By: Jay Barnson, Rampant Games

Depths of Peril is an action-oriented role-playing game with heavy strategic components from indie developer Soldak Entertainment. It blends Diablo-style gameplay with a dynamic world and competing AI-controlled “covenants” (rival factions) for a game that is at once familiar and incredibly fresh and exciting for veteran RPG fans.

The Basics
The core of the game is in pretty well-trodden territory. You play one of four classes, predictably lifted (with a minor name change) from the Dungeons & Dragons standard of the last thirty years – warrior, mage, priest, or rogue. After choosing your name and class (your gender is dependent upon your class), you get to name your covenant. A covenant is a house or faction of barbarians attempting to control the city of Jorvik. Naturally, yours will not be the only covenant in town.

Your character has starting attributes and skills dependent upon their class. There are two kinds of skills – active, and passive. Passive skills are always in effect, and may give you bonuses or allow you to use certain kinds of equipment. Active skills must be activated in order to function, and include magical spells or special attacks. Your attributes affect your ability to attack, defend, withstand damage, raise your class “power” to activate your skills, what equipment you can carry, and so forth.

Within the city, there are NPC (“Non-Player-Characters”) to talk to, receive quests from, trade with, and (in the case of rival covenant members) to compete against or ally with. Most of the game takes place outside the city, where you do battle with various monsters across randomly-generated landscapes and dungeons. As you do so, you gain experience points, cash, and various random loot items. After gaining enough experience points, your character gains levels, which gives you an immediate small boost in power, but also provides you with points to buy or upgrade skills and increase attributes.

So far, so traditional. This aspect of the game is fun and well-executed. If that was all there was to it, I�"d give Depths of Peril reasonably high marks (especially as an indie game), lose a few hours to it in enjoyment, and then forget about it. But this is only a foundation upon which the rest of the game is built.

A Dynamic World
First of all, let�"s talk about the world. In most RPGs, you�"ve got a world full of things that need to be done by you, the hero. The quests don�"t change much, and they will wait for you, the player, to get around to them – even if it takes years. The game will wait for you.

Depths of Peril is not that kind of game. The world changes as you play. Threats to the city build up if you – or one of the other factions – don�"t stop it. An uprising of a particular monster type in an area, if not stopped, will give rise to a very powerful (and hard-to-kill) “boss” that rises to take leadership. If you (or the other covenants) don�"t take care of this specific foe in a timely manner, it will gather together a kind of “posse” of powerful henchmen that will make it even more difficult to eliminate. Leave this new “super-group of evil” alone long enough, and they will unleash their evil plans upon the city – which could make life there very difficult for the NPCs, all the covenants, and your character.

The challenge is that there are several of these kinds of quests and events taking place at the same time, requiring you to prioritize which ones get your attention. The choices are rarely easy, and the consequences – while not very permanent – can be pretty lasting. But it gives you an ability to interact with the world in ways beyond the scope of most other RPGs. It�"s a rich and entertaining experience, but it will keep you hopping.

Covenant, Sweet Covenant
The covenants are another element that completely changes the feel of the game. First of all, you have your own covenant, which resides inside a particular building in the city. You can recruit up to five covenant members, who may join you (one at a time) on adventures, or gang up on raids against other covenants.

A covenant is more than just a pool of henchmen for adventuring and inter-covenant warfare, however. It contains storage areas for equipment (which can follow you from game to game), houses a library of books found in the game (which can give you minor bonuses for all covenant members), and can house up to four relics which also provide bonuses or extra income for your covenant. You can also hire monsters to help guard your covenant house and its all-important lifestone.

The lifestone is in the center of every covenant house, and it is literally the life of the covenant. When a covenant member dies or is injured, the lifestone resurrects and heals them. Resurrections use up a small amount of the lifestone�"s health. In addition, it can be directly damaged by enemies. Though it will heal gradually over time, if the lifestone is ever reduced to zero health, that covenant is immediately wiped out and removed from the game.

