So now that the connection issues appear to be less of a problem for now at least, I've been able to have a few decent games with friends and also randomers (instead of boring AI).

Before I begin, I'll make it very clear that these are my very early impressions of the game, as I haven't tested everything through and through, I've only been playing since release day. Additionally, I'm experienced in competetive DOTA and the RTS genre so my views stem from that, and also my expectations to make Demigod a competitive, balanced and over all fun game to play.

<Casts flameward IV>

So lets go.

General Gameplay:

The general gameplay of Demigod has started well, instantly familiar to DOTA players, pick your character, shop for items, push the enemy towers, fight enemy heroes/Demigods, win the game. Whilst I know thats a brief description and doesn't encompass the real depth of the game, such as citadel upgrades, flag captures etc.. its basically all you need to know and works very well.

My only criticisms on the gameplay would be two fold:

Towers & Reinforcements

Towers seem to be relatively weak unless set to the strongest setting, and in keeping with this, reinforcement waves (including general summoned units, but we'll get to that later) seem more of a nuissance than anything else.

Whilst comparisons to DOTA are not ideal when discussing the gameplay of another game entirely, they are inevitable in a game that shares so many qualities. In turn, anyone who attempted to needlessly tank creep (reinforcement) waves in DOTA  would be a fool and probably die very quickly, in Demigod, it really isn't an issue. The reinforcements seem to be eye candy more than anything, offering little challenge to Demigods or structure alike. All though, that arguably changes when Giants enter the fray, they still don't pack the same punch that say 'Mega Creeps' have in DOTA.

Again, im not trying to turn the game into DOTA, just using this as a reference to highlight that reinforcement waves should perhaps be a little more noteworthy as a major part of the gameplay.

'Ganking' and Demigod fatality

This is perhaps an issue regarding the map layouts than the gameplay itself, nevertheless, it is the gameplay that suffers. What I am getting at here, is that the game doesn't really lend itself well to the concept of ganking. The rigid structure of the maps generally means there is little deviation from the 'lanes' and the Fog Of War is usually very lax, making the possibility of ambushes and 'ganks' very limited. Typically, combat boils down to who has the biggest stick, rather than who has the better strategy. This in my opinion, is not how the game should play.

Expanding on this, the gameplay is somewhat softened by the fact that there is a relatively low fatility aspect for Demigods. Basically, its easy to survive, and quite difficult to score a kill in DOTA, mainly because Demigods in general, are quite powerful. This ties into the points on Towers and Creeps, since if they were buffed, Demigods would as a result, be weaker. The main feeling I have behind this, is that the gameplay doesn't really seem exciting most of the time, I prefer to be on my toes the whole time, however, at times, it can seem like very little effort is required to actually play the game.

In my opinion, the more danger there is to your character, the more exciting, and ultimately more fun, the game is to play.

To try and improve on this would require some careful alterations to Demigods statistics and survivability, basically making them more lethal, and less hardy. Going hand in hand with a buff to towers and reinforcements, I believe this would make the gameplay, much more competitive.

Citadel upgrades:

I love this feature, as it does bring some tactical depth to the gameplay isntead of just running and gunning without a moments thought for the big picture. However, I can't help but feel its been executed in the wrong way, on two accounts:

Upgrades cost GOLD

This just seems a bad idea to me, particularly when playing in public games. People love gold, because you use it to buy items, and people really love items, and why shouldn't they. Gold = items, items = stronger Demigod and a stronger Demigod = more fun.

So when your asked to pour relatively massive amounts of Gold into upgrades that you directly do not get to use or benefit from in terms of your gaming experience, of course, your not going to want to do it. (Even though, it is a huge factor in winning the game, there will always be a niggling feeling that you could have bought that nice weapon or piece of armor with that gold instead of some higher numbers on your towers/reinforcements).

More than this, theres no real way to deal with upgrading fairly, one player is always going to spend more gold on upgrades than another, and recieve more or less no merrit from it (maybe a favor reward, woot...). Why should the other guy get to have all the fun of using crazy item of + a billion damage, when your spending all your gold on your fort. Simple answer, they shouldn't.

