Demigod is a fast-paced hybrid role-playing/strategy game from Gas Powered Games. Players select hero Demigods, outfit them with numerous power-ups and potions and unleash them in team based mayhem. Each team has a base to defend, the ability to spawn minions to fight on their behalf, flags to capture and gold to mine. “But that sounds just like DotA!” I hear you say. Well, yes, because it is.

Being able to summarise a game, almost entirely, in four lines with space at the end for an unsuccessful attempt at humour can never be a good thing. And it’s this lack of depth that ultimately leaves Demigod falling short of what could have potentially been an outstanding title. For those of you still wondering what a “DotA” is, it’s an acronym for “Defence of the Ancients” - one the most popular and widely played mods for Warcraft III. So popular in fact that Swedish people write songs about it.

Demigod, like DotA, is focused on competitive play and as a result lacks any form of single player campaign. This is a major omission in my opinion, firstly because the game fails to develop any plot or even explain why these gods are at war. And secondly by adding a campaign one would assume that the developers would have created additional game modes like castle defence or added support for more than two teams or even created a co-op dungeon exploring scenario. Such a shame we are limited to a DotA style of play with only a small set of customisation available. It does have a “single player tournament” mode but this is really just a bunch of skirmishes matches strung together with scores tallied at the end to produce a winner.

After selecting skirmish or… online skirmish, the player is presented with a choice of eight Demigods. They are divided into two categories: Assassins and Generals.

The assassins are powerful attackers and like to get their own hands dirty by getting the job done themselves. The generals on the other hand take a much more subtle approach by recruiting minions to fight on their behalf or relying on their powerful spell casting abilities. Even within the two broad groupings each Demigod plays very differently with its own array of abilities and spells to upgrade.

Next it’s on to choose your battleground. Now with no single player campaign you would expect that the developers would pack Demigod full of skirmish maps to try and make up for this shortcoming. Unfortunately Demigod has about the same amount of maps as the Queen of Thorns has clothes. That’s right ladies and gentlemen; you get a grand total of eight. Woot!

So finally we come to the game itself and if you have read this far it may sound like Demigod is destined to be branded a 1 star disappointment by this reviewer. Not so. The game itself looks and plays beautifully and is a time-sink of addictive fun.

As was mentioned earlier Demigod is a team game, with each team controlling a base of sorts. On most maps your base features a citadel, a basic item shop, a minion portal and a crystal of health. The standard game is won when the opposing team’s citadel is destroyed. The citadel itself provides your team with many communal upgrade opportunities. These include better armour and repair rates for your team’s structures, as well as access to new, more powerful types of minions, all available, of course for a fee. The item shop on the other hand provides per-player upgrades. All the usual potions, lotions and ointments can be found here. Lastly your minion portal provides your team with a steady stream of marauding fighters to help you in your quest to conquer the opposing citadel.

The minions are also the main source of experience in the game, being generally very weak especially early on; they provide ample cannon fodder for your Demigod to practise his various abilities on. In addition to the whole sale slaughter of minions your Demigod can also gain experience by capturing flags (which provide team-wide benefits) but the real money-spinner is the killing of other Demigods. This is a feat that requires careful coordination between team members such as casting spells in unison. But a successful result can be very rewarding for your Demigod’s experience level and also very lucrative for your team as a bounty is paid for a Demigod kill.

The game mechanics are very well balanced and this usually means that sooner or later the better team will gain an ever increasing advantage over their opponents and win the game. This prevents the games from ever becoming a “stalemate” and dragging on for extended periods of time. The computer AI must also be mentioned as it does a fine job of imitating a human player and at the harder levels it will put up an almighty fight.

Demigod suffered from some shockingly bad online networking code on its initial release; however, this problem has mostly been rectified through patching. The online following for this game, while not huge, is large enough so that there is always a game waiting to be joined. Online is where Demigod is at its best and most frenetic and no matter how good you think you were against the brutal AI, there is always a Korean teenager waiting in the wings to show you just how micromanaging your Demigod can be taken to a whole new level.

In the end I still think there is a huge gap between the game that was released and the game that could have been. Don’t get me wrong, Demigod is not a bad game by any means. But with a just little more development time and variety added, this game could have joined Warcraft III on the classics shelf.

Then maybe, just maybe it too would have earned a serenade by the Swedish.

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