The Dink Network

Ric says, "Thanks for playing my dmod. Playing it offers you the chance to be good or evil, or a fighter or mage. These parallel game paths will hopefully make play more realistic, knowing your actions will change the path of the game. The game contains three new weapons and five new spells. It might be worth playing twice!"

*Best download of september 2003*

In "Bane of the Magi" Dink arrives at the town of Palona to discover that the mysterious Bringer of Light has taken up residence and that there has been a ban on magic. In his quest to uncover the motives of the Bringer of Light Dink must choose whether to accept training to become a mage or a warrior. I chose to become a mage.

Strengths: An interesting storyline combined with great gameplay made this a very pleasurable D-Mod. That I had to make choices only increased my enjoyment of the game. There are lots of secrets and goodies to be found, such as potions and gold, and these help you immensely. For the most part, what you had to do and why you had to do it were explained very well. There are several new and terrific spells and weapons. The thief training was an amazing addition to the game and came in very handy.

Graphics: The game has great graphics and I was quite impressed with some of the stuff I saw that was new to me. I nearly fell off my chair when I hit a chest and it came alive and started attacking me. Wow! I also enjoyed Dink shrinking in size in the room with the dragon statue and then when he goes to hail Charon. I was also impressed with the graphics for the spells such as the Spirit Door and the Earth Rune. Skeleton warriors? With the sounds they made they were truly creepy. There are more examples I could name, like the waterfall, but suffice it to say they were all done extremely well.

Map: The map was decorated very nicely and there is a variety of different locations in the game. The town of Palona is done very well especially with the buildings having nice details, such as the rooms at the inn and the different shelf contents in the houses. The marketplace was excellent with a number of people walking around making general comments and lots of goodies on the tables, as you would expect to see at a market. With its barren landscape, eerie sounds and numerous monsters, like the skeleton warriors, I, uh, may have become a little frightened by the Underworld when I played the game late at night. Overall, a very good job.

Weaknesses: The game froze on me several times especially when I tried to talk to someone while there were a lot of people around (the marketplace comes to mind) or if I pressed the "H" key to look for secrets when someone was trying to talk to me. Most of the people in the town gave the same answers over and over to the only two questions I was allowed to ask, which became annoying after a while, though it occurred to me that this was perhaps done deliberately to illustrate the negative hypnotic effect the Bringer of Light had on the town. There was one area of the game in particular that I went to after I had forgotten to go and collect my new spells, and there was no way to leave the area to get the spells without first completing the task I had been sent there to do.

Overall Impression: I was really, really impressed with this game. I loved having the choice between becoming a mage or a warrior, whether to be good or evil, or somewhere in between, and having to decide whether or not to accept the thief training, knowing that all these choices would affect the outcome of the game. As stated before, I played as a mage and the new spells were really extraordinary. Having a spell that can send you back to a location where you placed a marker? Fantastic. And the first few times I used the Spike spell I just sat back and watched it go. A lot of time and hard work must have gone into the making of this game, and it shows. An excellent D-Mod.