Info about Din's Legacy:

Official game description:
Din's Legacy is an action RPG with mutating characters, set in a dynamic, evolving, fantasy world for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  
During the Orc Schism, the entire Orc race was violently split into Dark Orcs, Zombielords, and the Mutated. The Mutated are tainted with Orc blood, a zombie parasite, and necromancer magic. This makes people seriously mistrust and even fear them. The fact that they slowly mutate over time makes it even worse. Who is going to trust you when you grow horns overnight?  
Despite all of this, the Mutated are actually more closely related to the Elves, both their behavior and physically. They want to prove this to the world, but they are facing a tremendous uphill battle.  
The trickster god Din was intrigued by their chaotic mutations and burning desire to prove themselves to the world. Always in need of champions, he made a pact with the Mutated. Each volunteer would become one of his champions trying to save the world wherever Din sends them. In return, each time they die in his service he resurrects them to continue their service.  
Din's Legacy, as well as the Mutated's and yours, are all in your hands! Can you be the Champion that is needed?  
Features:  
*   Experience your character mutating over time for good and bad  
*   Guide your character's evolution (choosing/improving skills, suppressing unwanted mutations, etc)  
*   Use mutation points to mutate your character towards another character or sub-class  
*   Uniquely created worlds for every game, with different scenario, win/lose conditions, areas, monsters, items, and quests, give the player a new experience every time  
*   Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world  
*   Your choices truly impact the game  
*   Co-op multiplayer to adventure with friends

Release date: 28 Aug, 2019

Categories: Action RPG, Cooperative Multiplayer, Character Progression, Procedural Generation, Exploration, Roguelike, Character Customization, Faction Management


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Innovative Mutation System (weight 0.93): Players extensively praise the game's innovative and complex mutation system as its core strength. This system provides unparalleled character customization, allowing for deep skill hybridization, class mixing, and continuous character evolution. The manageability of mutations and the streamlined class unlock system further enhance build diversity and long-term engagement.
- Dynamic & Unpredictable Living World (weight 0.66): The game features a highly dynamic and unpredictable living world, where procedural generation, random events, and active NPC factions create emergent gameplay and stories. Monsters scheme, towns evolve, and factions engage in diplomacy and war, making each playthrough unique and full of surprises.
- Overall Engaging & Fun Gameplay (weight 0.53): Despite any perceived graphical or polish shortcomings, players consistently find the game's core gameplay loop highly engaging, fun, and addictive. Its unique take on the ARPG genre provides a deeply satisfying experience.
- Exceptional Replayability & Depth (weight 0.38): The game offers exceptional replayability, with deep systems, extensive world customization options, and opportunities for theorycrafting. Players anticipate hundreds of hours of entertainment, allowing them to tailor difficulty and scenarios to their liking for continuous engagement.
- Significant Improvement in Soldak Series (weight 0.38): Many players consider Din's Legacy to be Soldak Entertainment's best game to date, representing a significant evolution and improvement over previous titles like Din's Curse and Zombasite. Reviewers appreciate the innovative approach and refined mechanics.
- Satisfying ARPG Core with Roguelite Elements (weight 0.2): The game delivers a highly satisfying Action RPG experience, reminiscent of classic Diablo-style gameplay, combined with strong roguelite elements. It effectively scratches the loot hunting and upgrade itch, offering a fast-paced and engaging genre blend.
- Improved Graphics & Visuals (weight 0.12): Players noted improved graphics, effects, and overall visuals compared to earlier installments in the series. While not cutting-edge, these updates contribute positively to the game's presentation.
- Responsive Active Development (weight 0.1): The development team is highly praised for their responsiveness, consistent release of patches, and active engagement with the community. This dedication to ongoing improvement builds trust and enhances the game's long-term viability.

Common complaints:
- Persistent Bugs & Performance Issues (weight 0.96): The game is plagued by frequent crashes, stutters, and numerous bugs that hinder the experience. Reviewers note general performance issues and express disappointment that post-release updates have been minimal, suggesting a lack of significant improvement for these long-standing technical problems.
- Lacks Innovation & Polish (weight 0.78): Many players feel the game is highly derivative, lacking innovation and significant evolution from previous Soldak titles, often reusing assets and mechanics. It feels like an unfinished 'work in progress' with many features lacking depth, polish, or synergy, contributing to an overall sense of stagnation in the developer's approach.
- Poor Character & World Design (weight 0.66): The game is perceived to have a minimalist story, lacking narrative depth or emotional arcs. Character classes often feel similar with limited skill choices, and vendors are frequently unavailable or sell useless goods, making itemization difficult and unrewarding, which hinders overall character progression and world interaction.
- Clunky UI & Navigation (weight 0.58): The user interface is described as dated, ugly, clunky, and poorly designed, with microscopic buttons, tiny text, and a lack of hotkeys. This makes basic interactions, inventory management, and quest navigation unnecessarily cumbersome, detracting significantly from the gameplay experience.
- Unbalanced & Random Difficulty (weight 0.56): Players report constant, often unfair, difficulty spikes and unbalanced progression largely due to unpredictable randomization of enemies, events, and skill acquisition. This leads to frustrating, unwinnable situations and a feeling of losing control over character development, making the core gameplay loop a punishing slog.
- Repetitive & Unrewarding Combat (weight 0.56): Combat is criticized for feeling clunky and unresponsive, with difficulties in targeting enemies and repetitive monster designs. Players find fighting with boring skills unenjoyable, often yielding 'crap loot,' contributing to a sense that the core combat experience is simply not satisfying.
- Dated Visuals & Poor Optimization (weight 0.48): The game suffers from outdated, basic graphics, simplistic animations, and a general lack of visual polish. Environments are often illogical, repetitive, and cluttered, hindering navigation. Furthermore, poor optimization is a major flaw, leading to performance issues even on capable hardware.

