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Heatwave Interactive | Play Now
MMORPG | Genre:Historical | Status:Final  (rel 06/21/11)  | Pub:Heatwave Interactive
Distribution:Download,Retail | Retail Price:$49.99 | Pay Type:Subscription
Desktop Client | System Req: PC 

Gods & Heroes: Hands-On Preview

News Manager Keith Cross recently attended an event hosted by perpetual Entertainment's Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising. While there, he had an opportunity to get some hands-on play time with the game and today he shares his impressions with us.

I recently had the opportunity to fly out to San Francisco to attend Hero Camp, an event organized by Perpetual Entertainment to show of their upcoming mythology based title: Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising. Between refreshments and social gaffes, I had the chance to get a hands-on preview of the game along with a number of my fellow journalists.

My overall impressions of the game are good. The only problems I found with the game were the types of problems that are to be expected from a game still in closed beta, a floating bush here, some pathfinding issues there. There are still some kinks that need to be worked out and some polishing to do but the game appears to be on track.

The overall look of the game is beautiful. The dynamic environmental effects add not only a level of beauty to the game, but also bring about other useful consequences. Dynamic shadows that move across the ground as the sun moves across the sky are more than just pretty, they allow for objects of the era such as working sundials that will tell you the time of day in game.

Each zone that I visited was themed with the patron deity of the area in mind. For Diana, the goddess of the hunt, it was a verdant forest filled with centaurs and nymphs, while Vulcan's land had a distinctive volcanic theme.

I was impressed by the how enthusiastic the folks at Perpetual are about their product. It shows when they talk about the game, and it shows when you play the game. As I stood on a precipice behind a temple of Diana, looking down on a lakeside Roman village and admiring the view, Development Director Seth Olshfski commented on how the village I was looking at was actually in its second incarnation. The original looked good but he said it just didn't look Roman enough, so they went back to the drawing board and rebuilt it from scratch. Seth went on to talk about the precipice, or more specifically, places similar to it, in general. Currently, members of the quest writing team are wandering the lands looking for those spots in the game that are worth visiting just for the visual splendor, and putting quests and other goodies there. To some, this may seem like an obvious and straightforward way to plan the games quest content, but few games have put such a conscious effort into linking the visual design to the game content design.

The quests that I saw seemed fairly standard compared to other MMOs, but I can't say much about that as I only had time for a superficial look at the quest system. And I didn't get a chance to play through the over-arcing storyline to see how the quests come together in that context. One thing that I can say about the quests is that there are lots of them. One of the complaints that they've been getting thus far in the beta is that there are too many quests.

One of the game play features that makes Gods and Heroes stand out from the crowd of MMOs set to hit the market around the same time is the minion system. First off, the minions in Gods and Heroes are far more than mere pets. The minions are almost as varied in abilities, temperament, and purpose as the player characters. Although a player of high enough level can have a maximum of only four minions active in their squad at one time, there are roughly 130 different minions that players can acquire in the game. A common question among those who have been following this game is: why only 4 minions? The answer is simple: four is all you need, any more and high level play would be unmanageable. This became apparent to me during the high level play session of the evening. We were put in teams of five players with 40th level characters and four minions each. With the minions, a small group of 5 becomes a raid group of 25 which can be chaotic, but also opens the world of raiding to players who can't commit the amount of time and organization to get a large raid group together.

You will need a fair amount of help from a number of your minions to be successful in the game. That's because the system was designed to encourage a bit of strategic thinking. For example, if you're playing a gladiator, the main tank class of the game, you'll probably want you're first minion to be a healer and set them to hold back from combat and automatically heal you when you're hit points reach a preset level. When I had the opportunity to play as a 20th level Priest, I had two minions, the maximum at hat level. They were both melee types I'd send them in first to do the dirty work while I stood back healing them and firing off the occasional damaging spell. My tactics were basic, but the potential is there to manage every detail and build the perfect squad for the job. The min/maxing crowd will be very pleased. But the system is straight forward enough that those who prefer a more laid back style of play can automate most their squad's activities and not have to worry too much about getting trounced.

For the demonstration, we were pitted against the Telchine, Chalcon, a member of the pantheon that the Olympian pantheon overthrew to gain their status. I had a pretty poor showing, firing off a group heal mere seconds after most the group and all of my minions were killed by one of Chalcon's area attacks. I was then promptly killed while running away to, uh... regroup. Luckily, our group's tank was able to hang in there long enough to pull off the win by the skin of our teeth.

