Since my 360 got out of the repair shop I took time to really sink my teeth into the demo, and try out every class with a full playthrough.
Playing as berzerker is really fun and fast, and the loot system is not so bad but I still feel like this game has a ton of problems, several of which haven't been mentioned yet:
Most classes play exactly the same, class balance seems off -- Champion, Bionengineer, and Defender just feel like gimped versions of the Berzerker. Sure they have more HP than the Berzerker, but this game has no death penalty so who gives a shit? You might as well pick the class that deals damage that fastest and the hardest. If you die, you start over again 10 feet away. Because there aren't a lot of unique skills and abilities, I don't see what will attract people to the slower and more clunky characters.
The "healer" is more like a gimped melee character with an occaisional heal -- Most of the Bioengineer's healing comes through very slow passive regeneration, and the active healing costs an entire level on your combo meter. It's already questionable why you'd want a healer when the game is stuck in Free Play/Credit Feed mode, but it doesn't seem like you'll be able to do that much healing due to the large expense of the heals. To put it in more conventional RPG terms he is a healer whose mana only regenerates through combat (where you'll take quite a few hits), and when he casts a heal it eats 1/3 of his base mana.
Commando plays a little different, but doesn't feel very fleshed out -- Enemies close in on you too quickly and in such large groups that's impossible to maintain any distance. Grenades kind of help, but also eat up your ammo quickly. Aiming at a specific target is difficult....you're kind of forced just to shoot whatever you're locked on to. This is the only class where I died several times over the course of the demo. In theory it should be okay to have a ranged DPS character without a lot of HP, but in practice he gets stuck in melee situations too much and has a bit of difficulty.
The loot pinatas are the same every time -- The reward obelisks for challenges and boss encounters spit out the same blue/purple objects no matter what class you choose or how many times you play through. This is particularly a pain if you are a Commando, because the blue sword that the troll boss gives you is awesome for all the other melee characters, but useless for you. My commando was still using a LVL 2-3 rifle when I completed the demo.
There aren't any potions -- So you're about to enter a "Challenge Arena", but the last encounter with enemies has you at low HP. There is nothing you can do about it since there aren't any items to restore your health. In this situation I tried running to the next room to either die or get a health drop off an enemy. To my delight the game locked the door back to the previous area, so I was forced to skip the arenas altogether.
Challenge arenas seem biased -- The arenas generally challenge you to kill x number of enemies within 40 seconds. Well that's all fine and good if you are an insanely fast damage dealer like the Berzerker or Champion. What if your class is based around outlasting his foes (Defender, Bioengineer) or based around gaining distance and crowd control (Commando)? I don't see how it's fair to expect them to take down enemy waves quickly because they weren't designed with that sort of utility in mind. You can still get through the challenges as a support class, but it's much tougher and god help you if you don't have a full combo meter to let you use a bunch of ruiners.
Free Play Mode Kind of Breaks Things -- I've already mentioned several problems that come with the removal of a death penalty.....namely that it negates the need for anything but damage-dealing classes. What incentive is there to play the game besides the most obvious and easy fashion? Why bother with healers and aggro and strategies when you can just blaze through as a melee god? They don't have to have a death penalty per se, but give me some reason to care about how much health I have. Perhaps later on in the game they will introduce bosses and enemies with shields that regenerate while you are dead.....so you'll at least be forced to get through single encounters without dying.
THE GAME IS STILL PRETTY INTERESTING -- All this stuff aside, I think the very core of Too Human has some fun stuff to offer. It's easy to go on forums and pick apart problems with the class design and game mechanics, but it's equally easy to jump in with the Berzerker and forget all those problems as you hammer your way from target to target, one-shotting everything as you move at 100 miles an hour. At the demo's end I still want to see more loot and continue down the talent tree with my character. I worry that this game won't have much longevity though, unless the other classes have something that really makes them worth playing.
