Beta Impressions: Mythos

Other than thew few exception mentioned above, the rest of what I saw of Mythos is rather derivative and has mostly been seen before, if not in the original Diablo, then in any of the clones that came out during the point-and-click-hack-and-slash heyday. Part of me is willing to overlook this and give Mythos the benefit of the doubt for the simple reason that it has been almost 7 years since the last Diablo game came out, and there are surely many people out there looking forward to the next game in the genre. Normally, I’d go with this part of me and end my impressions piece here, but a few gripes prevent me from doing so.

The first is pacing. The loot I have found so far in Mythos – and I’ll admit I’m still in the early levels of the game – has been a rather insipid heap. I’ve found many items with sockets, but very few gems worth putting in said sockets. I’ve also come across a high proportion of green/blue gear with stats that were absolutely useless to me, despite 3 playing three characters and the in-game mail system. And when I say ‘useless stats’ I don’t mean ‘+3 wisdom sword’, which would be rather nice, considering that a lot of melee abilities require mana to use. I mean things like ‘+1% poision resistance’ and ‘+2% minion damage’. These might be important stats later in the game, by all means, but when you’re level 3 and monsters don’t use poison attacks, and your minions do up to 15 points of damage per attack, greens with those enchantments become vendor or crafting-material fodder. And yes, I do realise that there is a random generator at work, but that’s why I say I have issues with the game’s pacing, rather than with the games itemisation.

Pacing aside, the game itself feels like a rehash of the core Diablo tennets. Monsters in the beginning areas include wolves, ravens, zombies, skeletons, skeleton archers, goblin/imps, goblin/imp shamans, giant spiders, giant beetles… There was one interesting creature in a cave dungeon, which ceased to be interesting the moment I realised it was an ettercap, from back in the old AD&D days. Allegedly, I did encounter one boss which looked intimidating, and was somewhat hard to beat, except for the fact that rather than chain-quaffing healing potions like in Diablo, I had to drink a healing potion, attack a few times, run away while the potion cooldown expired, rinse, repeat. The fact that the monster died and dropped a blue with absolutely no useful stats whatsoever just about killed any sense of accomplishment I might have had.

Lastly, compared to a game 7 years old, this isn’t a commensurate improvement. The entities in the game may be rendered in true 3D instead of pixels, but that doesn’t make it a better game. It’s not as linear as Diablo, but that shifts the focus from the story to the level/loot aspects of the game, which don’t live up to the scrutiny after playing MMO’s for over 10 years. The game could have been, if not a direct successor, at least a viable branch of the evolutionary tree, but it isn’t.

All in all, if you’re an enthusiast of action RPGs, but not of MMOs, you might find some amount of enjoyment in Mythos, if only to tide you over until Blizzard announces Diablo III at Blizzcon.

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