace means even more frantic gameplay, but the upside is you'll gain a 15% bonus to experience gained. Once one of your characters reaches level 25, you can also unlock higher difficulties and the hardcore mode (permanent death) - roguelike fans are sure to love this feature, and the general st yle of the game compliments this very well.

All of these things I've discussed basically boil down to a very flexible, replayable and extremely fun dungeon crawler that's light on story, yet full of personality and options to suit a number of different playst yles. You can also play this game co-operatively online, although I haven't had the chance to test this out myself. At a price of $25 for the full version, with a playable demo, you simply cannot go wrong.

Graphics and sound are quite decent, models are in 3D and look quite good with a decent variety of creatures, some famliar, some strange and creepy, while the enviroments are isometric 2D, much like Diablo. The world itself and textures aren't the highlight of the visuals, but they work well. A plethora of graphic options allows you to select a suitable resolution and effects such as AA, detail levels, texture filtering and so forth. With my aging computer rig that's plugged to my HDTV, at 1920x1080 the fonts were well scaled and perfectly legilble, and the game looked and played smoothly. The music tracks included do a good job of adding ambience and there's a good variety in the st yle.

I have run into a few bugs during my 30 or so hours of gameplay, but nothing crippling. One of the more annoying bugs is that I cannot assign any actions to my other 3 mouse buttons (other than left and right-click). For someone at a computer desk with easy access to a keyboard, that's not a major issue, but I'm playing PC games on my couch, and it's always nice to rely on the mouse alone if I can. The UI allows me to bind functions to the mouse but when activated, nothing happens. Luckily the developer is very active on the forums, and there is a bugs section for users to post their problems so they may be addressed via patches.

In conclusion, I highly recommend Din's Curse. Grab the demo, see if you like it, you have nothing to loose. Support your indie devs, the price tag is more than reasonable for the hours of entertainment you'll get from this game. Be warned however, the game is extremely addicting!

8/10

- written by Jorlen