Demigod - 20/20 hours

I was wrong about the Demon Assassin. I played him a second time and got my highest kill count to date - 28. I think it definitely suffered from being the first one I tried as a total novice.

I wish I could say the same for the Torch Bearer. I've noticed in a big brawl, with another character to absorb enemy attacks, his abilities to slow down and weaken enemies can be very dangerous, but he simply does not do enough damage nor have a strong enough defense to be viable 1v1.

To round out my time, I decided to play a single-player tournament. It was pretty fun, but it frustrated me to learn that Demigod supports multiple victory conditions. Variety is nice to have, but there was no hint, when I was playing skirmish mode, that it was possible to change the map goal. That sort of lack of documentation is a real pain. I wished from the very beginning that there was a tutorial mode, and this surprise merely cemented that sentiment.

Looking back at my twenty hours, I don't think I've ever experienced such a dramatic turn around in my appreciation of a game. I started out lukewarm towards Demigod, due to my dislike of RTS games, but as I played it more, I came to get a feel for the tactics and an interest in exploring the character builds.

I feel comfortable leaving it behind, however. It's a small game with not a lot to do. I've seen all the maps, played all the characters, and beat all the victory conditions. I never unlocked nightmare mode, but got good enough at easier difficulties that is seemed reasonable to try. I expect that in multiplayer, against other humans, there is no upper limit to the necessary skill level. But multiplayer for this game is dead, and I've learned my lesson from Blade Symphony about trying to climb the ladder of mastery.

I read an article about Demigod that said it came out around the same time as League of Legends, and at the time, there was some dispute about which was the better game. Yet one took off to be huge and the other faded into obscurity. It's funny how things work out. I haven't played League enough to understand the nuance of why one succeeded and one failed, but I suspect it was random chance. While both were vulnerable and small, one of the games got a critical mass of players, and became self-sustaining, thereby getting new characters, balance updates, and improvements to matchmaking and communication, whereas the other withered away, to become nothing more than a curiosity, an artifact in the history of a popular genre.

I don't know enough about the genre to appreciate the lesson, but it was fun enough that I'm not averse to learning more.