The Dink Network

Probably not as bad as some reviewers have made it out to be: this game has real style! It reminded me of Lloyd Alexander, and a lot of effort has been made to pack stuff into it. On the down side, a certain pointlessness pervades the game, which makes it hard to keep playing towards the end. Also, I *really* disliked the scripting. Although my own scripts are usually poorly done, there are some things here which are just plain ugly. To go into more detail:

Style: 10 /10
When you enter a new area, some text appears to announce it in the center of the screen. There are various ambient sounds, which are aesthetically pleasing even when they don't match the scenery. The music is not bad... some nice FFVII. Some poorly done but well placed weather effects enhance the... experience, as do the wonderful names of various people and places.

Gameplay: 6 /10
Not actually good, but standards in this area are low.

Story: 5 /10
Nonsensical, but not ill-fitting. You travel 1000 years back in time to rescue your parents, who have been kidnapped by your uncle. I couldn't beat the second-to-last boss, so I didn't find out what the secret of parizaya was... oh well. What really interested me about this story was the "saving your parents" part. I think there is one section of [u]Taran Wanderer[/u] where the protagonist tries to save a guy he believes to be his father. Psychologically, he is looking for acceptance from a father he never had (being an orphan). As an aside: the original Dink is about an orphanned pig-farmer searching for adventure, much like the (above referenced) Lloyd Alexander series. While Dink's motivations in the original are basically murky, and he seems to save people for the sake of saving them, here he (well, "Sori" as the protagonist is named) has a clear personal stake in defeating evil.

Without story or gameplay, it is hard to justify playing this, but, like rap lyrics, it might be worth downloading for the style, or even as inspiration.

*NOTE* Changed my review a bit and the score, because with the Gold Version, it has some new stuff and actually fixed the bugs most people here have been talking about!

Okay, I'm going to write a review for my own creation. I'm trying to be as honest as possible.
I think this D-Mod is a very nice start. It has some bugs, yeah, but it's a very big game. BTW the patch fixes the bugs (even the variables).
The plot isn't excactly original, but it's okay. Biggest + of the game is the many details and good music, but the biggest - is the unclear storyline, or maybe the lack of something really innovative. The scripting wasn't special (except for the boss, that had some nice stuff in it). I guess this game is pretty average here.
GRAPHICS 7,3: The standard graphics have been used pretty good. A lot of details and no empty or boring screens. However, the self made graphics are pretty crappy.
SOUND 8: I really like the midis in this game (DUH, I chose them myself)
they fit in the game and situations perfectly. Not much new sound effects though.
GAMEPLAY 6,8: Hmmmm, I think still some bugs. Side quests have nothing to do with the plot, no big deal but the plot is already so unclear. The game plays nice enough for me and it's really big. But it could have been a lot better if it weren't for some errors.
It plays all nice though, and feels a bit like an old school SNES rpg. With the Gold Version comes also some nice extra's, but you'll have to see them yourself.
LASTING APPEAL 8,4: You have to admit it. It's big, and it has quite a lot of secrets. Some people will quit halfway the game because it's too much of the same over and over again, or because of bugs, but once you give it a good try, it lasts for quite a while.
TOTAL: 7.4

Revised: After I finished FIAT and AGAE, I decided to change the score I gave SOP. I won't change my review though.

I was always troubled that by saying "this was xxxx's first dmod" you can have a substantial lower standard. If by the same standard, "Isle of Croth" should be rated higher than 10.
This is especially troublesome if such a dmod is a HUGE one. In fact, I hold higher standard for large dmods since it requires much more time to download and beat.
Ever since I finished POTA and SOB, I had much higher standard for a dmod, especially large one. Typically you might need to invest a lot of time to beat a large dmod without cheating. So if you got stuck (not your incompetence) with no reason after playing 20 hours, you would get very frustrated.
Overal plot is not bad, but nothing really new, either. (contray to what the author claimed) You really CAN find something that you have never seen before, but not necessarily good.
The author did not understand how to use global variables at this game. So you do need to do something in a certain order otherwise you might mess up everything and need to restart the game at much earlier stage or even start it all over.
Hardness and map tilts are poor. Most of the screens were not carefully designed. Most people would talk about the size, but the truth is: if the dmod is only about half of the size it is now, it could be a much better dmod. Most of side tasks are not original or important. But you need to finish most of them in certain orders to get the "KEYS" to go to next region. The similar quest goes on and on. I did manage to finish the game with some cheatings. (I found the Key to the next location, but the block won't disappear.)

Although it says "Final", it still contains certain bugs. Some of them might need to re-write the whole variables system, although the author still claimed he fixed all bugs.
It IS amazing that without proper use of global variables such a huge dmod can work. The author did not know how to make changes in dink.ini at that time. So don't be surprised that you can find very little new graphics.
If you do have a lot of time to kill, do not mind you might need to restart the game a few times, and are not very picky on some annoying bugs or map tilts, you could find this one entertaining. Otherwise, it might be better to beat POTA or SOB or the original Dink again.

This' not a very good dmod. It's boring and the large size of it just makes things worse... Quests have to be done in correct order or other things won't work, and the dmod is just too buggy to be good. Music isn't good either.

This game is huge. There are so many caves, potions, secrets etc. The problem is that you do not know if you really need them to complete the mod. There are underground bugs 100s of them with a maze you cannot get through even with the walk through on DMod Solutions.

The author of the game put a lot of work into it. There is a lot of animation, magic tool which you don't always know what to use them for.

I could not find the drunk, the goblin that gives out the fist flame, found switches but did not know what they opened.

I did like this mod, though even if you did not know what to do there were other things to get involved in. After reaching the castle going through the rooms the game kept crashing when I had to change weapons or fight. So after so many crashes I quit but up too that point I thought it was great in several places and too hard in others.

A large epic. With some new graphics and music, but too uneven for me.

As noted by other reviewers there are a number of game halting bugs which slows down the enjoyable factor enormously.

Many a time I forgot (or got confused) as to what to do.

Play this one after playing the other epics... but be prepared for some frustration.

Lacks a cohesive plot. There were more bugs than pillbugs. As the author said, the music was good, but not enough to make up for some of the annoying crashes. I admire the effort of the author (this being his first DMOD), but a 7.1 rating? I've played near perfect, very challanging DMOD's that would be a 7. Kudos to Christiaan for his first, but this could be a much better DMOD with a little more time spent fixxing bugs and abnormalities.

Overall, I liked this DMOD. I found a glitch that let me end the game way too early though. I ran into a couple errors which forced me to got into DinkEdit.exe and remove some things. For instance, I would get a key and then the game wouldn't recognize that and remove a fence. So I had to edit the fence out. The map was also pretty useless. However, other than that I liked this DMOD. It had an interesting story and was quite large. I like the larger DMODs. They offer some play time more than an hour or two. This was his first DMOD and I think he did a pretty good job. I won't give a super high rating just because it was his first though. In closing, it was a fun DMOD. It kept me occupied and coming back every day at lunch to play.