I would propose that citadel upgrades are handled with a seperate economy altogether; War Score.

Rather than spending your hard earned gold, you would spend the War Score earned from actually achieving objectives in the game, such as capping flags, killing Demigods, and destroying towers. Of course, gold income may need to be scaled down to compensate for this, but I believe it would bring about a more positive attitude towards Citadel upgrades.

Upgrade complexity

The second point I would bring up about upgrading the Citadel, is it is relatively complex, theres alot to choose from here and in the middle of a huge battle, you don't really want to be standing around trying to decide if you want your creeps to have 10% more hp or 10% more damage (not sure if those are the actual figures, just an example). Anything that takes too much time away from the actual gameplay is in my opinion, detrimental to the enjoyment of the game and being out of the fight for too long is never good. (To reference another succesful game, look at Dawn of War 2's take on streamlining base building)

Here, I would suggest that certain upgrades be grouped into one simple branch making a much more streamlined upgrade tree. For example, the 2 upgrade branches relating to Structure armor and damage, simply group them into one branch of structure upgrades that gives you both effects with less of a headache. And this could continure on, merging the two seperate creep damage and armor upgrades, the Demigod experience and respawn timer upgrades, all to bring about a simpler system for faster paced gameplay.

Generals Vs Assassins:

My experience of the division between Generals and Assassins so far has lead to a relatively blunt conclusion: Assassins are stronger. It could be argued in theory that generals if played properly and with more micromanagement and so on and so on are superior. The fact remains, Assassins have all the killing potential and versatility of Generals, without the need to micromanage extremely innefective minions, or extra idol costs.

Generals tend to require more attention, have weaker offensive power and again, have to pay out for Idols, with little tradeoff, they are not much more effective with a full entourage of minions than without. 'Generals' like Oak and Erebus can often be played with a gear loadout similar to Assassin types, without bothering with minions or idols, and often come out better for it.

This is obviously flawed.

Here, Generals should be symbiotic with their minions, the framework is already there with the ability trees of the Generals, however, the stats simply do not cut it. Again, as described earlier, the minions are just too weak to prove worthy of the effort to micromanage them (The UI doesn't help at all here) It can be highly frustrating to spend some time summoning your army only to have them all annihilated in one fell swoop by an AoE spell, dealing virtually no damage to the enemy in the process. What I would suggest is to make Generals relatively weaker, but massively increase the strength of their minions to compensate, bringing about a radically different gameplay style from Assassins.

The current state, and looking forward:

In terms of content, currently the multiplayer aspect is a dual edged sword. There isn't a huge amount of maps but four modes compensate for this. However, there is a serious dirth in heroes, whilst maps are well and good, variety in heroes is what really makes games like this shine (not to sound like a broken record, but the main reason behind DOTA's appeal is the massive variety of heroes, and as a result, every game is different).

Whilst there are plans (I think?) to add more eventually, this is really where the game is going to go stale, fast. When the same matchups keep occuring, the game will become predictable, and as a result boring, as inventing strategies on the fly and adapting to the battlefield become things of the past when you can second-guess the opponents every move

Of course, it is early days and SD may pull through soon enough with a big injection of content, we can only hope.

Moving on to the single player, whilst this is probably not the main reason why the majority of players play the game, it is dissapointing that there is no real campaign, since the backstory is just soaked with potential here for a story driven campaign.

More so, the lack of a tutorial can be daunting, again, as discussed above, the format is familiar to DOTA players to a degree, but to less experienced players, I can imagine the learning curve is relatively steep.

Summing up, forgiving the recent technical hiccups with connectivity and looking at the game itself, I am not completely negative, however, this game has the potential to be great. But, only with careful attention to the community, and implementation of ideas to put the focus on FUN. After all, thats why we play

I hope you agree with me, and if you don't, please post your constructive comments and perhaps we can come to an agreement.