Mytheon Recap

Massively's Rise and Shiny editorial of this week features Mytheon, explaining why you should give this free-to-play MMO a try. Though it's as critical a recommendation as they come.
I'm a simple man. I need a strong cup of coffee in the morning, walks with my two dogs, a kiss from my wife -- and giants. Lots of giants. Mytheon is a perfect game for a simple man like me. It installs easily and the controls are basic. It is by no means perfect, but I am not sure that it is trying to be. Like me, it's simple. It wants you to control miniature armies of centaurs, cyclopses and skeletons, and it wants you to kill things while controlling that army.

See? Simple.

Well, I will admit that it is never that simple, especially within the sphere of gaming. Like in most simple-to-play-yet-tough-to-master games, a good deal of the depth comes from the planning and organizing of the mini-army. After all, do you want to go for high damage output or would you prefer to go for defensive ability? Personally, I had to decide whether I wanted more skeletons or minotaurs only, and really gave no thought to any such math.

Once you have your army organized in the form of "stones" that rest in a pseudo-card deck, you can click on certain level-specific areas on your map to explore -- essentially Guild Wars - style instances that can be replayed over and over. As you kill monsters and conquer Medusa and other fabled creatures, you achieve goals and titles and can respawn or return as much as you need to get the job done. While visiting a new zone is fun for the first or even third times, having nowhere to go until hitting the next level (and gaining access to a new zone) can definitely be tiring.