The world of Din’s Legacy is that of chaos and random procedural generation. No two worlds are the same, and just as in life, anything can happen, so having an array of weapons and fellow players by your side is a must. Developed and published by Soldak Entertainment in September 2018, this was an early access release, and as such, it has been fully released on the 28th August 2019. So, what is Din’s Legacy? Let’s dive right in.
Din’s Legacy
What is Din’s Legacy? Good question. It’s not clear when you play the game for the first time. By looking upon the website homepage for the game, I was able to glean information about the backstory. In short, you are part of a race called the Mutated. Due to a big event called the Orc Schism, you are a race of beings infected with a little bit of everything: orc blood, zombie parasites and a pinch of necromancer magic thrown in for good measure. You are tasked with trying to prove to the world that your kind are not all bad, and you set off in search of ways to make a name for yourself in service to your god, Din, who has made a pact with your kind. In return for your allegiance, should you fall in battle, you will be revived and set out into the world.
Upon my first playthrough, I was thrust into an endless sea of character creation screens, world modifiers and map size creations. This is to set the world up the way you would like it to be, and it’s a nice touch. You can make the enemies as strong as you. Make them tougher, weaker. The choice is yours. The same applies to the size of the map too. Everything can be set by you. How you choose to set this up will determine how your gameplay unfolds. Well, sort of.
Gameplay
The gameplay relies upon the procedural generation of the world you inhabit, and this dictates the difficulty spikes you will encounter. What I mean by this is that because it is all procedurally generated, monsters and spawns for loot and traps can and will have detrimental effects on your playthrough. For example, I started off in a base. How you came to be there is a mystery, but upon looking around at my immediate area, I noticed a portal. Being ever curious, I went in. I instantly regretted my decision as it spawned me a mile away in the middle of a huge, sprawling battle between enemy human NPCs and monsters. Not knowing what to do, I was immediately set upon.
The controls (despite being customisable for both keyboard and controller) felt counter-intuitive. It took me a while to realise that by holding the right button on the mouse, I could just stay still and attack. It also turns out that all of the help you need is in the tutorial in the main menu, ready for you to read and digest. However, I like my tutorials to feel more organic, to guide me through the beginnings with a few helpful hints, then when you progress, it should give you a few more hints. This way the game doesn’t unload everything on you at once.
The Flow of the Story
Instead of introducing you to gameplay elements in a steady flow, the developers have opted for the everything all at once route where all the options to use every skill at your disposal and every quest to undertake are all at your fingertips. Now, this is both good and bad. Good in the sense that you can take your adventure in any direction you wish but bad in the sense that there is no pull to make you want to follow through on a quest or mission. It fixates on the fast-paced, non-linear combat scenarios. Pop-ups appear in your screen telling you about world events that are constantly going on around you. If you don’t pay attention to these, it can have dire consequences. The problem is that there are so many of the messages that I got lost trying to keep up.
Instead, I just spammed the monster spawns and getting loot, and I focused on gathering experience and recruiting random NPCs to my party for an extra set of hands. After some time of doing this, the further out I ventured, the harder the monsters became until I died due to a trap. The game is designed around this because you get to respawn back at base. This is where I learned that by ignoring the sprawling messages, my base was burned down to a smouldering pile of ash, with the NPCs inside barely hanging on for dear life.
Mutations
One of the features I did like was the leveling aspect and power-ups for your chosen character. What’s different about this system is that it takes the typical fantasy RPG gameplay of leveling and class building and turns it on its head. No longer are you stuck in the rigid role of your profession. If you want a skill that’s normally locked to, say, a mage, you can get it. Spend some mutation points that you acquire by leveling your character, and the skill can be yours. Also, by playing the game more, you’ll also see mutations that grow naturally depending on your play style. Horns can grow, and flaming hands can be granted to give you the edge in combat. But, negative effects are also apparent to balance all this growth, so take it with a pinch of salt.
All in all, this game will appeal to fans of the genre and the developer’s previous games. If you happen to be one of them, then this newest title will be right up your alley, giving you all the options and crazy creations you can muster to your heart’s content. For the rest of us, you’ll probably have a hard time with the immeasurable amount of difficulty spikes, the learning curve and the huge wall of texts that greet you right from the outset. As for me, I’d have liked more of a guided first few hours or so I can ground myself in the world and gameplay mechanics.
Developer: Soldak Entertainment
Publisher: Soldak Entertainment
Platform: PC
Release Date: 28th August 2019
