Game Review - Loki: Heroes of Mythology

Game Review - Loki: Heroes of Mythology (See all PC Action Games)

Score +6/-3

Overview
Loki: Heroes of Mythology (See all PC Action Games) is a real-time third-person Diablo-style "fantasy role-playing game". Like most games of this sort, there isn't really any role-playing involved per se since there are little or no choices to be made that really affect the outcome. It is more of a type of "shooter" game where you run around killing interesting monsters in interesting environments.

+ It's a big game with various culture-themed worlds to play through. Compared to Diablo 2 or Titan Quest, there's a lot of gameplay here.
+ There's a lot of gear to get and wear, which keeps things fresh. The items are not merely cosmetically different -- each level of superior item is distinctly different and often quite interesting in their details. For instance, higher-level Norse Warrior armor can have a wolf head for a pauldron/shoulder piece. Some very nice epic-looking pieces are displayed by iconic heroes in the main menu.
+ There's theoretically a lot of replayability since each of the four hero types have three specialization trees, and some of the trees have a viable option of either doing a combat or magic route, for as many as 24 character play styles.
+ You can reset your powers in a skill tree easily and frequently, letting you try different skills or correct allocation mistakes. (You cannot roll back stat increases the same way, though.)
+ The boss fights feel epic, especially when there's a huge boss like Fenris.
+ The game has three tiers that escalate to a heroic/epic look and feel.
- It gets intensely boring very quickly. The map is thick with enemies which bogs things down. This is not normally bad, but you go through big maps that look and feel the same before you come to a plot point and there's a lot of running in between teleport points.
- The rate of progress is very slow, especially for powers. This also contributes to a game that feels very static for a long time.
- In general you will come to rely on just a few powers and increase your ability with them. This also gives a static feel to the game. Play balance between the skill trees is very skewed, but this isn't a problem with the Single Player option.