Depths of Peril

http://www.depthsofperil.com/

Take a fairly rough around the edges Diablo II clone, add to it some 4X style diplomacy and conquest, and you have Depths of Peril. It's an intersting idea, taking your standard click based hack and slash action RPG, and meld it with a faction based trade and conquest ethos. Every game you play, you set the parameters for the world, the
difficulty of the monsters, the number of opposing factions to your own - and then you forge a hero to go out into these areas to perform quests from the settlement hub, to level up, gains new skills, gain influence, cashand loot - as well as try to recruit others to your party and your faction (or in game its called Covenant). Once you've got a few members, and you've decorated your Covenant hut with relics and tomes of knowledge, plus placed some guards to defend the place. You can begin to start allying and ganging up on some of the other Covenants who are AI controlled factions, running similar heros and recruits around the world trying to gain the most influence and power and utterly destroy the other factions. If you are Allied with other factions just make sure when you destroy the bad guys, you have the top level of influence within your alliance, so that you can claim the win.

Despite the 1990's graphics, it can be quite involving when you begin to use your hack and slash hero, to stock up your hut based barbarian "empire". I like the scope of the game, to make a balance between the decidedly average (in terms of graphics and complexity of quests) killing and questing sprees and the empire building (basically collecting bonuses and hired hands), with the diplomacy of joining some factions together to then turn and wipe out the weaker ones. Good effort on the hybrid gaming idea.