Din's Curse - Review @ Sorcerer's Place

7/10 is the score for Din's Curse over at Sorcerer's Place:

Which takes us to another interesting aspect. The goal is to save the town and accumulate reputation. If you waste too much time clearing levels, gathering loot, and exploring, you can lose the town. So, you must restrain your tendencies to explore every nook and cranny and gather every last copper piece and bent knife and focus on the goals. Din doesn't care how rich you are and what a great rig you are rocking; he wants you to save towns and be a proper gofer for all the NPCs around. If that's not your thing, you should think twice about trying this game, because Din's Curse is not about exploring large areas and clear-cutting the forest of bad guys. It's about doing quests, getting reputation, and saving towns.

It changes the rules on you mid-stream, and the monsters can use the same features of the dungeons that you use (levers to trip explosions work equally well for and against you). It's refreshing in a way, but also maddening, as there is no real guaranty that you can actually save any particular town. If it spawns with a bunch of problems and powerful bad guys, you are out of luck. While you can control the relative level of the spawn before it happens, that doesn't mean that you are going to guarantee yourself an easy (or even fair) time of it.