Mythos Previews

A couple of new hands-on previews of Flagship Studios' Mythos hit the web earlier today. The first is at WorthPlaying:
Now, Mythos may have been developed primarily as a tester for another game's hardware, but that doesn't mean there's anything done in half-measures. Graphically, this is shaping up to be a very eye-friendly release. The art direction is cartoon-like, and there is fairly strong use of bloom lighting, meaning the end result sits somewhere between World of Warcraft and Guild Wars. It also seems to have been built to perform on lower-end machines, something Blizzard is well known for and an admirable trait in design. Also, for a title built on the principles of "basic," there are hints of the kind of depth we traditionally ascribe to "real" massively multiplayer titles. For example, there is crafting, but I haven't been able to figure out how it works yet. it's quite possible that the feature hasn't been included at this time. In fact, there seems to be some pretty major changes still to come. The official web site lists Elves as one of the playable races, but somewhere along the way, they morphed into satyrs. Also, quests seem to give out at level 10; after that, it's either grind while waiting for new content or start a new character with another class.

While the other is at AtomicGamer:
There's a huge amount of loot with plenty of interesting properties to choose from, including dual-wield options as well as items with gem sockets for customization. The monsters are randomly placed throughout levels and include mini-bosses and larger ones, and there's a pretty deep skill system (it's a hybrid between the systems seen in Diablo II and Titan Quest) that has a bunch of upgradeable passive and active choices to increase your damage-dealing abilities. All three classes so far can summon up minions to help them in battle and power them up by spending skill points. I didn't get too far into any of the trees, but the skills I got to use were a lot of fun. The tooltips I checked out for the rest of the skills make them sound pretty interesting as well.