A bunch of design shortcomings and overall imperfections cannot mar this fascinating and addictive dungeon crawler.
I played some great games, some seriously overrated games, and some unforgivably underrated, quickly forgotten games.
Din's Curse sure falls in the "underrated" cathegory, so i felt my moral duty to review this particular game.
Misunderstood by many, Din's Curse has been seen as the last in the never ending series of Diablo clones; however, this game looks a lot more inspired by the immortal Rogue: the hero is bound by a curse to fulfill the quests the Din's god assigns him, saving randomly generated cities in the meanwhile.
Every city is just as seen in Rogue a bunch of houses with NPCs and shops, built on top of a dungeon inhabited by all sort of demoniac creatures -just like your average sunny village in a volcano!!-.
This time, you're not bound to explore just an infinite and lifeless dungeon, but you move from city to city with little dungeons (from 4 to 10+ floors) and, what really makes this game shine, every town "lives" on his own: new bosses arise every now and then in the dungeon (often just by killing other monsters by their own!!) and start to build earthquake machines, plan attacks on the city, corrupt citizens to pass on their side...
You're not the only hero in town, so if you're not quick your quest will be solved by other heroes... or maybe they will be caught by a boss and you will have to save them! However, there are lots of ways to fail a quest, but don't worry, there will (almost) always be a way to save the town, even if some important NPC dies... maybe someone is ready to be the new city's apothecary, if you prove the city and its hero worthy...
Where the game lacks is in polish, graphics (really, really dated) and overall variety in quests; however, this is sure forgiven because not only of the merits of this highly dynamic, almost fully random system (so there's ALWAYS something new, even if it could resemble a bit something you already seen), but also thanks to a good Diablo-like equip and skills system, with multiclassed PG (6 main classes, 18 subclasses and something like 140 total combinations that play REALLY different, even if they're not all well balanced).
Consider the vote as a a very plain judgment on the game itself compared to today's commercial standards; if you consider this is an INDIE game sold for less than 20 $, you sure understand it deserves absolutely a try (if only to support the indie scene) and, depending on your love for the hack'n'slash dungeon crawlers, the score can without doubt rise half a point if not an entire one ;)