The Dink Network

Blacksmith's Trail (The)

This is madness! The Flyin' Pork Tavern The Banishment of Poor Marty
March 3rd, 2015
1.01
Score : 6.8 fair
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lordsval
Peasant He/Him Australia
Lifelong Dinker 
Overall, this is a fun little D-Mod, but its sometimes extreme difficulty drags down the experience.

Gameplay
The gameplay here is above average. The puzzles are not very complicated and were easy to solve, but the regular combat made my adrenaline pump. The boss fights are very well scripted, although extremely difficult.
There are almost no powerups to be found and little in the way of character improvement, so it's not really possible to improve one's power in combat through typical RPG play.
The mod's runtime will get to approximately 70 minutes or so of normal gameplay, however the first and last sections of the mod are so unforgiving that I estimate I've put in about 5 or 6 hours of play into the mod.
Unfortunately I found it impossible to beat the final boss without modification of the game, despite over 50 attempts and several hours of grinding.

Story
I very much enjoyed the story of this D-Mod and found myself wanting more. I love the author's style and found he managed to keep the balance between overly serious storytelling with the typical light-hearted Dink theme.

Graphics & Sound
This D-Mod has some astoundingly good graphics and level design (aside from the last boss). Sound is also well above average. Looking at my screen whilst playing through the mod made me feel like I was looking into some high quality pixel art. Good stuff.