What do you get when you band together the former team responsible for Diablo series and the well-received RPG Fate? It's an amazing team responsible for one of this year's MMORPG sleeper hits: Mythos. Developed first by Flagship Studios, Mythos was made with the notion of the Diablo and Fate games combined in a multiplayer perspective. After Flagship Studios closed down, all the rights were bought and carried over to Hanbitsoft. Taking over Mythos's development, Hanbitsoft picked up where Flagship Studios left and retained the what the original team had in mind. Though Flagship did launch a closed beta test of Mythos, it wasn't until 2011 that the game was once again launched under a different developer and publisher. So, is Mythos deserving of a second chance?
Think of Mythos as Diablo or Torchlight deluxe, although in this game, the backstory isn't really clarified. Players are given a choice of 4 races: Human, Cyclops, Satyr and Gremlin. There are only three classes: Bloodletter, Pyromancer and Gadgeteer. The three classes represent the melee, magic and ranged archetypes respectively. Each race also has stat bonuses per class, usually giving higher attributes to a class of their specialty (like Gremlins' high dexterity for Gadgeteer class or Satyr's high wisdom for Pyromancer). Character customization is fairly simple. The game gives a few faces, hairstyles and colors to choose from. Race and classes are not gender-locked too (Mythos Gold which is humorous for the Cyclops race since they all look exactly alike).
Upon entering the game for the first time, a starter town with a few tutorial quests and an easy 1-level dungeon is in place. The game has a detailed, yet easy to understand, help window too. Getting the hang of the controls is very much easy. More so, Mythos also has two different camera views: a fixed Isometric view and a free-camera MMO view. The starter town, tutorial quests and help window got new players covered on everything in the game. After a few starting quests, players get the chance to leave the tiny map for greener pastures. Camera angles in free MMO view takes getting used to, and it does get unfriendly when it zooms too close due to the camera bumping an obstacle. Other than that, getting the hang of the game is easy as ABC.
