Din's Champion by developer and publisher Soldak Entertainment—PC(Steam) review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Are you interested in 2D survival crafting games like Terraria but want something a little grittier and more in-depth? Well then, I might have a game for you! Din’s Champion is an interesting title that could best me summed up as some sort of chimeric cross between Terraria and Diablo.
Set in a world where an evil goddess is poised to destroy and recreate the world according to her whims, it falls to you to take on the forces of evil. You must build a town, craft your own weapons, and set out to slay the evil generals of the army set against the world. As you explore the world you are in, the game will progress with or without you, crafting a unique environment, both ecologically and militarily, each time you play.
Din’s Champion is a bit of a tough game to pin down because it does, well, a lot really. Let’s start off with the basics of how it works. The main premise is that of a survival/combat crafting game with a 2.5D side scrolling style, hence the similarity to Terraria. You start out with very little and must begin by chopping down trees, mining resources, building houses, and making gear through smelting ingots and forging armour and weapons. Unlike Terraria however there’s also a big emphasis on the combat oriented portion of the game. In Din’s Champion you have levels, skill trees, skills that increase as they’re used (like mining or forging), and various classes all with their own specialties and skills. As a comparison, this is much closer to Diablo in nature, both graphically and character progression wise.
As a good example of this, the warrior and assassin classes, which you can choose when making a new character, have different skills and intended playstyles. Not all classes will be available from the get-go however. A lot of them require unlocking by hitting certain in-game benchmarks, such as defeating a certain number of a specific enemy type. Needless to say, this makes individual character building a lot more of a critical factor, unlike most crafting type games where your equipment is the codifier for your playstyle rather than a chosen class.
So let’s talk a little bit more about the crafting side of things before delving into the combat. As I’ve mentioned, Din’s Champion is much like Terraria in the crafting style. You must go around collecting resources via mining with a pickaxe, chopping down trees, and digging up the terrain. If you happen upon some copper ore, you can create a furnace, produce copper ingots, and then forge equipment. You start with very little to your name and must create everything as you go, including workbenches and required stations. Once you’re somewhat set up, now you can make your first house! And you will want all your stuff in houses. Basically once you “finish” a world, your houses and contents get transported to the next, so make sure nothing is left out!
Now that you’ve got a house and some equipment, it’s off to go explore the deadly reaches of the wilds! There are different zones, spread both horizontally and vertically, throughout the world and each have their own biomes, traps, and monsters as well. Pay attention when entering a new area to make sure you won’t get beaten too badly. So now you are in enemy territory, and you see an evil demon across the way! You can now exchange blows. I’m assuming this means you will be swinging a sword at it with the first character you play. The surface tends to be pretty lenient from what I’ve experienced, so this means a few hits should dispatch your foe! You will be rewarded with money, experience, and if you’re lucky some drop items that can be used for crafting.
Once you start leveling you can now acquire new skills. Some of these are active skills and need to be assigned to your hotbar number keys, and others will have a passive effect. Active skills will consume MP but tend to do decent damage or provide good effects. Your health and mana will regenerate over time, more noticeably when outside of battle, so as long as you’re not being attacked you should be able to hide somewhere for a bit.
And you will need to hide. Enemies in Din’s Champion are not just static patrol units in their general area. They will dig, they will break through walls, they will get in fights with NPCs you haven’t met yet and kill them before you have any way of getting there, and they can and will subjugate other boss monsters to form alliance all while you’re trying to correctly place a table in your house so you can make new gear. Din’s Champion is an incredibly dynamic game, which is both a point in favour and against it in a broad view. While it is really neat to have constantly evolving threats, everything is on a sort of timer. Enemies will get stronger while you’re getting used to things, the challenge will increase, and you’ll be left sitting there thinking “how the heck do I make better gear or get better resources?”.
This also has an interesting spill off that results in any quests you take, whether they be from your base crystal you need to defend from the monsters or from wild NPCs, have a time limit. Sometimes these time limits are long enough to be considered negligible, other times they’ll be so short there’s no way you can reasonably complete them in the timeframe requested. I once had a sidequest from an NPC asking to find his buddy’s body. I only managed to explore half the area the body was supposed to be in before I timed out on the quest. While this dynamic is a really cool concept, it generally means you’re probably going to get pounded into the pavement for the first couple of world’s you run. Definitely a nice aspect for those a little more used to the game, but starting off is a bit rough.
Speaking of a little rough, it’s about time I mention the user interface. It’s pretty clunky and a little unwieldly. There are plenty of menus to navigate, stats to view, and mechanics to learn. Seriously, you’ll want to read all the tutorials/hints they give you as well as explanations. It might be a bit of a drag when you’re starting but trust me it’ll be helpful. Unfortunately navigating these menus isn’t exactly intuitive since there are so many, so I found myself checking the keyboard controls more than once because I couldn’t remember a hotkey. Even the menus at some workshop tables are pretty rough as well. Trying to repair equipment, since it has durability, and being unable to repair only one thing because you don’t know how is a bit frustrating. My biggest advice? Your first world is purely testing and getting used to how things work. Don’t put too much stock into performance until you learn how to walk. Once you get a handle on things then the game really takes off. I would also like to mention that the game isn’t exactly easy either. Enemies, especially boss units, can pound you into paste pretty easy, so make sure you’re prepared and know how to fight going into that.
The graphic and sound design for Din’s Champion is certainly a choice I wouldn’t have made, not that it’s bad or anything like that. This is another aspect that’s closer to a Diablo like game than it is to a Terraria or crafting game where things tend to be “cutesy-er”. A very much grittier look and some rather basic looking assets at times, but that sort of adds to the charm of the game really. It sets itself apart from the crowd both through the drawn inspiration and unusual art style.
As a sort of wrap up I will give a disclaimer that I am not good at Din’s Champion. I constantly overestimate myself, fall into pits I think I can get out of, miss jumps I could probably make. I also have an unfortunate habit of running into strong enemies before I reasonably should fight them or being completely unable to locate a quest objective. Despite all this I’m actually more inclined towards the game than you’d probably expect. Yeah, it’s rough around the edges and a little janky here and there, and the combat sometimes feels like something off an old Newgrounds flash game at times (wow how old is that), but it has a certain charm and depth that a lot of other 2D crafting style games don’t. You actually build a character off your character instead of gear, the world is constantly evolving, and it has a really unique presentation for the genre.
Overall I’d say Din’s Champion is a bit more of a niche title. For those who enjoy hack-and-slash RPGs and want to shove that system into a 2D survival crafter type game? This is probably a great choice. The world is always changing and enemies are active and can tunnel under your base or make alliances in real time, providing a unique challenge. On the other hand the menus and combat can be a little janky at times and feel a little rough. I’d highly suggest checking out the trailer available to see if it’s something you might enjoy!
Score: 7 / 10
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