I have to say I'm a fan of the minion system. Some of the first games I ever played were adventure games and RTS games and this system is an innovative cross of the genres, making it an innovative MMO to keep an eye on.

More Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising Features:

Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising - Et Tu, RipperX? Media added on Tuesday July 12

More Previews:

Rise of Dragonian Era - Beta Weekend Preview Preview added on Monday February 13
Repulse - Beta Preview Preview added on Friday February 10

More Features:

Guild Wars 2 - Micro-Awesomeness Column added on Tuesday February 14
The Free Zone - Is F2P Ruining Korea’s Youth? Column added on Tuesday February 14
 
 
magarr writes:

Damn good.

 

First.

New Post Quote
7/06/07 9:18:31 PM
 
moostown writes:

The game just seems to be more of the same old tbh, it doesn't look impresive at all.

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7/06/07 10:15:18 PM
 
eshi writes:

the minion system reminds me of guild wars hero systems which works really really well.  Hopefully Gods and Heroes will have a hero battles thing like in guild wars too w/ an ELO rating system!

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7/06/07 10:31:27 PM
 
bhiebob writes:

sounds good... nyahahaha

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7/06/07 10:38:41 PM
 
Kenze writes:

Im liking what I hear about this game! The minion system sounds great and I love the theme. I cant wait to add this to my collection.

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7/06/07 10:46:44 PM
 
Phos writes:

Yet ANOTHER fantasy MMO. Not me. I need a break from swords and spells for a while... a long while.

- Phos

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7/06/07 11:18:17 PM
 
johnnychangs writes:

Nice article.  One correction though, Gladiators are not the "tank class of the game".  Soldiers are the tanks, Gladiators are more of a DPS class.

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7/06/07 11:33:02 PM
 
VaNaS writes:

Likewise im just gonne pass all fantasy stuff for now and only going to trow my interests into mmofps , fantasty games are to much alike.

And minion system bleh...had my eyes on this game for quite a while but that concept made me loss all my interest in it.

But for the fans it should be worth it and hopefully interesting, but il pass this one for sure.

New Post Quote
7/07/07 4:49:42 AM
 
Snodge writes:

Each review of Gods and Heroes gets me more and more convinced that this might be one of those games which may actually do something new within the MMO genre. The whole minion system is clearly something new and innovative which I really want to give a try, and the little things like making places which have a great visual appeal within the game quest hubs, shows that they are really thinking long and hard on how to make the game a really good experience for those of us who end up playing it.

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7/07/07 5:31:56 AM
 
Gadorian writes:

hmm... i think the minion system is realy cool, i want to try it

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7/07/07 10:31:39 AM
 
tute writes:

Can't wait.  I will definitely be pre-ordering it.

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7/07/07 1:28:23 PM
 
Saurus930 writes:

Sure I'm going to try this game. I don't care if it's fantasy or Sci-fi as long it's good and makes me wanna come back.

 

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7/08/07 5:44:07 AM
 
tinlar writes:

The paired animation of this game is simply amazing ... watching the combat of this game it like watching combat out of God of War II rather than the "swing at the air in front of the monster to hurt it" combat that we expect from MMO's.   Simply amazing, I can't wait to move my guild to this game.

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7/08/07 10:56:06 AM
 
Tnice writes:

Good to see a game is trying something different.

Please, for the love of god MMORPG get new headphones and mics for the podcast.  Get some Logitechs or something, anything.  Sounds like you are talking into a plastic cup.  It is really bad.  Content is great but the quality of your podcasts make them really bad.

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7/08/07 3:32:48 PM
 
spankybus writes:

The game being based in real mythology (i know its an oxymoron) is a big selling point for me. I really like games that do this, and its amazingly seldom. Okami was awesome, though i knew nothing of Japanese myth prior to playing it. Titan quest was baulders gate set in a world I've been reading about in every history class in grade school.

 

On top of that, they seem to be looking to really try a new style of game[play...i am very optimistic about this title.

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7/09/07 1:23:53 PM
 
zoombunny writes:

This game looks  like it could be great, im definitely trying it out. I'm very curious to see the minion system.

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7/10/07 3:42:55 PM
 
sai_borg_yaj writes:

What a thorough preview!  I'm really excited about this game.  I can't wait until it comes out.

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7/12/07 1:51:38 PM
 
ManGhost writes:

 

I think it looks cool!

Think about it, its probably got the best "IP" around,  and the animations look amazing. This game is guaranteed to be a cut above the rest.

New Post Quote
7/13/07 7:59:00 PM
 
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