Gameplay feedback:
- Extensive Procedural Content & Scenarios (weight 0.37): The game heavily relies on procedural generation for nearly all content, including maps, dungeons, quests, enemies, and loot. Players engage in diverse, randomized scenarios that function as mini-campaigns, each with specific win/loss conditions and customizable settings for world size, monster density, and difficulty. This design ensures high replayability and varied experiences.
- Flexible Class & Skill Progression (weight 0.24): The game offers a large number of starting classes, but character progression extends beyond the initial choice. Skills are acquired and evolve through a combination of traditional leveling and the mutation system, allowing characters to mix and match abilities from various classes. This creates diverse and adaptable character builds.
- Familiar ARPG & Developer Lineage (weight 0.16): Players frequently compare the game to other action RPGs like Diablo and Dungeon Siege, indicating its ARPG roots. More specifically, it's seen as an evolution or modification of previous Zunius titles such as Din's Curse, Drox Operative, and Zombasite, carrying over and refining elements like town management and faction systems.
- Dynamic Factions & Town Management (weight 0.14): The game includes dynamic faction relationships, town events, and a 'nemesis' system where a specific enemy faction actively targets the player's town. Players must manage their town, monitor NPC morale, and protect important characters, as their survival is crucial for quest completion and overall scenario success.

Performance notes:
- Performance suffers during intense scenes (weight 0.07): Players report significant framerate drops, particularly when many visual effects, such as large areas of poison or numerous fire pools, are present. Performance also dips during action sequences, especially with the new lighting system, sometimes dropping frames to near zero.
- Shadow rendering issues encountered (weight 0.04): Some players experience issues with shadows not rendering correctly on their specific setups. A temporary solution is available by disabling shadows in the game's options menu.

Recommendations:
- Unique ARPG for specific fans (weight 0.44): The game is highly recommended for Action RPG enthusiasts who appreciate experimental design, deep character building, endless replayability, and complex interwoven systems. Players should be prepared to overlook dated graphics, a rough UI, and general lack of modern polish to appreciate its originality and unpredictability.
- Doesn't surpass prior Soldak titles (weight 0.24): Many reviewers feel the game does not offer a significant improvement or sufficient new content compared to previous Soldak titles, specifically recommending Din's Curse or Drox Operative instead. Some even suggested it should have been DLC rather than a full new release.
- Performance and subpar audio (weight 0.19): Players noted performance issues and a generally subpar audio design, with some reviewers suggesting playing without sound for a better experience. There is an expectation that future updates should address these technical shortcomings.
- Developer maintains loyal fanbase (weight 0.09): Many players express strong loyalty to the developer, recommending their other games and showing enthusiasm for their future titles. This indicates a positive relationship with the studio despite mixed reception for this particular game.
- Hardcore modes are unadvised (weight 0.02): Reviewers specifically advise against using hard-core or semi-hard-core modes currently, indicating potential issues or lack of refinement that can detract from the experience in these challenging settings.

