Loki Preview

Another excellent time-saving feature is the ability to load any unwanted inventory items into a kiosk. The kiosk essentially functions as a sub-section of the inventory which items can be stored in. This is automatically offered up to the next merchant for sale so that all gamers need to do is confirm the purchase, making it ideal for clearing the low-level clutter out of the inventory but still being able to profit from it at a later point.

Loki has a handful of other features that it boasts about in the various press releases, such as a bestiary and being 'in full 3D', but to be honest features like these often fall to the wayside as nothing more than useless distractions. Besides, who honestly boasts about having 3D graphics anymore? Companies that aren't confident of their game graphics, that's who.

For everything that Loki does right though, there's usually something bad to balance it out. We've already mentioned the graphical short-comings of the game and, while that probably needs reiterating for full effect, there are other rookie mistakes made in the game design. NPCs who hand out quests for example are clearly marked when they have a quest to give, but aren't marked at all when you have to bring items back to them, which can sometimes be a bit of a pain when dozens of identical characters are milling about in the same square.

A feature which tore us over its brilliance/crappiness was the game difficulty, which is split into three levels – Mortal, Hero and Deity. We only got a chance to go on the first difficulty setting as the higher levels were locked off, but the descriptions indicated that lower difficulties only allowed players to get so far in the story, before presumably giving a cliffhanger ending. Only on the highest difficulty, Deity, is the story fully playable and complete-able, though monsters will scale to players abilities and have no level cap to inhibit them.


Obviously this difficulty setup has the benefit of making the game more replayable and challenging, but it may be too much for some and we're not keen on the idea of having to play the same ugly game three times to get a conclusion that will probably be presented via some lame FMV. Still, that's why God invented cheat codes, isn't it?

First Impressions

Loki is a tough one to call in terms of how we think it's shaping up.

Loki is definitely a fun game for gamers who don't have expectations that are too high and for casual RPG fans or lazy (i.e. can't be bothered to use a keyboard) gamers the game will probably fit the bill. Those who love playing through games over and over in order to unlock every single creature in the bestiary and every single ending, the players I call 100 percenters, will find that Loki could probably keep them going for a while.

But it really does have its shortcomings and these are more than enough to ruin the game in the eyes of many. This is particularly true of the graphics which are at times enough to make some gamers tear their eyes out in despair.


Still, there's time until release yet, so if the developers, Cyanide Studios, can tighten up the graphics problems and throw in a few more dynamic quests then the tried and tested gameplay mechanics may be enough to make Loki an underground success, especially given its support for up to six player co-op and ranked PvP arenas.

Unfortunately, underground success is probably the best that Loki can hope for as the game doesn't offer up anything really new and there are plenty of older games, like Darkstone or Dungeon Siege which can deliver the same experience with smoother graphics and at a cheaper price.

In its current state, Loki isn't enough of a game to distract hardcore RPG fans for more than a minute and anyone other than avowed genre fans would do well to avoid it unless it drops in price or raises in quality, or unless they hear otherwise from us.