In a world where many new free-to-play games reproduce Diablo-esque fantasy-themed MMORPGs we see many of these ventures and Mythos Global developed by T3Fun and published by Hanbitsoft happens to be one of them–and does it extremely well. This is, of course, because the developers for MG came from the pack who made Diablo. As a result, the game presents a control-scheme many players will already be used to and thrusts them into a world of magic, knives, and gadgets. Behold the planet of Uld, it’s inhabitants, and their plight in the face of a universe filled with gods and darkness.
The game presents a multitude of different races to choose from the so-called civilized races of Satyrs, Humans, Gremlins, and Cyclopes have seen their world devastated and now rebuild.
The player finds themselves thrust into this reconstruction effort and asked primarily to beat down animals and monsters from the get-go. That means wilderness in the beginning filled with wolves and imps; and then eventually instanced dungeons out in the countryside to jump to.
Gameplay: There’s a lot of Diablo here but it’s trying hard to differentiate itself
At first glance, like many free-to-play games coming out, Mythos Global feels just like yet-another-Diablo-clone, however it does distinguish itself a little bit. First, there’s a number of races to choose from, character creation has male/female choices, and a set of customization features. Then there’s three classes to choose from (each class has their own three-set of skill trees as well to customize down.)
Amid the races. Humans take up the usual role as “wise diplomats” who use their silver tongues and wit to pass through the world of Uld, they’re leaders and disciplined traders; playing a human leads to a more balanced set of abilities. Gremlins are tiny, gnome-like peoples who are expert and excellent machinists and gadgeteers (undoubtedly the bet gadget class); they are by far the shortest race, and have high technical skills, they seem to get bonuses for intelligence and wisdom. Next is the satyrs who are goat-legged and curly-horned individuals with magical aptitude—attuned to nature their description states—personally I played one with a gadgeteer with a gun. Finally, there’s the cyclopes, the largest and most brutal; these one-eyed individuals are well known for their strength and probably work well as warriors.
Then there’s the three classes:
Bloodletters occur to me to be basically the melee warrior-and-rogue classes with some odd elements added. For example, they gain health from killing foes, can use the blood of the fallen to buff themselves or engage a sort of stealth. All of their trees seem to have names that suggest blood, the color red/crimson, and et cetera. They play a lot like most melee classes and blades would seem to be important.
Pyromancers make use of magic and fire to subdue foes and roast them into quivering lumps of embered charcoal. They also get to summon fire element minions—in fact, while playing I found someone with what looked like flame-tailed lemurs chasing around eating wolves and bears, now that was fun. Pyromancers throw fireballs, waves of flame, and explosions like none other.
Finally, Gadgeteers round out the experience with characters who carry guns like hunters and throw bombs and otherwise have interesting gimmick effects. I played one of these mostly because ranged classes are my preference—as a gadgeteer I found myself going with dual-pistols or a rifle (although most of the talents seem to be rifle-only, which is sad.) Think bombs and guns. Finally, gadgeteers also have some gimmick bombs that slow, poison, and throw enemies around—but largely their combat is centered around the bang-bang.
Movement is WASD set as usual and attacks are mapped to the number keys in the hotbar but just like Diablo there’s a primary and secondary attack on the two mouse buttons. Mapping those helps hugely for dealing with opponents. Run around using the keyboard, and lay waste with the mouse-buttons; and the occasional reaching for a number key to get something situational managed.
There appears to be an in-depth crafting system that all characters are encouraged and capable of joining into. Most items dropped can be picked up and dismantled into crafting components—in fact it’s possible to program the inventory to rip them apart automatically. There’s also “identify charms” just like Diablo’s identify scroll—and the inventory can be charmed to automatically identify stuff as well.
Most of the game is played in overworld hubs, there are critters in them and quests are given by NPCs with yellow exclamation “!” points over their heads. Some quests send players into instanced dungeons signified by swirling light at points and while there’s NPCs who can send you back to the lowest level of the last dungeon you were in it seems like the game keeps kicking me back to the starting town (and I have to run back.)
Graphics and Sound: Graphics for this game feel middling and the camera is locked
Just like Diablo the camera can be locked and it’s isometric, but this is distinctly a 3D game. Fortunately, there’s a number of ways to change the camera angle and behavior—the modes seem to be all about a locked camera angle and a modified-MMO camera (that allows you to tilt the camera). Turning tilt off takes a little bit of getting used to but it’s not that big of a game breaker after you’ve gotten used to not controlling the camera in a 3D game landscape. Of course, you can pan the camera with the right-mouse-button and with the MMO-camera set… It’s just hard to tell why they included this outside of a UI menu.
If enemies or you get hidden behind objects they are displayed as red and blue silhouettes. This makes sure that you don’t get jumped by anything you cannot see. That’s a fortunate and good.
The characters don’t feel all that well rendered, but they’re distinct enough and you can identify enemies pretty quickly by looking at them. Graphical bugs are minimal but sometimes weapons don’t spawn their appropriate effects—although it’s a good time to mention the effects are nice. Throwing a poison bomb puts up a cloud of greenish mist that kills all, and firing a gun sprays out a series of bullets.
Sounds are present, punctuated, but subdued. All of the different attacks produce a sound that feels appropriate and generally you know you’ve killed a critter because they have a death-sound that rattles out when they go down. This was especially useful when I found myself fighting a swarm of spiders (giant and otherwise) in a cellar at the begging of the game and I wasn’t sure that I was killing them.
Of course, the heap of dead spiders after button-mashing, throwing bombs, and blasting bullets should have told me that.
Freemium: Standard cash-shop development similar to most free-to-play
Currently, Mythos Global appears that it will use a cash shop to support its free-to-play model, but it lacks a variety of items. As it’s just coming into its open beta, this will probably fill out as they develop their audience and open up content. Mostly available currently are the standard boosts, boons, and some costume and cosmetic items. So far, looks like they’ve got everything that they need for a proper virtual item shop to support players and we’ll know more about how they advance that as time goes on.
One of the things that you can buy from the shop enables instant-resurrection (using for-money currency.)
Overall, I’d say it’s too soon to review their cash shop; but this is a tried-and-true method for funding free-to-play MMOs and it’s hard to go wrong with it.
Conclusion: Diablo-clone with modifications, RPG elements, and sky ships
Mythos Global is still in beta, but it’s obvious that this game will get going and into a space that will make it every interesting to play. I can see a lot of growing pains as the developers try to address some of the UI issues that I ran into, but it’s nothing that other MMOs haven’t gone through in their pre-launch as well.
Elementally, MG is a cute little fantasy-genre title that takes many of the best parts of Diablo and integrates them into an RPG system. The limited number of races and classes seems to be helped by the vast array of customization within the classes—plus there’s a small race, a medium race, and a huge race—and after rolling a gremlin I discovered she wore a monocle.
Who can turn down a monocle!
In short, Mythos Global looks like it’s got all its ducks in a row and, as it makes its way through the beta it’ll be good to see it come out the other side. Meanwhile, when it goes into open beta, make sure that you push your way all the way to the floating island and check out the skyship and the rest of the game. There’s a lot to explore and there’s already people filling out the community.
Plus, as I said above: monocle!
