From
its mid-2006 announcement to a 2008 change in developer,
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
has finally found its way back in to our lives with new content,
features, and fixes. Having played
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
briefly in its Flagship days, I was excited to be among the first to
test the game in its current incarnation under developer HanbitSoft and
publisher Frogster Online Gaming GmBh (Redbana is publishing the game
in North America).
After logging in I was prompted to make my first character in the
world. Mythos’s
character creation options are akin to
style="font-style: italic;">WoW’s,
, just with fewer
choices. All
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
characters within a race are pretty much the same size, and aside from
a handful of face, hair color and style options, players are able to
chose among different accessories ranging from horns (for goat-like
Satyrs and Cyclopses) to glasses (for Gremlins) to facial hair (for
human males) to earrings (for Human and Gremlin females).
Each race has two racial bonuses as well – an elemental
resistance plus stat buffs like a to-hit bonus (Gremlins) or a defense
bonus (Cyclopses).
border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95784">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95784">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95796">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95796">
After the short creation period and debating which class was for me, I
made my Human Blood Letter since I like to use melee and some spells to
hack my way through enemies. Other options included the Gadgeteer, a
pet-based ranged attacker, and the Pyromancer, a ranged fire magic
caster.
" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> style="font-style: italic;">The pattern of gameplay
in Mythos mirrors another Travis Baldree-designed game –
Torchlight. You have a hub and get quests that take places in dungeons
a nearby portal away."
I was dropped into the tutorial village with a basic weapon, quick
strike ability, and two paragraphs of ominous-sounding lore. The
tutorial area its self was pretty basic. It’s a small town
with a couple of quest givers, yet the area covered just about every
aspect of the game:
- The
style="font-style: italic;">Diablo-style
interface - Entering dungeons
- Using items such as the
identifying stones (to learn about the magical properties of unknown
items) - Achievements
- Combat
- Crafting
- Levelling
Each level awards you skill points that you spend in your talent trees.
Each class has three trees to pick from, allowing plenty of opportunity
to mix and match between the three trees. Along with talents, with each
level comes points to spend on the three core stats: strength
(melee), dexterity (ranged), and intelligence (magic). Since
each class can perform each of these attacks to some degree, stat point
decisions can get pretty complex as you level.
cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95805">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95805">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95803">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95803">
The achievement system is reminiscent of
style="font-style: italic;">Aion’s
title system in that achievements give you stat boosts that you can
equip at will. I got my first, “Battle Start!”
(there’s a fair amount of half-translations still in the
beta) with my second kill, when my master Deah conducted me to a giant
bear’s lair with remarkably little fanfare. After
slaughtering scores of spiders (true to form, in
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
combat is fast for bosses and faster for common mobs), the bear fell
with a dozen or so hits, never posing a real threat to my health.
Back in the village, Deah had me try out the general merchant, and I
took the opportunity to try out “MMO view.” Mythos
offers “isometric view” – the more or
less top down view familiar to games like
style="font-style: italic;">Lineage
and Diablo,
and “MMO view,” a close-in view that attempts to
recreate the third-person, , monkey-in-a-tree camera view familiar to
RPG and MMOG players. Unfortunately, you have to rotate the camera
manually by holding in the left mouse button and dragging –
it doesn’t spring into place behind the character as you
move. And for that reason I can't see myself using it for anything
other than taking screenshots.
I finished the tutorial pretty quickly, and after levelling up I left
to continue in the land of Uld. Leaving the area, I was surprised to
discover a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_G5Z17WybQ">small
video that was actually put out
as a trailer a while ago. The infusion of lore was welcome, since
neither Deah nor any other character I met in the tutorial was
forthcoming about why I’m in Uld and what I’m doing.
cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95800">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95800">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95801">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95801">
" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> style="font-style: italic;">Mythos offers
“isometric view” – the more or less top
down view familiar to games like Lineage and Diablo, and “MMO
view,” a close-in view that attempts to recreate the
third-person, , monkey-in-a-tree camera view familiar to RPG and MMOG
players. Unfortunately, you have to rotate the camera manually by
holding in the left mouse button and dragging – it
doesn’t spring into place behind the character as you move."
The graphics and user interface were definitely the highlight of the
game for me –
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
has aged well. Character animations are smooth, environments have a
definite atmosphere, and weapon effects compare favourably with games
like Magicka
and Trine.
The UI is well-proportioned and did a good job of displaying lots of
information in a small space. Some of the menu icons were a bit small,
but I quickly learned their function by trial and error.
Right after the tutorial, I found myself in a different town that was
under siege from the local fauna – wolves and bears in
particular - and in need of help. Conveniently, a quest giver is beside
you ready to set you off on what turned out to be the first storyline
quest of the game.
The pattern of gameplay in
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
mirrors another Travis Baldree-designed game –
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight.
You have a hub and get quests that take places in dungeons a nearby
portal away. Dungeons have a set number of floors and they are filled
with plenty of mobs and loot for you to find, along with reward objects
like chests. . The most interesting thing about dungeons is that they
never the same layout; they’ll always be different every time
you enter. It certainly keeps them fresh but the bosses will always be
the same. Once in a while you’ll get the odd over world quest
which will either consist 1) of going to new areas or, 2) talking to
people, or 3) killing a few pesky mobs
cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95797">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95797">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95792">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95792">
Combat in the game works like
style="font-style: italic;">Diablo
(sorry, but the comparison continues to be apt). You have one attack
bound to your left mouse button and another to your right mouse button.
The rest of your skills are can be accessed via hot keys on your hot
bar. A stack of health and mana potions, some provided gratis at the
start, help when things get hectic in the dungeons. Some amount of
blood will pile up, but those who are sensitive to this can turn it off
in the settings.
By this point, after saving this small town I definitely felt some
sense of being immersed in the game. At times though I kept getting
lost, it could have just been me being silly but I could not find any
directions what so ever to my next objective. The map screen could do
with a bit of work as well.
Finally after about 15 minutes I found my way to the Sky Captain, who
gave me a lift to Heaven Island - the game’s main city.
It’s more Orgrimmar than Millenium City or Metropolis, but it
certainly packs a lot of activity into it for its size. In addition to
plenty of portal-producing quest givers, you’ll also find
crafting quests.
cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95793">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95793">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/95788">
style="border: 0px solid ; width: 300px; height: 225px;"
alt="mythos" src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/95788">
Crafting itself is pretty old hat, but with a twist. You gather your
ingredients and distribute them in your crafting window, buying new
recipes to make new items. Here’s the twist: as you craft you
gain points that you spend in the crafting tree to gain more
progression in your desired route. When crafting an item you can also
occasionally set some stats. However adding more stats to the item
increases its risk of failure when making it, so you’ve been
warned!
Mythos
is most certainly a fun experience and covers most of what I like about
dungeon crawlers. One big question that remains is how the game fares
as a multiplayer game; in other words, how
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
the single player dungeon crawler becomes a social combat experience.
As more players enter beta I hope to explore its massively multiplayer
dimensions. If you’d like to test out
style="font-style: italic;">Mythos
too, Ten Ton Hammer has a limited number of beta keys
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/giveaways/mythos/closed-beta">available
here.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Mythos Game Page.