Factional Arithmetic
And this is where the strategic portion of Depths of Peril really comes into play. The game begins with several other AI-run covenants. The covenants are all tasked with the defense of the city, and must cooperate on some level to do this. Simply put, there are too many quests in play for a single covenant to handle it all. On top of that, good relationships with other factions can lead to trade agreements to your mutual benefit, and even to alliances where you may adventure together for mutual benefit, rather than just with members of your own covenant.

But they are also all vying for control of the city, which means you are constantly competing for the best recruits, the best quests, and the greatest influence (and thus a greater portion of the tax base of the city). Because of this, the covenants can become your single greatest threat in the game. Rival covenants may damage your status through rumor and damaging your relationship with other covenants, and outright warfare may erupt.

Warfare between covenants – even if your own is not directly involved – can prove disastrous for the city. Battling covenants rarely have much time for anything outside their own conflicts, which means important quests do not get done. A webwork of alliances, mutual defense treaties and non-aggression pacts can make things extremely interesting when violence does ensue, but sometimes there is simply no better way to deal with things.

There�"s Trouble Right Here In Jorvik City
As with any game, all is not perfect. The initial release included some frustrating bugs, including the occasional crash to desktop, many of which have been fixed in patches (patch 1.004 Beta is currently available as I prepare this review for submission). However, for the most part, the game runs pretty cleanly, notable for a game of this level of complexity and depth. The patches have also provided different game-play tweaks to improve the overall balance of the classes.

The dungeons are unfortunately very constricted and hard to navigate, particularly for the AI. Sometimes I have descended into a dungeon level where my companion was forced into an entirely different room while I was forced to battle a “welcoming committee” by myself.

The boss strength and respawn rate of monsters are almost punitive in their level of difficulty. The amount of movement required fighting boss monsters (they will almost always slaughter even the warriors in a toe-to-toe slugfest) will often pick up a half-dozen additional monsters as back up into areas that had been completely cleared only seconds earlier.

Diplomacy with other covenants can sometimes be mind-boggling in its lack of feedback. A covenant on the verge of destruction may sneer at your attempt to form a mutual defense pact, only to be wiped out a minute later due to having a lack of allies. The diplomatic section of the game also seems to reward the front-runner and penalize the covenants already behind, as the weaker factions reward the stronger ones with gifts in an attempt to keep relations up.

Finally, the game has so much going on, with such short time limits on quests, and with so many options, items, and things to do, that the pace can get frustratingly hectic at times. This improves as the player gets more familiar with the game, but always seems to keep things feeling a little too frenzied to stay in control, or to give you the luxury to explore.

Summary
Problems nothwithstanding, Depths of Peril is quite simply an incredibly fun game that pushes the envelope of what a computer role-playing game can be. The strategic and dynamic elements come together with the traditional hack-and-slash / loot mechanic in a combination that is at once familiar and new. This is the thinking-persons action-RPG, and the answer to the demands of genre fans craving deeper fare.

Graphics:
While they may be a few years shy of state-of-the-art, the graphics in Depths of Peril are polished, colorful, functional, and very advanced for an indie game. Unfortunately, the graphics sometimes collapse under their own weight, as things get lost in all of the clutter of very, very busy areas. The inability to move some menus dialogs around (particularly when you need to click on a character behind them) can be frustrating.

Sound:
The music is good (if a little repetitive) and largely in the background. The other sound effects are very effective and provide effective feedback to all of the game events.

Game Play:
If anything, Depths of Peril provides almost too much to keep you active, engaged, and entertained. You will not get bored easily! It�"s addictively compelling and fun for this veteran RPG fan!

Value:
Progress through level 100, plenty of difficulty level options (including three additional “world” difficulty levels, available at levels 25, 50, and 75), four different character classes, a large skill “tree” to provide greater customization options, and a huge variety of equipment and items means it is virtually impossible to completely “play out” Depths of Peril.

Concept:
Depths of Peril describes itself as a blend of RPG with strategic elements, which plays far better than it sounds. The dynamic world and competition / rivalry / cooperation between the covenants adds a new dimension to the traditional action-RPG formula.

Overall:
While Depths of Peril may be a little intimidating to first-time RPG players, for fans of the genre it is a breath of fresh air. It�"s an action-RPG on steroids, adding a new dimension to well-executed traditional game-play.

By: Jay Barnson, Rampant Games