Demigod is Divine.

If you were to stop reading now and go buy Demigod, you’d probably be fine. Heck, from what I can tell, you’d be better than fine. Demigod is an outrageous game. The problem is, it’s not just crazy good. It’s also got a whole host of problems.

I’ve been mulling over what I want to say about Demigod since I bought it. That’s not say I haven’t loved it. I have. I played it a good 15-20 hours in the first two days I got it. I haven’t done that with a new game in years. But if I’m being honest, I probably spent a couple few hours of that time waiting on a multiplayer game to start. See, that’s where the problems come into play. Literally.

The Good

Lets start with the good though. And boy howdy is it good. You see, Demigod is a new kind of RTS. It’s more like mixing Desktop Tower Defense (still the best Tower game around) with a typical RTS and taking out all of things you don’t really need. Oh, and throwing in a bit of RPG to go with that. I don’t even really know what to call it. I’m sure someone smarter than I (yeah right) will come up with something clever to call it.

Whatever you call it, I’d say it’s revolutionary. No RTS (or RTS hybrid) should be made ever again without checking out what Demigod did with slight changes to the formula of your typical real time strategy game. They did what Relic was trying to do, create a strategy game that was really about the battle not about the building. And they did it by getting rid individual unit control (with some key exceptions).

In Demigod, you start out in control of one two types of Demigods trying to be the best so you can attain full godhood. Each map starts with your DG at level one. You get one free talent on your talent tree (think Titan Quest), a thousand gold and that’s it. You need to level up to get more badass, which you need to do to stop the other would be gods from destroying you (or fortress or holding flags or so on. Depends on the game type). You take your newly born god, head out into the beautiful map (Every map is just sweet) and try to stay alive while capturing flags, fighting of hordes self controlled units that spawn periodically for each side. As you fight you gain gold and experience. The experience you use to buy talents and the gold to buy armor/weapons/powers/guys.

To boot, their are two basic types of Demigods. Assassins and Generals. Assassins never control more than the one upstart god they begin with. They have rely on their powers to keep themselves alive. Generals also get some powers, but usually they are more towards controlling units and making them better. Each style is a very different experience and actually pretty different between each of the four per type (eight total demigods, four for each type).

Once you play a few games, it makes more sense. It all boils down to control and strategy though. Should you run for the flags, or try to meet in the middle and kill some little guys for experience? Can you take the huge Rook you see stomping your way, or should you retreat and rearm? Will your Torch Bearer have enough mana to burn him to the ground he can crush you with his massive hammer? Or will the Oak nearby come over and help out by stunning him when he tries to use a power… So many choices, almost all of them tactical in nature. You’re fighting a full fledged battle every time you start a map. By the end of you’ll have clerics, angels and giants fighting on your side (if you upgrade your citadel), all of which you aren’t in direct control of. And your Demigod will be displaying all kinds of crazy mystical powers. Because they can.

The Bad

Ok, now, if you stop reading here and run out and buy Demigod, you’re going to miss what makes me want to say hold off a bit. Maybe. You see, Demigod has a MESS of multiplayer issues. If you want to play single player, I haven’t heard of many problems, other than the AI being a bit brain dead on the higher difficulty levels. Online though? Well, multiplayer matches can take anywhere from five to twenty minutes to start. Yeah, that long. Not always for sure. And it’s improving every day (I played a couple of matches last night where each only took me about five minutes to get started, from clicking search to playing…that hasn’t been the norm though). It was so bad though, and especially on launch day, that multiple reviewers panned it and gave it abnormally low scores. I can’t really fault them either. If I had bought on launch day even, instead of the day after, I would have probably been a lot more upset

I won’t even get into how wrong it is that an entire review for a game was destroyed because they tried to play the game for one day and couldn’t. That’s mainly because reviewers don’t play games the way we do and is more a systemic problem in the industry, rather than one specifically for Demigod. The point being, on launch day, it was near impossible to play Demigod online. Whatever the reasoning was, it still didn’t work. And it didn’t get a lot better right away. Hell, it’s not a whole lot better now. It’s better, but still filled with problems. For instance, they’ve got this really cool site setup for stats and the like. Except, even though I’ve clocked easily over 30+ hours in Demigod, I don’t exist on that site. And I’m not alone. Or system they have setup to buy items that carry over between games…almost every time you start a match, the number is messed up, which means you can’t even buy Favor related items. Or that probably two out of five games I try to play don’t ever launch.

Oh, and before you go, oh well, I’m just going to play it single player…there isn’t a tutorial either. Now, that’s not a killer and I got around it and learned the game (it is a simple game at its core), but it’s one more thing to scratch your head about. There are a few things like that, head scratchers. For instance, how Stardock (the publisher and hosting service) and Gas Powered Games (the developer) decided to go with Peer to Peer networking…which they are still working on getting right. Or what about the poor UI for multiplayer? When you’re trying to connect to a game and it finds one, it gives you a blank box with a Cancel button. That you stare at for many minutes (see above) if you don’t notice the other, minimized, box below. There are definitely some questions to be answered and more than a few issues that should be addressed (including people being unable to register or get updates in some rareish cases).

You should probably buy it.

So, now, you’re most likely thinking you’re not going to run out and buy it all. That may be for the best…except well, this game is so good, my suggestion would be that if my description of play above interested you at all, it’s worth it. As long as you don’t run into the technical problems. If you can buy it a place you can return it to (a luxury most of us don’t have these days), run out and buy it right now. If not, you’ll have to decide for you. I don’t regret buying it. I haven’t run into being unable to register or patch or anything like that. And multiplayer games do eventually start…

I really do hate to suggest buying a game that could be broken for you. So if you’re unsure, wait a bit until it gets patched. Whatever you do, buy it at some point. The game changes RTSes something fierce and definitely expands the genre. And does it well.

What Would Matt Do: I’d buy the shit out of this game. I’m actually considering getting another copy so I can convince my wife to play with me and she isn’t really an RTS gamer. The game is just that good. Also, I can’t help but to link Three Moves Ahead by the ever awesome TroyG. It’s getting better every episode AND this week is especially relevant with Brad Wardell (CEO of Stardock) on to Demigod.