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| Din's Legacy by Mischief Procedural Generator 09/15/2019, 5:22pm PDT | ||||
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| No Man's Sky has recently released yet another disappointing update that adds a little more gilding to its potemkin village, but fails to deliver the living world promised by the infamous E3 trailers where I could join in, I could take sides. Defenders of NMS say that delivering a living world is unrealistic, it'd take 50 years and $500 million to produce a game like that, "you ask the impossible!" But then, like Yoda lifting Luke's X-Wing out of the swamp, indie developer Soldak not only creates procedurally generated worlds far more alive than even NMS's wildest promises, it's been making them for more than a decade.
Din's Legacy is Soldak's latest "living world" ARPG, and I think they've finally gone off the deep end. Because while the game is as straightforward to play as Torchlight, the procedural worldbuilding, event generating, and player character mutation approaches Rimworld levels of procedural anarchy. 
The game takes place in a fantasy world slowly recovering from the zombie apocalypse of their previous game Zombasite. You're a member of a mistrusted elf/orc hybrid species cursed by necromancy to constantly physically mutate, yet you remain noble of spirit. The god Din takes interest in you and grants you limited immortality while you travel between threatened settlements to rescue them and make a good name for the mutants. Each randomly generated settlement has three "leader" NPCs who give you different quests, all of which need to be cleared in order to win the map. Where Din's Legacy and Soldak games in general deviate from the formula is these quests have a ticking clock attached. The big baddie isn't just sitting in their dungeon twiddling their thumbs and waiting patiently for you to stroll in and slay them. The baddie is casting spells, recruiting lieutenants, and building machines for the express purpose of destroying your settlement. Spend too long grinding and you could see key members of your settlement turned to stone, apocalyptic thunderstorms brewing overhead that zap your villagers to death, and an army of monsters clawing down the gates of your settlement ready to stream in and slaughter your people. Immortality or no, this is an ARPG that you can lose. Fortunately if you do lose you can roll up a new world and bring your existing character there to try again with all your equipment and XP intact. 
But more than just the big bad, the worlds of Din's Legacy are not only dangerous, but alive. Monsters have their own factions and you could enter a forest and find a war going on between the giant catmen and the water demons. You could also find random humans fighting for their lives and if you save them you can recruit them to your village and give it more of a fighting chance against an invasion. If you run away from a fight, the monster you were facing will upgrade to veteran status and be that much more dangerous later. And if a monster manages to kill you they upgrade to elites, gain new powers and become a full-blown midboss in the game's emergent narrative. But one nice thing I have to point out about all of Soldak's titles is while the game generates a world to match your character's initial level, there is no level scaling in-game so you always have that sense of escalating power. So the other big thing about Din's Legacy is playing a mutant. What this means is two things: first throughout the game you pick up random mutations that do things like add new skills to your tree or gives negative traits that you can spend skill points to repress, or add a proc to an existing skill on your tree, like my warrior who got a flame wave effect added to his whirlwind slash, or my healer who caused a minor earthquake every time she made a kill with her holy bolt. The other thing is you accrue mutation points that can be used to switch to a different class while retaining purchased skills from your previous class ala. the job system from Final Fantasy Tactics. Except not quite because the actual skills you gain or lose are random and you can get double or even triple skills on your skill tree. It's very messy. 
This procedurally generated anarchy, so much more pronounced than their previous games, could be make or break for you. You don't have full min/maxing control over your character build, some generated worlds can be disappointingly easy to clear, sometimes the rules of the game change from world to world. I've generated a new world only to find myself in an enclosed arena with a boss monster and the fact that I couldn't kill it without a couple deaths myself resulted in a failed world. I've also generated worlds with rival settlements that have their own villagers and heroes, complete with the diplomacy system from Zombasite. This is not a game for an OCD control freak. Which brings me to the negatives. Din's graphics are over a decade out of date and sometimes some of the world generator's creations are downright ugly. Sound effects don't fare much better, the whirlwind slash ultimate crowd-clearing attack for warriors just sounds like a couple butterknives being clinked together. The music is fine, but it's stock music you may have heard in other games before. The interface makes it clear that it's a product of extended early access because it's pretty slick and handy once you figure it out, but bafflingly obtuse to new players. The combat mechanics are really stiff and clunky, especially with the game's new ability to generate rolling hills and ridges with tree cover that can hide enemies completely. Victor Vran this ain't! 
So would I recommend buying a Soldak game? Absolutely. Din's Curse is the best game for beginners with straightforward action RPG gameplay matched with Soldak's patented living worlds. Drox Operative is my favorite of their games; the perfect goldilocks balance of ARPG and 4X, the combat is slightly more skill-based, and the spaceships in deep space aesthetic has aged much better in this engine than the fantasy games. But would I recommend Din's Legend? Only if you're already a veteran of Soldak games. I really don't think it's intended for newcomers, they literally throw everything and the kitchen sink from their previous fantasy games into this one. But don't just take my word for it, every one of their games has a full-featured demo with a level cap and you can continue your character after installing the full game! |
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Din's Legacy by 09/15/2019, 5:22pm PDT  Gimme another day or two before publishing. I may change my mind about the rec. NT by 09/15/2019, 6:11pm PDT Scrap this review, ICJ, I'm writing a new one! by 09/16/2019, 4:40pm PDT Re: Scrap this review, ICJ, I'm writing a new one! by 09/16/2019, 7:16pm PDT Okay, here's the final draft. by 09/23/2019, 10:26pm PDT |
