Soldak’s latest action RPG, Din’s Legacy, is progressing well through its early access period. First released on Steam in September 2018, the game now has all its core features working well. The new mutation mechanic is working especially well and is a clever advancement to the RPG genre’s usually quite ridged class system. Mutations provide a separate set of abilities and skills that trigger using a separate experience point system to the regular levelling and class system.
The benefit main of the mutation system is that it allows players to learn skills and talents that wouldn’t normally be available to their chosen class which depending on the user’s choices can either further enhance their chosen class or blur the line between their class and another that might complement well. While some of this system appears to be based on luck with advancements being added randomly, the player can choose to enhance or supress those mutations to shape their characters in a certain direction.
Like previous games, the procedurally generated landscapes return, with options to change the scale and difficulty of the worlds spawned, along with the ability to find and recruit NPCs to your party and home town. Enemies that defeat you get promoted and grant you quest experience when killed and the main area quest system has also been carried over from previous versions.
There have been a couple of complaints on Steam that this new title is very similar to the studio’s previous games and that it should really be marketed as a DLC addon to the previous title rather than a standalone new game. While it is true that the game does bear a striking resemblance both in visuals and functionality to previous titles, the narrative theme is different. There are also advancements in the new title which it would be difficult to implement in an already completed game, as particularly the mutation system would require the skills and XP system to be rebuilt and rebalanced from the ground up. I would also point out that the current sale price of the full game is about the same what you would pay for a piece of DLC, anyway, so to pay that for a new title seems a decent investment, to me.
If you have played previous titles and decided that they were not for you then this new game doesn’t reinvent the formula to the degree that I would say that giving the series another chance would change your mind. However, for fans of the previous games it’s a fresh new instalment giving them more of what they love. If you’ve never played any of Soldak’s games before and you enjoy a good action RPG then this title is well worth checking out and can be download through Steam here.
Being a title that is still in production, there are likely new features still being developed and, while I have currently not encountered any, there could well still be some lurking bugs. I’ll be keeping an eye on the game’s development and will report back with a more in-depth review when it nears full release.
