Mythos Preview

Eurogamer shares their experiences with the beta test of Flagship Studios' Mythos in a new two-page preview.
Mythos rips out the downtime to focus on the raw, action fun of role-playing games. It's really only about killing monsters and collecting loot. This makes it shallow as all hell - but very deliberately so, and hugely entertainingly so. Again, it shows in the three character classes - much as the Pyromancer's almost a melee character on the quiet, the real melee character, the Bloodletter, can also summon a horde of demon thingies to fight for him. You're not boxed into the traditional single-purpose existence, but rather given a stuffed box of very different toys to play with. The combat itself is ridiculously fast and sparky compared to the invisible dice-rolls of WOW, Lord of the Rings Online et al - you're out there definably smacking stuff down yourself, utterly involved in the fight. Mythos is fun.

Mythos is an MMORPG? Well, in many ways it's not. It's focused a lot more on the Diablo experience - one character carving a path of destruction through a series of linked outdoor areas and instanced dungeons - than on WOW-style roaming and grouping. You're allowed to be selfish. You're all but encouraged to be so, really. Until the most recent major beta update, you'd barely even bump into anyone. There'd be a few folk lurking around the quest-and-shop hubs, and constant chatter over the chat channel, but generally you'd be carving up imps and skeletons on your tod. It was fun, but a little disconnected.