Introduction
An action RPG in the Diablo/Dungeon Siege vein, made by an Age of Empires co-creator, set in ancient Greece, Egypt and Asia.
Gameplay
It has been called Diablo 3 by enthusiasts, and that is pretty much how it plays. You have a non-rotatable view, athough you can zoom, and click to move, click to talk, click to attack, click to pick up items/open chests. Clickety click click.
You start out with no skills, but at level 1 you select one of the eight skill masteries which will determine the skills you have available to learn. Later you get a second one, the skills are as follows: Storm (Ice, Lighting), Warfare (Attack power), Nature (Healing and Pets), Defense (Armour and Shield-attacking), Earth (Fire), Spirit (Necromancy), Rogue (Assasin-like attacks) and Hunter (Bowcraft, Traps and Speed). It's quite a balanced set and a nice change from the usual - any of the traditional RPG player types can be made from a combination of two skill masteries, but so can some interesting and bizarre new combinations: thieves that can tank, druids that like to hurl fireballs, or clerics that summon liches.
As you progress it's the usual "save our village", "rescue the prisoner" type stuff against increasingly tough and more numerous enemies, with the odd "boss monster" that drops some cool loot. When stuff drops to the ground it's rather hard to see, but you can hold down various keys to show the names of either 'rare-only', 'non-broken' or 'all' items. A nice feature.
You can assign two "sets" of weapons which unexpectedly, but pleasingly do not affect your inventory when switching between them. You assign skills and potions to a number key toolbar and can use them at any time.
You can slap down a portal at any time and whizz back to any town you've visited, returning to where you were through the town's portal.
Some friends at work played Diablo 2 endlessly until they discovered World of Warcraft - what made it so great for them was partly the persistent (and free) online servers, and partly the constant lure of getting a slightly better piece of kit. Players of any RPG will be familiar with the system used for identifying the hierarchy of items with modifiers, and the enhancement system of combinable shards of upgrade material is very similar to Diablo's. I have yet to play on the internet, as it was something I never really got into with Diablo (too much cooperation, not enough shooting in the face) so I'll let someone more experienced review that aspect until I do.
Sights and Sounds
Well it looks better than Diablo 2 - not hard, since that used sprite-based graphics and ran at some pitifully low resolution. The graphics are probably about the same as most fantasy-styled MMORPGs, but the fixed camera view rather spoils it and it feels primitive. I appreciate it would be rather difficult to play if you moved the camera directly behind the player, but it just feels more like a graphics engine deficiency than a player aid.
Sound wise, there's speech from the quest-givers and endless lectures on ancient Greek heroes from eveyone else. There's also sound from the surrounding areas giving you a clue to what lies in wait, although since it is usually off-screen it's hard to tell where it is coming from.
Stuff that sucks
You have to click each item you want to pick up, there's no 'pick up all' option - with no information from the item on the ground apart from its name and rarity colour you often have to pick everything up to see if you want it or not. Inventories are a bit small, too - lots of trips back to town to sell stuff.
Fixed camera. Not good - you can't see what's down the road, almost as soon as something appears on the screen, it can see you and attacks. It's easy to run into trouble and get overwhelmed.
Your weapons have a circular range. The screen is rectangular. Some ranged attacks cannot always reach the corners, but some go right off the screen and enrage unseen enemies.
The controls. Clickety click. I'm going to wear my mouse out. Also, I've taken to using mostly ranged attacks (Shift-Click) as you stand still, too often with mêlée attacks I found myself running behind a moving enemy rather than attacking it. Unfortunately holding Shift down all the time makes it very uncomfortable to reach the number keys for skill/potion use.
Conclusion
It's a decent enough game and fairly simple to begin with, without the complexity of Dungeon Siege II it's easy to pick up. It gets a bit hectic fairly quickly though, and since the main controls require most of your concentration it's difficult to actually use your skills or watch your health bar.
For me, it's the fixed view that ruins it. Even rotation would have been good. When zooming it appears the engine is rendering objects in 3D (as the camera height changes slightly) it just doesn't let you look around. These days it would be unthinkable for an RTS to only offer a fixed view, so why is it acceptable in an RPG?
Fans of Diablo 2 will probably love it (well, those who aren't Blzzard fanboys), assuming the network play is up to scratch. You can't overlay the map like Diablo (though that always did my head in) and you need a proper computer to run it on, but Diablo 3 doesn't look imminent - even if the jobs Blizzard are advertising for are actually for work on it, most of the original team have left the company, so it's likely to be distinct from and probably pricier than its prequels.
Score :
6/10
