Demigod

[Calis]

Anyone tried this game out yet?

In case you don't want to read my longwinded explanation here are a couple of links-

Tom Chick did some articles on the various characters you can choose which convinced me to try it. Here they are.

The main site for the game can be found here.

I read a little about this one today and decided to give it a shot and purchased it via Impulse. I know there is a retail version available as well. This is made by Gas Powered Games who previously made the Dungeon Siege games and Supreme Commander. Stardock was involved in some capacity as well.

I’m not entirely sure how to explain the game. I guess it’s based off a mod for Warcraft 3 that I also never played called Day of the Ancients(DOTA) or something to that effect. It’s a hybrid between a RPG and an RTS, but I actually think it leans more towards the RPG side which is why I was more interested.

You pick a Demigod before the game starts. There are Assassins and there are Generals. The Assassins are for horrible RTS players like me and are basically just huge monsters. It’s a super-unit that has a wide variety of possibilities depending on how you level them up. The Generals have a more RTS feel. You will be controlling multiple units as you can summon others to join you. I haven’t tried one of these yet so I can’t say much about it.
The game plays out a bit like a standard RTS but with some twists. You play in arenas, and the ones I’ve seen so far at least are pretty linear. Each side starts with a few towers and defenses protecting the entry to their citadel. There are flags strewn about the map that work like in the Relic RTS games(Company of Heroes, Dawn of War). You hang around it for a moment and that gives you control of that flag, the flag then gives you a bonus; maybe +experience, +mana regen, or something along those lines.

The catch is your units are not under your control. You have a spawn point in your starting base and you have groups of guys spawn at the entry and start moving. These guys are effectively creating a frontline for the war. They’ll run into each other and you’ll be fighting for small amounts of ground. The towers are a huge defensive bonus so the person getting pushed back gets some nice help. It works pretty neat, and your Demigods can thrash the normal units pretty well, but you definitely can’t solo through it. You need your guys, especially when you’re against towers. You really have to plan out your time and when you can branch off to capture a sector, or when that might cost you some ground.

There’s no base building, but you do have your starting base. In it you have the portal that summons come through, a shop, and your Citadel. The shop you can use to outfit your demigod. It’s got what you’d expected from an Action RPG; helms, armor, boots, rings, consumables, and some other things. You’ll be getting gold throughout the game and using it to purchase items from here. Also somewhere in the middle of the map is an Artifact shop that you fight for control over and you can buy some very expensive but powerful items. I haven’t saved up enough for one yet so I can’t comment much.

The Citadel functions as your tech center. You can tech up your generic minions, and your defenses. You can upgrade their armor, health, you can add new units to the groups that come through the portal, or you can add things to increase your income or lessen your penalty for dying.
The goal in the skirmishes I’ve played is to destroy the other team’s Citadel.

It took me about an hour to beat the computer in a 1vs1, but that was with no tutorial or idea what I’m doing so I imagine games can be played out in a shorter period of time. It does seem very tough to take down defenses early, so I don’t think it is a huge rush game.

You level up your Demigod through the match, and from what I’ve seen the cap is 20 and I hit that in my game. There are several different branches you can take when leveling up and there is not nearly enough points to come close to maxxing everything out so I think there is a fair amount of variety to builds.

It seems like it would be a blast to play cooperatively or multiplayer. I think you can do up to 5vs5 matchups. It would give you a nice mix of a huge epic game, but you have a manageable amount of units to control.

From what I read the game has some serious issues with the online portion now and that is really hurting the word of mouth and reviews. It also got really choppy for me as the game went on, but that might just be me having the settings too high. I think if they iron out the multiplayer this one could be a blast.


We need to get an FOFC group together to try this one!

[mckerney]

I play a lot of Defense of the Ancients and would have checked this out by now, but I don't currently have a computer that can run it. Will be getting a new computer probably within a month and plan on picking up Demigod when I do.

[CleBrownsfan]

I'm looking to pick this one up... Very nice review of the game. Any more updates to your initial review?