Contrary to my post, I really do enjoy Demigod and played it for 14 hours straight today. It's really fun and worth the purchase cost, but if I can have a say in balancing the game, then I will give all the criticisms I can.
Funny thing about this post. I was gonna make a thread about how Regulus, when on Hard mode, is unstoppable especially as he levels up, and it takes two or three Demigods to kill him. I've even been Regulus in the enemy base and not lost any life at all. I would up killing 7 Demigods in a row because he just couldn't die.
The Rook is definetly the weakest character by far. He has near to no special attacks to get from the screen, has trouble walking through wards of enemies, and is always the prime target of other Demigods. This character always falls in battle. In just about every case I've played, the higher the difficulty, the worse it is to have The Rook on your team because The Rook will wind up dying some 7 times before you will have your first or second. I once had it randomly assign me three Rooks in a 5 vs 5. That match I had the most trouble winning because it was one Rook dying and another slowly walking down to take that one's place for the entire match. I wish The Rook did more damage to buildings so its use was more worthwhile. The volleys coming off of it automatically are also not powerful enough. Funny thing is, The Rook, while being the biggest and most pronounced Demigod, is the easiest to kill hands down. Each and every Demigod seems like a God in comparison.
I did three matches on hard using the Torch Bearer and oh boy is that a slow starter. Almost useless in the beginning, later on, the Torch Bearer starts to actually do some damage, but it's very problematic. See, I was in a tourney match on hard and the frost one, even if I never go into fire mode, is just worthless. Freezing doesn't last long enough and doesn't seem to do enough damage for the cost/cooldown. In Fire mode, I was the match leader in kills, level, and least deaths as well as having upgraded my citadel to have better and stronger enemies and give my team more experience, but somehow I completely lost that match too. I spent over and hour on each match as the Torch Bearer and wasn't able to win, but I was clearly the match leader in my ability to single-handedly stop the enemies; still, my team wasn't pulling their weight, and I was also having issues fighting Regulus. I was able to kill him twice in those three matches, but the only way I was able to do that was when he ran out of potions and 3 of us ganged up on him. It's just kind of crazy to say the least.
The Vampire guy is impossible to kill which isn't a problem. I'm just pointing out you did well to fix him because I can't ever seem to kill him unless I'm Regulus because Regulus can kill anyone. The Vampire lord is actually the easiest to kill as Regulus. I know it's his thing to kill Demigods, but still. The Vampire lord is almost impossible to kill as the Torch Bearer because he can run away so fast. It's not a big deal that the Vampire lord can stay alive, I just wanted to point out that as the Torch Bearer, I was unable to kill him at all either with ice or fire.
When not on my team, Sedna is really tough to kill, always healing and just frankly, not dying no matter which character I choose. That is one character needing less health for sure. It just doesn't seem fair that this girl who has to ride on a snow leapard gets to be an tank character. Maybe that was intended, I don't know.
Oak is completely fine. I think his minions, the Minataurs, are far too weak and pretty worthless even on the highest level; other than that, he's fine. Actually, that's a lie. Oak's invernerability is a waste of skills. I wish it were area-based and could work on my units as a whole rather than just one target which I will always choose to be myself. And then there's the issue of casting the spell and losing a few seconds waiting for the animiation to finish so you can move close enough to a tower to take it down while a step later the thing wears off and renders it moot. The sheild is just not going to do anything at all, and I now avoid it at all costs. Any ai that invests in it helps in losing the entire match for that team.
Occassionally I come across a hard-to-kill Unclean Beast, but in just about all my matches, this is one enemy I will pick out from all the others (aside from The Rook) because it just loves to die if it doesn't teleport away first. Has to be one of the most useless characters. If it's on my team it sucks. If it's on the opponents team it also sucks. At least The Rook can destroy towers, this thing can't even kill the simple enemies for the most part.
I would like to say the ai is really smart and doing a great job... as long as they're not on hard and not on my team, ha ha ha. The reinforcements ai is really something. I think it was extremely well programmed. I wish the enemies were programmed just as good. A lot of them seem to follow the same movement paths destorying the immersion and making the game predicatable, very bad when it is supposed to depend on you playing your cards right based on your own predictions rather than "this enemy always takes this path so just go to the end of the path and kill it".
I do have a few concerns with the game itself. There is no way to win if you are losing. Once the enemy has pushed just a bit into your area, you are done. You can try to defend yourself, but you already lost and now it's just 30-40 minutes of losing slowly, very slowly. There has to be some benefit even if you have no flags and a team of Demigods under level so there is a way to come back even if you're really not makin' it. As an example, Age of Empires III has the "revolution" thing you can use if you are a European civilization, Age of Mythology has Ragnarok if you're the Norse, but Demigod has nothing. I mean, the best you have is having Oak die and go berzerk, but by that point in time it's already too late for it to really do anything or matter. In a fighting game like Super Smash Bros Brawl, characters on a losing team will start off with a Final Smash making it so they can catch up. Racing games sometimes give rear players more speed or better power-ups. Sometimes these balances can destory the game and make it based on chance and not talent, but in others, as in the case of Age of Empires, it's worked in there as a choice you have to make, and you only get one chance to make it. From there, you have to figure out if you can pull through like that or not. That's a lot better than knowing you're gonna die and that's it especially if you are the match leader, and your team of ai just loves dying by the hand of Regulus or going after the wrong towers. I really shouldn't have to feel like I'm babysitting my team, I want comrads and friends. It seems so disjunct as if I am my team, and the others on it are holding me back.
