Din's Champion

It was just too janky. After 90 minutes I was exhausted with the game. Very little choice for abilities/skills. Everything moves like you are underwater. Will probably try again at 1.0 release as it did seem to have potential.

I've been playing Soldak games for nearly 20 years and the commitment to updating based on feedback has been consistently great. If you've played Depths of Peril and Zombasite, you'll feel at home here with a similar but improved formula applied in a Terraria-like hybrid fashion, which continues to evolve to meet the new gameplay style. This is worth your time if you're interested in deep gameplay and not scared away by old school graphics.

I'm not saying it's a bad game. at it's core it still has the soldak formula, and there are some new features I enjoy. It's just not a direction I'd like to see the series move in. the good: -the crafting system is decent. admittedly I'm not really a fan of the "make an item and get completely random affixes" diablo style crafting because it's really frustrating when you get something useless, and most of what I enjoy about crafting is tinkering, not gambling. As a new feature I like that it's been added though, and the runes/ gems do allow some customization. Plus, it's nice to have some control over what item types I get. -The soldak formula is there. It's still good. -I can hide my lifestone so that enemy ai cant path to it. Cheesy, but it saves a lot of hassle. -terraria style building, nothing super innovative there, but it's an adequate implementation of an already proven system. -tons of classes, and I've always liked the achievement style class unlock system soldak uses The bad: -I can hide my lifestone so that enemy ai cant path to it. it saves a lot of hassle but I probably shouldn't be able to cheese it like that. -There's a day night cycle. Which isn't bad by itself, but at night you play wave defense against constantly spawning enemies. Which, admittedly, I solved by hiding my lifestone. Prior to realizing I could though, I found it really annoying because the enemies spawn just fast enough that you can't leave the base but not fast enough to keep you consistently occupied. I don't even have a problem with the concept, they just need to give you something to do in between waves, or make the enemies spawn faster so you're not awkwardly standing there. -combat feels awkward. I can't put my finger on why, it just does. -The limitations of tunneling and whatnot mean its a LOT slower than previous games. previous soldak games were constant action. Every time you pushed into a new area you had to murder dozens of enemies to push through it, and the map was flooded with little objects, chests, traps, etc. This game you spend most of your time tunneling. and when you do find a little cave system, there are maybe 2-3 enemies there, and then you go back to tunneling. Or maybe you find an underground house with a single chest. Maybe the cave has one wishing well. I personally find this way less engaging than previous games. imo the map would benefit from focusing more on a labyrinthine tunnel system populated with tons of stuff, rather than a few disconnected caves with a couple mooks each. Also, maybe dedicated dungeon entrances? that way you could have areas where actual adventuring and combat happens without the constant digging. -I miss the mutation system. That's a personal gripe, I just like tinkering. -water is implemented in the least interesting way possible. You can't swim, you just sink. so you can't find clever ways to use it for mobility. You drown so you can't ignore it. Enemies/allies don't drown and it doesn't interact with the environment, so you can't find clever ways to use it to your advantage. It's never really that deep so it doesn't present an actual danger. It's just kind of there, you fall in, you jump out, make a platform to jump out, or dig out, and that's it. The only value it has is making water bottles for alchemy. -There are a lot of underground trees that don't provide wood, or anything at all when you chop them. Just a personal gripe because it means sometimes you have to pull yourself out of whatever you're doing to go back to the surface to get more wood for necessary utility items. -the lack of enemies means you level really slowly. This means you can't equip some items/upgrades you craft. -If you ever felt like your inventory was constantly overwhelmed by loot drops in a soldak game, now imagine half your inventory slots are filled by random map tiles you mined.

It's def a indie game but has solid mechanics that kept me addicted for 100s of hours. Worth my twenty bucks that I can't even buy lunch with anymore. Pros: -It's got random loot -It's got procedurely generated world akin to terraria or starbound zones -It's got item crafting and enchanting -It's got a good amount of different classes -You've got nemesis NPCs that you have to hunt down and that send monsters and other NPCs to hunt you and/or attack your town -NPCs that you can take as companions or townsfolk with thier own skills. Cons: The amount of sand and mud that you encounter is a lot and you have to sit there swinging your pickaxe a long time to deal with them to unstick yourself. Although, this might be intended to make you think a little on how to get around them without triggering a slide. Same with water and poison liquids in the environment. There is a lot of it and I end up digging way way far away to get around them, drain them, and repeat all the way down the map. Game might could use a config option for it at generation time.

This game is crack. The game is in Alpha, and it already has a ton of features and is insanely fun. Terraria exploring and building mixed with Diablo style loot, and it's done really well. Performance leaves some to be desired, but the game is still in Alpha so I'm sure performance will improve. Overall I absolutely recommend, and I think the game should be much more popular.

A charmingly janky mix of Terraria and early Diablo

If you like Terraria, this is a no brainer. Try it, remember it's in Alpha, and and enjoy. If you like Factorio, don't touch this game. It will be like day 1 Factorio all over....you'll lose complete sense of time, take PTO the next day, and just engulf yourself. If you like any other game which requires building, character skill and inventory development, strategy, combat "tense" action, discovery....or stimulate dopamine by any other method, I'd suggest giving this a try. Bottom line, nothing crazy original, but new enough to absorb 100+ hours of your time. If, at the time of reading this review you note that I have less than 100+ hours, recognize that is a personal choice to prevent myself from becoming so absorbed in a game the life get's put on the back burner. I could easily spend 200+ hours in this game. P.S. I find it ironic that the spell check in Steam flags Terraria, and brainer.

Soldak Entertainment is one of the few publishers out there that is an insta-buy for me. Din's Champion is another case of a fun, engaging game and world. The co-op is a lot of fun, and the deviation from their normal top-down style to 2.5D is a refreshing take, and I think made it even more enjoyable. I've spent nearly 100 hours in-game, 90% of which was co-op. If you enjoy Terraria and games of that style, but with RPG skill trees, and a constantly evolving game world, where nemeses are abundant, and regular mobs can evolve into bosses - I definitely recommend grabbing this gem and giving it a try.

It's a good base concept but right now every build boils down to only one skill thats useful and for every class it seems to be fire/explosion of some sort. Once it's baked and classes have variance that work it'll be fun otherwise it's pretty short content

True to form for all Soldak games, but with about 20 extra layers of ambition. I hope this gets to the promised land someday. It's great, but there are levels of jank that detract a bit, but it's to be expected and doesn't detract a ton from the game. But I'm going to fight someone if I can right click sell soon.