Overpower Review

Overpower is an upcoming medieval, third person medieval shooter that features MMO character progression with a MOBA combat mechanics system. The Hydrant games team used there affinity for FPS games as well as MMO games, such as WoW and Final Fantasy, to birth Overpower.

Review is based on a beta version of the game.
In the final released version many bugs could be already fixed or non-existent.
The clash of MOBA and MMO truly come in hand in Overpower to offer class based progression, without the (at times) tedious hours spent grinding that MMO players face – making it great for people who want to jump in and have some immediate fun! The game will be available to purchased starting tomorrow Apr 20 on Steam probably from $12.99!

Overpower offers the following key features, which I'll discuss in more detail:
  • 4 Classes (with male and female alternatives)
  • 30+ class based abilities
  • 5 game modes
  • 9 unique levels
  • Fast paced combat

Classes:

Kicking off with the basics, the four classes are each assigned with a different level of difficulty – not unlike other games in this genre – with Assassin, Mage, Ranger and Warrior being Easy-hard respectively. Personally while playing the game, i found the Assassin and Ranger to be the easier of the classes to play (despite ranger being considered as a hard class to play).

Each class has a male and female counter part (apart from the warrior seemingly), and a variety of different costumes can be purchased through the Steam market to clad your hero in dapper attire! Each hero has a class ability which is activated via the shift key, and also include a selection of “gem abilities” which is activated through Q and E keys (personally i found this to be a little awkward, so i bound the abilities to my extra mouse keys, but hey, i’m a bit of a MOBA noob). There are 6 abilities per class, two of which the player can have active, as well as a choice of weapons per class.

Assassin: Easy

This is the class that i found easiest to play during my time playing Overpower. It’s a fairly simple class to grasp and has a combination of ranged and melee attacks, as well as a super handy stealth run, which makes hiding or advancing on enemies easier.

Gem abilities:

  • Cursed Blades – Use the shadow realm to curse their blades, causing extreme damage!
  • Dagger Rain –  Shower daggers down upon enemies for AOE damage.
  • Face Kick – Kick and stun an enemy.
  • Shadow Shield – Become immune to all damage for a period of time!
  • Slowing Poison – Poison enemies with a slowing effect that deals damage over time.


Mage: Medium

This class was one which i personally found felt, vulnerable. The mage is also a high damage, ranged fighter which includes the use of protective gem abilties.The mage’s shift ability was “Blink” – teleport a short distance in any direction. However, if you compare this shift ability to that of the ranger, or even the warrior, who essentially do the same thing, but with a different name and drastically better, it felt like a weakness in the Mage’s shift ability. From playing the game, i felt that this ability  could have been improved, or even a completely different ability all together, to flesh out the Mage’s personality and play style ; rather than feel like a cheaper copy of the other available classes. I feel like the weakness in the shift ability in comparison to the other classes will be a definite deterrent to players when selecting a character, when better options are available – sorry friend. Gem abilities:

Gem abilities:

  • Arcane barrage – The Mage releases a homing Arcane Barrage. 
  • Arance stasis – Flaming arrow which deals damage over a short period of time.
  • Barrier shield – The Mage creates a Barrier Shield that heavily absorbs all damage.
  • Fire shield-   Flame Shield that absorbs an enemies basic attacks and returns fire damage over time.
  • Frost shield –  Frost Shield that absorbs an enemies basic attacks and returns a slowing debuff. 
  • Ice blast – A wave of Ice, dealing damage and slowing all nearby enemies.


Ranger: Hard

Despite being considered as one of the harder classes to play, i found it the most enjoyable out of all four. It has a great shift ability, which allows the player to tumble – spring in any direction while gaining a speed boost, its great fun! It also allows players to jump in and out of fights when things get messy.

Gem abilities:

An arrow that seeks out enemies on low HP to finish them off.
Flaming arrow which deals damage for a short period of time.
Arrow which deals damage to the enemy, while healing the player for an equal amount.
A net which roots enemies in place briefly.
Reigns arrows onto a target location which deals AOE damage.
Concussive arrow dealing damage and slowing enemies.


Warrior: Hard

The warrior class felt difficult to play, as getting close and personal was key – however ranged enemies would often snipe me while i was trying to smash some heads with my executes! Bummer.. Playing warrior is the stereo typical tank role, and i feel it was easier to play in Team death matches, rather than solo death matches! The extra support to deal with pesky rangers was gladly appreciated.

Gem abilities:

  • Blood thirst –  Killing an enemy heals the Warrior and extends the Blood Thirst state.
  • Cripping strike –  Strikes his enemies and slows there movement speed, and deals damage.
  • Execute – Jumps into the air and aerial slams the ground, dealing heavy damage to low life enemies!
  • Sonic slash – Swings his axe, unleashing magical energy that travels forwards.
  • Stone Guard – Damage absorbing shield that temporarily protects him from harm.
  • War cry – Becomes temporary invulnerable and increases his damage based on the health he is missing.

Game Mode 

The game includes five different game modes to play in: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Last Team standing, Critter capture and Control Points. 

Over all, i found that the game modes were average – however this could be heavily due to the fact when searching for a server, there were no real players in any of the servers! This meant i could not take full advantage of the 32 player capacity, nor experience the social, chaotic aspect of this game at this stage. Taking that factor away though, the games i found that were easiest to play, and most enjoyable were actually Team deathmatch, and Last team standing – both fairly similar game modes, with slightly different rules. Control points had a similar concept to King of the Hill, and critter capture being a spin off of that concept, except teams had to capture some critters, and take them back to there own base!

Deathmatch on it’s own was not as good as the team death match i felt – mostly due to the fact that i died. A lot. Regardless which class i played, i felt like it was a bit too easy to die and with every player out for your blood, it was pretty hard to play. Team death match made it a bit easier to survive, as only half the players wanted my blood, hurray! But i guess this is perhaps a means to the games title – the characters are overpowered.

The only negative thing about the game modes, (apart from lack of players, but the game is still under development, so it’s understandable. As well as only US servers) is that there is very little tutorial aspects in the game. There isn’t a, “hold our hand while we walk you through the basics”, which can be annoying in some games when too thorough, i felt there could have been more guidance, to make the experience more enjoyable.

There are 9 different maps to enjoy, each with there own character, advantages and disadvantages – but everyone is stunning in there own way!

GRAPHICS 

The graphics of Overpower were one of the selling points for me – i loved the low poly, cartoon style of the game, as it makes it very loveable, and fun to play with! Over all it felt reminiscent of games such as Orcs must die and Smite! As well as beautiful graphics, the lighting in some of the maps were also beautiful, which added a lot of character and atmosphere to the maps!

SUMMARY

Overall, i think Overpower is shaping up to be a great game – with pretty graphics, nice game mechanics and simple to play game modes ; it will be a game for new MMO/MOBA players to learn some of the basics of the game, or for casual gamers to have fun. I think that, as nice as the game is at this stage, experienced MMO/MOBA players won’t feel the same satisfaction as they will while playing traditional games – however would serve as a much more casual setting.

As the game is sill under development, it’s not fully fleshed out yet. I think some improvements need to be made to the game modes – as they mostly feel like copies of other game modes that have been renamed and reskinned, as well as perhaps some additional classes and sophisticated shift abilties! But the game can improve in the near future and get even 2 more points and get to 8/10.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Although i could not find a direct source from Hydrant Games, the Steam store recommends:

  • OS: Windows 7
  • Processor: Core 2 Duo
  • Memory: 4GB RAM
  • Network: Broadband internet connection

We have Czech video review so if you are interested or want to see some of the game mechanics in action, watch the video posted below :-).

6
Fair

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