with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Are you interested in a side-scrolling action RPG with crafting mechanics? Looking for something a little more gritty than the usual cutesy stuff that's more well known? Well then, Din's Champion may be what you're looking for!
Din's Champion is like a weird mesh of Terraria gameplay and old-school Diablo stylization. The main gameplay consists of your chosen created hero attempting to confront his arch nemesis. You are dropped in a 2D world where you can go around attacking the blocks that make up the environment, collect them, and craft with them. Among this world are creatures and enemies you combat along the way, whom you may also mug for materials and experience. Upon earning enough and leveling, you can upgrade some of your stats, such as vitality or dexterity, as well as assign points to various skills.
Skills come in different varieties, but let's take a look at ability skills and "trades" skills. Ability skills are what you may be familiar with from other RPGs, either active or passive, and will either provide an attack or healing/buff effect, or have a passive improvement to your character. The "trades" types of skills are mining, tailoring, forging, and the like. These skills will increase as you perform the related action and provide benefits, and you also get points on level you can assign to help speed up the process.
So, how does the world of Din's Champion work? Well, you get tossed down into an area ravaged by evil, and it is your task to eliminate it. You have a crystal nearby which acts as a respawn point if you aren't playing hardcore mode, and can find various gates which you can activate in order to fast travel around. Your goal here is to eliminate the bad guys while protecting the crystal. If it gets destroyed, you lose. After completing a "level", whether you win or lose, you're sent to the next area with your stuff in any rooms you own, within a certain range of your crystal, or you have on hand.
Each "level" consists of a randomized set of areas with different suggested enemy levels. Both items and enemies can spawn in here, and it doesn't always have to make sense. For example, the first nemesis I fought was stuck next to the side wall that can't be destroyed, and I literally had to dig my way to him. On an interesting note, the world is always active, and enemies and NPCs that are around can, and will, interact or fight with each other. I had one boss I was gunning for die suddenly because an NPC had killed him while I was looking for him. That being said, any quests you pick up, whether via NPC or your crystal, can have a time limit on them. These limits aren't always stated, but if the NPC dies, or something happens to your quest target, it could mean failure.
When you start up a new character, there are a number of different classes you can potentially pick. From the standard "weaponmaster" to "ninja" or "fire mage". Each class has a different set of character skills, the trades remain a constant, and different suggested playstyles. You can unlock more classes by earning different achievements, which the game has a handy indicator for checking.
Your basic gameplay loop will probably consist of: mining, trying to find materials, crafting better gear, mining for better materials, crafting better gear, trying to beat a nemesis. Rinse and repeat until either failure or success. Be careful though, as you will have to explore a lot to find many of the enemies you're looking for, while also making sure your home crystal is protected and recruiting NPCs if you can. You may also have to dig. A lot. In the first two worlds I made, I needed to dig to get almost anywhere, which gets frustrating when it rains and for some reason polluted water starts falling down your tunnel. Pro tip, light brown water is polluted and will damage you. A LOT.
When you go about creating a new world you have options to customize your gameplay. You can choose a world size, as well as a pacing setting which determines how aggressive enemies will get, but also exp values. You can use these settings to cater the gameplay to your desired experience. For the most part, I never really noticed the enemies getting too aggressive with the crystal on the standard pacing, so you can take your time in the beginning getting used to the game at first.
Now, as this is a preview and not a full release, there is room for improvements. A couple of issues to be noted at the time of writing this deal with some movement issues, skill usage, and combat interactions. Movement is...weird, I suppose I could say. You walk faster going forward, and you face the direction of your mouse cursor, which results in a really awkward time trying to back away from an enemy. I did also notice that sometimes you get the slowed speed even if you're facing the right direction for a little while before you speed back up. Additionally, the jumping is really inconsistent. I couldn't figure out how to get a jump height that remained the same for very long. Sometimes you jump high, sometimes you have a half jump, and I couldn't figure out what was different between attempts.
Skill usage is also really awkward. If you acquire a skill by using your skill points it gets put in your hotbar as a default. It took me way too long to figure out it actually assigns to right click for use, leading me to think my skill just didn't work. It was pretty frustrating, and should probably have been explained a little clearer. Lastly we have combat interactions. Hitbox detection needs some hella work. You can stand three tiles above an enemy, swing to the right with a sword, and still hit them. Unfortunately, enemies can also take advantage of this oversight. There were a few times where I thought I was outside an enemy's range, only for the attack to hit twice as far as the combat animation would imply. It's janky, but at the very least it works both ways.
Another bit of a complaint I have at the moment is with the user interface. While the character and skill menus are fine, the navigation for the crafting menu is both ugly and a little annoying to sift through. Maybe sorting it by types of craftables and changing the graphic design would help. Oh, and stopping the equip menu opening when you want to put down a crafting station or related item from your inventory would be nice as well.
Din's Champion shows a lot of potential, and I'm hoping it only continues to get more fleshed out as progress continues. I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye on Din's Champion as the development continues. A little more fleshing out of some aspects, especially the combat and hitboxes, and Din's champion could be pretty rewarding!
Score: N/A 
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