hile it’s never faded into obscurity the way some other ancient civilizations have, it seems Roman history is enjoying an especially popular revival these days. From the HBO series to games such as God of War, it seems as though creative types are more than happy to mine the culture of that era for inspiration. Now you can add Perpetual Entertainment’s Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising to the list.

Chris McKibbin, the company’s co-founder and president, and Stieg Hedlund, lead designer, are keenly aware of just how much they have to work with. “There’s almost too much,” Hedlund said during a recent demonstration of the game, referring to the vast amount of mythology he has to work with in the game.

“There’s never been a triple A online game based on Roman mythology,” McKibbin says, which is a curious omission. Perpetual is setting out to change that with its new online action-adventure game, which takes standard MMORPG elements, adds a variety of new gameplay mechanics and puts it in a setting that is at once familiar and foreign—the age of gods.

Hedlund and McKibbin stopped by our offices and gave us a hands-on demonstration of the game, including exclusive looks at some of the title’s instances. It’s important to note that we did see an early build, and that some of the balance, UI and other features are bound to change. Rome wasn’t built in a day, though, and the team has plenty of time to polish out the rough spots by the time it releases in late summer or early fall.

Aside from the game’s setting, one of the standout features of Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising is its minion system. The Perpetual team realized that a lot of players get locked into certain playstyles in MMOs, and they wanted to alleviate that. In Gods and Heroes, players gain access to minions, which are A.I.-controlled friendly NPCs. Minions fight alongside the player character, performing a variety of standard combat and support actions. There are currently 132 minions within the game, each with its own name, history and story.

Perpetual made the decision to give each minion a personality so players would have a common vocabulary when discussing the minions. Rather than saying, “I found this guy, and he’s a good healer,” players will be able to say they recruited Rufus Horatius, and other players will be able to tell exactly who that player is talking about. Perpertual also sees a Pokemon-like collecting angle to the minions, with players scrambling to complete questlines to acquire more powerful aides. The majority of minions are found by completing quests, though some contracts (the way players acquire and keep track of their minions) are rare drops. Think of minions as living gear, and you’re on the right track.

Of course, you don’t immediately get a squad of minions—you have to earn them. After a quick demo, we got to start our own characters and check out the world for ourselves, from the perspective of a brand-new character.

The character-creation system is fairly standard, with players picking gender and class. There are six classes currently—gladiator, priest, scout, mystic, soldier and nomad. We picked a gladiator. The game supports a deep level of character customization, even allowing for the effects of aging. Players also pick two colors for their character, which will show up in their clothing. Colors will also help differentiate between minions, in case two players have the same minions simultaneously active. An interesting option was presented after selecting class—the selection of a patron deity. Each class has two deities to choose from, and each provides specialized bonuses. We selected Jupiter.

Players start off on an island, a captive of the Telchine. The Telchine aligned themselves with the Titans in their failed battle against the Roman gods. They’ve since vanished, but are now trickling back onto the earth. The reason for the imprisonment is made clear early on—suffice it to say it’s for their own safety.

The first few quests were simple, killing wild dogs, Gauls, etc. After we smashed idols in a temple and summoned Jupiter, things got more interesting. It seems that our character had god blood flowing in his veins, and the Telchine were desperately trying to control anyone with the slightest air of divinity. It probably sounded like a good plan at the time, but after killing a number of guards and lions and escaping through a gate, it was obvious that it could have used a little more work. Or they could have hired better security. The missions were as easy as they were simple—though the difficulty is still being dialed in. After watching a guard get one-shotted by our level 2 hero, McKibben made sure to let us know that this was still a long way from what the final experience was going to be like.