The Real-Time Strategy genre has been having problems as of late. Let face it, resource and army management titles haven’t been able to keep up with first person shooters. This has become more prevalent as increased graphic performance has decreased the number of seasick players and big budget titles keep fans excited and trigger happy.

Still, developers keep making attempts to re-energize the genre.  Dawn of War took out resource management completely and focused on action, while Halo Wars attempted to take advantage of legions of fanboys. The latest crack at it comes from Gas Powered Games in their new game, Demigod.

Demigod takes a little bit from other genres in order to spice things up.  Your main character is controlled with the finesse of an Action RPG, without the over-complex depth expected from a game such as Diablo. This hero summons up hordes of minions, where you can then battle it out with other heroes in an arena. The campaign borrows elements from the fighting genre and takes place over a series of battles, with points ultimately determining the winner.

I am kind of skeptical about a strategy game that draws elements from fighting games. In my opinion, fighting games are just a lot of button mashing and contain little strategy at all. However, there is one characteristic about Demigod that comes from fighting games that I DO love. While the campaign is relatively short, it can be replayed with any of the different heroes within the game. As gamers grow up, we don’t really have time for 40 hour epic JRPGs anymore, so a short game with high replay value is very appealing.

This is something the Dynasty Warriors franchise has been doing for years, but because the games are… well, terrible…  their design approach hasn’t really caught on. It doesn’t matter if a campaign can be beaten over the course of an afternoon if there are 50 more characters you can play as, each with a slightly different perspective. The winning formula can be made even better if every time you beat the game, some upgrades are carried over and more characters are unlocked.  I am not a fan of fighters, but other genres can learn from their lasting appeal and replay-ability.

Whether or not Demigod will become the next big still unknown and unlikely. Regardless, I give them big credit for trying to mix up the RTS genre and give it a little more umph.