The Seventh God Review

First Myth-Blog review!

Myth has had a long history of modding filled with amazing plugins, both solo and multiplayer. However in terms of Solo campaigns, three stood out among the rest, which were came to be known by some mythers as "The big three"

These plugins were "Chimera", "JINN" and "The Seventh God"

The Seventh God seems to take place in the same universe, or very similar universe as The Fallen Lords, Soulblighter and The Wolf Age, but somewhere very different from the locations seen in these stories. The map is quite well done, and gives you a feeling of "there's more to this world then I will get to see" which is nice, because it doesn't feel like the world is there only to tell you this one story.

The story is something along the lines of Lord of the Rings, with a lot of parallels in storytelling and ideas, though it quite departs it at times. It's nice as there are no real Lord of the Rings plugins for Myth... (Why aren't there, anyways?). The story is told from the prospective of a mage, who is having visions of another time, which could be the future, his future, in which he slowly finds out the fate of the world, as told through visions. In general the story is quite good, though it starts off extremely hard to follow, giving you names of places and people with no explanation of who they are. It becomes easier later on, as you start to pick up on who's being talked about. It feels like, while the story is great, it doesn't push the barrier of being anything other then decent, everything works, but there aren't any surprises, and it's not incredibly original.

The levels are very beautiful with most, if not almost all of the scenery, units and environment models are completely new and well done. The units are much higher resolution then the normal Myth 2 units, so it's fun to zoom in on the action. In addition to the scenery and units, the color maps are very good, with natural looking landscapes and detailed rocks, grass and paths. While the levels look great, it's often sad that they are not used to their full potential, while a lot of them amount to nothing more then walk, fight, walk fight, walk, level end, with not much strategy on the gameplay compared to the normal myth gameplay. The problem being there isn't the balance of Rock Paper Scissors that Myth 2 had, where a lot of the time you don't have artillery units, and your melee units are much tougher then the enemies, making you not have to rely on much more then clicking and hoping. Also, most of the fight locations take place on level terrain, with no rivers in the ways usually, making the fights feel very similar through out the entire campaign. However, with all of this, the fighting is still fun and "feels right", even if a bit too simple.

While most of the time, there is a sadding lack of objectives beyond kill everyone/get here, there are levels that are very different from almost anything you see in Myth. These RPG levels have you walk around and talk to people to solve puzzles and collect stuff to move on. These levels are usually a beauty to behold with great landscapes and wonderful set-ups of scenery, environmental models and units. The levels often aren't very complex, but the hints they give you can be pretty vague, which makes them take a lot longer to find out. While this can be a good thing, the last RPG level in the game had me scratching my head for quite some time, trying to figure out what to do, after having said everything I could to everyone. The idea is great, but I feel the levels could be better if they had spent a bit more time on planning them.

The music and voice acting were amazing, bordering on something you'd find in a retail game, which was surprising considering "Chimera" had more famous actors, yet wasn't as good. Not all the voice acting is good, there is quite a bit that is passible, yet with the amount voice acting that is good, it doesn't matter.

I haven't gotten a chance to try it multiplayer, but obviously that's not the focus, as I have never seen a game of it played multiplayer online. The levels however look very pretty, though a bit generic, with not much new to bring to the table. I would think, with the simplistic gameplay of the Seventh God, it wouldn't be interesting enough to hold most Myth players. When flipping through the maps in an empty game, the only map that stood out to me was "An Axe to Grind" and it's variant, as they seemed to offer and interesting castle siege element into the netgames which I would imagine to be quite fun.

Overall, my overly critical review might sound negative, but I don't want you to think that the case, I am very critical, and I pointed out everything that stood out to me, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing at all, in fact I think The Seventh God is one of the best plugins for Myth to date, and easily deserves to it's place among the "Big Three". Not only is probably the longest original story plugin for Myth 2, but it also is well done, and is great fun to play coop.

Scores:

New Graphics (9/10): While all the new graphics looked quite amazing, it was strange that they chose to use some Myth 2 units, as they look out of place and blurry compared to those around them.

Story (8/10): While the story is simplistic and hard to follow at first, it's well written overall, and definitely worth exploring.

Gameplay (8/10): I ragged on it a lot, but I still had a lot of fun playing through it, and I know you probably will too.

Level Design (8/10): A mixed bag, the levels looked great, but were often not used to their full potential.

Music/Voice acting (9/10): While some of the voice acting isn't great, the good stuff makes up for it, I have heard worse voice acting in a retail game before.

Replay value (8/10): While the multiplayer might not grab you, the solo levels are great for cooping, and you will probably replay it solo from time to time too.

Verdict: Download/Keep or not?

Answer: Keep

Written by Jon God, August 29th, 2009