Played through it for a bit and here are thoughts so far:
Graphics - They are magnificient, not just in the technical sense but also of artistic quality. The world feels vibrant and jubiliant, alive. You see people prancing about in ye olde outfits and such, but they look great doing it. During the day, everything has kind of a soft glow, not to much like in some Oblivion screenshots or Deus Ex: Invisible war but just enough to remind you of a warm summer day. That's the kind of feeling I got from the graphics, like I was traversing through the countryside of the midwest in July. There are some goofs though, like in combat (more on that later) when you attack your enemy, you don't actually walk up to it and do your action, you kind of glide while your feet scurry about. It just looks odd. Also, some of the lighting is wack, as the lamposts in the first city shine blue for some reason and whenever you walk into that blue radius, everything is endowed with a blue tint. No biggies. Game runs wonderfully well, too, no slowdowns or anything on my machine.
Controls and Interface - As you know, the game is in first person, but the game doesn't use your standard FPS WASD setup. Instead, you must use the arrow buttons to go forward, backwards, and sidestep. You can't turn using the arrowkeys, so you end up having to use the mouse to turn the camera in the direction you want. It reminded me of playing Ultima Underworld, in which you hold down the right mouse button in the direction you want to move and just hold down the forward key. Overall, it takes about a minute to get used to, but would be better if they just used standard WASD.
The interface, on the other hand, is simple and easy to get the hang of. You have the required RPG buttons there: Make Camp, Journal, Inventory, Quests, Local Map, World Map, and Combat Formations. Thankfully, the interface isn't jarringly in the way and stays out view.
The Interface
As you can see, it's quite eye-pleasing and fits well into the artistic themes of the game.
Gameplay - You start off as a magician who has just arrived in a strange land to get in touch with the Gods by the way of a mage and try to get in touch with your inner magical means. Only problem is, hey, the king decided that mages suck and decided to banish them all. Doesn't help that most people aren't religious anymore and basically think that any old Gods can go fuck off. So yeah, it's an interesting start and thankfully I can't detect a CHOSEN WAHN MUST CHOOSE kinda setup here, just someone on a journey who gets caught up in the midst of things.
Like Gothic, the game doesn't have any character creation, so your PC is set in stone. This may change in the final game (I dunno, maybe they were just limiting it for the demo or something). I know a lot of people will be turned off by this (Like that guy who said that PS:T wasn't an RPG because it didn't have character creation or some shit like that) but I'm cool with it.
Leveling is handled in traditional bread 'n butter RPG fashion, kill the baddie or do some quests, you get XP. You level up. Woot.
Dialouge is mainly done for you GASP HORROR
but there are times when you have options, mainly when something important comes up. Whether it be saying "No fuck you, I don't do that" or rejecting a quest or asking questions, there's a variety of options you can choose. Thankfully, many of the NPCS have personalities and aren't cardboard cut-outs. A nice touch is that people walk around and hold conversations (Animation only, you cannot actually hear what they're saying) and while it's just dressing, it's pretty dressing.
Quests are fun and varied, and yes there's you standard of Fed-Ex style quests (I don't think any RPG has never had one) but there's some interesting ones thrown in the mix, especially the main quest. I guess I'm just a sucker for a storyline that revolves around you and your own goals and not what some king wants you to do because U R TEH CHOSEN WAHN (cough, Bloodlines, cough).
Combat is turn-based YAAAY! WOOO! YAAY! Wait! Wait! Wait! Yes, it's turn-based, but it's of the
Final Fantasy variety.
Cue sounds of Codexers gagging, puking, and that one guy jerking off in the background.
Hold on! Hold on! It's not strictly a Final Fantasy clone, there's some other stuff you can do in combat besides attack and casting magic. You can move around! Oh, and you can sselect different styles of attack! It's not all that bad!
The biggest complaint I have about it is that you can't really sneak around the enemies. While it's better than FF random pop-up combat, it can get annoying when you think your out of the baddie's sights and WHAM! The sword and shield icon thingy pops up and then the music plays and oh god I don't have any health potions and why did my wife leave me and argh I'm dead I have to reload.
Conclusion - So far, GODS seems to be an interesting game, with much promise. If they can polish up some of the rough edges (Mainly some graphical issues, typos, and maybe add some more dialouge and combat options) it will most definitely be a worthy product for Codexers to try. Can't wait to see what happens!
EDIT: Looking at the news posts and some of the feautures listed, apparnently I missed some stuff. Feel free to correct me on any errors or things I glanced over.
)! It just feels so weird to be playing this beautiful and smooth game and then you have the combat and it's just a sore spot.
