Curse

During our recent trip to Las Vegas for the CES 2010 show we were able to swing by the Petroglyph offices and check out the latest on Mytheon!

If you're not familiar with the game; True Games and Petroglyph released the first official Mytheon Trailer and screenshots several months ago, and left many gamers wanting to know more! Mytheon combines a layer of strategy in an Action RPG that is truly new and unique. Players can challenge legendary mythological gods by wielding powerful "Power Stones" that transform into spells, structures and creatures. You can also loot, forge, buy, sell and trade these stones among a thriving online community, and enhance the stones they're able to use in battle.

We had about an hour of hands-on time with Randy King, producer, and Chris Rubyor, design development director, to see just how far Mytheon has come in the past few months.

At First Glance

The graphics look incredible and the key bindings work a lot like some games in the same style of genre, Diablo 2, Torchlight, etc. It's a pretty intuitive game and very easy to get into and start exploring. The maps are incredibly detailed and more open than you'd normally get in this style of game. There's been a lot done with the camera and player perspective including a unique feature that lets you pan the camera forward to see what you'll be up against down the road. This really is an important feature, as at any given time you only have 5 Power Stones, what you use to summon creatures spells and buildings, available at any given time, after you cast one you've got to either dismiss the summon or wait for it to expire. Knowing what's ahead will let you strategize and summon the right things earlier on the battle.

 There are three classes in the game, and 180 stones total, at launch each class will have 60 stones available to them. Players are allowed to have a deck of 40 stones total. When you enter a map or engage in combat, 5 of these stones are pulled randomly for you to cast at any given time, as you use a stone, another is pulled into your play-hand from your deck. Some stones will combine into larger and more powerful creatures, but this will be accomplished only by the players who strategically construct their decks to increase their odds of getting the right Power Stones, and show incredible patience.

After watching Chris run through a high-level map the Petroglyph team gave us some free-time on the first map players will see when entering the game. From what we were able to see there was a solid number of different creatures, normally placed in strategic locations, for us to fight through in order to reach the main city and our trading hub for the rest of the game. One feature that instantly stood out was the ability to control each of your summons separately or as a collective. Since you represent an actual avatar on the map you can also issue defensive and "follow me" style commands to recall your summons at any time. The ability to control each of your summons separately really opens up a strategic element of the game allowing you to defend weak ranged summons with brute tank and melee summons. You're also able to summon defensive archer towers and have your creatures defend the building. The amount of summons, buildings, and spells is vast, and the implications for PvP matches should be excellent.

Our Thoughts

The game feels and runs similar to Diablo or Titan's Quest in an Action RPG setting where you have a hud, health and mana, potion slots, and are free to traverse large instanced maps. You can tackle the maps in co-op play with your party, or by yourself. There's also a large world map that you can use to fast travel to the different realms or locations controlled by various Gods.

Your avatar will become stronger as you level up, there is a level cap of 30, and you'll be able to travel to more brutal and exotic battle-grounds and acquire high end loot and rare items. Avatars also have several gear slots, so some of the rare items, weapons, and armor you obtain can be traded or worn to give you statistical bonuses. You can also trade and mail objects on the fly, so no running back to town to send your healer class friend the new +20% healing bonus robe you just looted!

PvP is something Petroglyph takes very seriously, and will provide players with dueling options, 2v2, and 4v4 PvP options. Players will be able to face off against each other in instanced maps and combine the powers of their decks to take on other players. With the number of combinations in each class, deck, and unique powerstone PvP should be very exciting and hold player interest for a long time.

Mytheon is launching the official closed beta next week, and will use the free-to-play model. Items for crafting, some Power Stone enhancements, potion bundles, and other items are possibilities for cash shop items that players can purchase. The team realizes keeping the game free-to-play is important, and won't be selling any items that give players a competitive advantage over other players. They're also confident their track record as a strong U.S. based developer, lots of previous Westwood talent, and success learned through developing titles like Star Wars: Empire at War, will set them ahead in the free-to-play space and allow Mytheon to shine.

Several features, well-timed randomness, and replay ability really make Mytheon incredibly unique and make for an excellent multiplayer(mmo) experience. We'll continue to follow it as the game enters closed beta next week!

To learn more about the game and sign up for closed beta visit: http://www.Mytheongame.com