Other player notes:
- Game is in early Alpha/EA (weight 0.1): Players widely acknowledge the game is in an early development state (Early Access or feeling like an Alpha), which sets expectations for roughness and potential issues. There's an understanding that the developer aims to iterate on mechanics with player input during this phase.
- Request Mac OS support (weight 0.06): Players express a clear desire for future games to support MacOS, with some specifically retaining older hardware to play existing Soldak titles. The lack of Mac versions for new releases is a disappointment for a segment of the player base and hinders their social gaming experience.
- Desire for more ARPGs (weight 0.04): Reviewers are keen for the developer to produce more Action RPGs within the established 'Din's Games' setting. They specifically hope for new titles that revisit the strengths of earlier games while incorporating more fleshed-out and improved mechanics.
- Lacking game enjoyment (weight 0.02): A reviewer indicated a fundamental lack of enjoyment from the game, stating they found more pleasure in writing the review itself. This suggests a significant issue with overall engagement and fun, though specific reasons aren't detailed.
- Support for small developer (weight 0.01): This feedback reflects a positive sentiment towards the developer as a small company, implying a willingness to support them financially. However, it doesn't offer direct feedback on the game's features or mechanics.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.39): Players experienced satisfaction from the game's tremendously addictive core mechanics, robust character building through the unique mutation system, and dynamic world simulation. The game's complex customization, skill synergies, and continuous developer improvements, including fixing performance issues and providing active support, contributed to a fulfilling gameplay loop and high replayability.
- Excitement (weight 0.29): Excitement stemmed from the game's unique mutation system, offering insane amounts of character customization and potential for overpowered combos, alongside its dynamic and living world with unpredictable events. Players also found excitement in discovering the game as a 'janky little gem,' the promise of endless replayability, and the continuous updates from an actively engaged developer.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.24): Enjoyment was largely driven by the deep, chaotic, and often unpredictable gameplay, with players spending many hours exploring game systems, theorycrafting characters, and appreciating the emergent gameplay and high replayability. The fun hack'n'slash combat, various class combinations, and satisfying loot acquisition, even despite rough edges or old-school graphics, contributed to an overall positive experience.
- Frustration (weight 0.21): Frustration arose from various technical and design flaws, including persistent bugs, crashes, and performance issues, especially in crowded areas. Players also expressed frustration with the confusing and untidy UI, unintuitive mechanics, overwhelming popups, unbalanced RNG, and random difficulty spikes that made combat difficult to track or progress feel unrewarding.
- Disappointment (weight 0.17): Disappointment was primarily due to the game failing to meet expectations, often compared negatively to previous Soldak titles like Din's Curse or Zombasite, citing issues like inferior graphics, clunky combat, and a general lack of polish. Players also felt let down by the game's unfinished state, the overshadowing of good ideas by poor UI implementation, and a perceived reduction of prominent features.
- Joy (weight 0.08): Players found joy in the game's addictive nature, leading to long hours of continuous gameplay and the anticipation of starting 'just one more world'. The experience was enhanced by chaotic game events, the delightful mutation system, and the ability to share adventures through multiplayer options.
- Appreciation (weight 0.06): Appreciation was shown for Soldak Entertainment's innovative gameplay, unique approach to the ARPG genre, and effective utilization of indie developer concepts. Players valued the dedication of the developers, the opportunities for diverse build variety offered by the mutation and combo systems, and the overall value provided by the game and its solid multiplayer experience.
- Hope (weight 0.04): Hope was expressed for future improvements, such as patches to fix performance issues, a new engine, and a complete overhaul of skills and combat in future Soldak games. The ongoing updates and the potential of the mutation system also fostered hope for the game's continued development and a new game set in the Din's Games universe with MacOS and multiplayer support.
- Amusement (weight 0.04): Amusement stemmed from the game's dramatic, unpredictable, and often humorous emergent gameplay and random events, particularly the 'shit-tier' and 'hyped-up' violence. The unique and sometimes bizarre outcomes of random mutations and game-over scenarios contributed to a 'funny little thing' experience.
- Anger (weight 0.04): Anger was directed at the perceived lack of polish, poor balance in core game mechanics, and repetitive design, leading to the feeling that the game was intentionally designed to annoy the player. The game's high price point relative to its quality and issues with the skill tree also contributed to this emotion.
- Annoyance (weight 0.03): Annoyance was caused by persistent technical glitches such as constant crashes, graphical errors, and the game changing Windows' display resolution upon exit. Other irritants included inaccessible areas, unrewarding world design, monster ineffectiveness, awkward hero movement on hills, and vendor scarcity.
- Surprise (weight 0.02): Players expressed surprise at how good the game was, particularly in contrast to its visuals, finding it to be an unexpectedly high-quality experience. This positive surprise highlighted the game's underlying strengths despite initial impressions.
- Interest (weight 0.02): Interest was generated by the game's unique world, dynamic quests, and the innovative nemesis and mutation systems, which offered chaotic and compelling gameplay. New graphics and physics also drew interest, suggesting a desire for modern presentation alongside unique mechanics.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion arose from not fully understanding the game's objectives, some core game elements, and its overall identity, leading to uncertainty about what was happening. This indicated a need for clearer explanations or a more intuitive design for new players.
- Preference (weight 0.01): Players showed a clear preference for the game's specific mechanics, such as its RNG and roguelike elements, over those found in other Soldak games like Din's Curse. The mutation system was particularly highlighted as a preferred feature.
- Helpfulness (weight 0.01): Helpfulness was demonstrated through players providing tips for others, indicating a desire to assist the community in understanding and enjoying the game. This action suggests a positive engagement despite any personal challenges with the game.
- Tolerance (weight 0.01): Tolerance was expressed regarding the frequent need to restart the game, suggesting that while it was an inconvenience, it was not severe enough to deter players from continuing to engage with the game. This indicates a willingness to overlook a flaw for overall enjoyment.
- Uncertainty (weight 0.01): Uncertainty was noted regarding the game's overall quality, indicating a mixed or unclear impression among some players. This suggests that the game's strengths and weaknesses might not consistently align for everyone.
- Pride (weight 0.01): Pride was expressed in the game's quality, with a specific comparison to next-gen titles, suggesting a high regard for its depth and mechanics despite potentially modest graphics. This indicates a strong positive evaluation from some players.
- Nostalgia (weight 0.01): Nostalgia was evoked by comparing the game to classics like Diablo 2, while simultaneously acknowledging its deeper systems. This suggests the game successfully captured elements of beloved ARPGs while offering modern, complex mechanics.}