well, grantelicious, i don't think i've seen you claim to like a single computer game in the time i've been reading your posts, so my advice would maybe be to maybe consider skipping it!
character building is nice, you can select gender, hairstyle, facial hair blah blah etc, you can also select height and bulk, so if you want to make a fat bald chick called duke, you can!
playing as the marksman, everything is a little easy (early on, anyway) - the guns have unlimited ammo and playing the game is really just an exercise in holding the button down with little to no danger relative to the other class (hopefully this balance issue shifts throughout the levels, otherwise the game is mega imba)
playing as the blademaster is, unless i'm doing something wrong, more difficult - having to close in on the enemy means they can fight back, and there isn't any fluid way to avoid attacks (dodge, roll etc) so i found myself having to go toe to toe with the harder enemies, blowing tons of health potions in the process, while as the marksman it was just a case of gunning them down at relative safety
the UIs feel a little more convoluted than they need to be, there's a lot of info on screen and it's all thrown at us at once, compared with diablo 2, hellgate seems like a pretty unnecessarily complicated game... but i'm sure i'll adjust
the game seems to follow the wow formula of quest grinding rather than just grinding, so - unlike diablo 2 - you have lots and lots of quests, but they're of the very generic kill x number of enemy y or collect x number of item y, just to give context to the motions you go through
most of the quest giver conversations (which are of course one-way) have terrible writing, none of which is voice acted, besides generic greeting and farewell soundbytes, all of which are f*cking terrible - they could've done a much better job on this front - oblivion has good voice work/writing by comparison... i imagine people will spam click next on every dialogue until they get either an accept or an ok prompt, then just check their quest log for a one sentence summation
the environments are drab and repetitive, all we see is london streets (all of which look exactly the same), and basement/subway areas (all of which look exactly the same) - there's something about the jump to 3D that makes this much less tolerable than diablo 2 was - though, if you're english (or are familiar with england), some of the accurate details (the picth dark sky, dilapidated buildings, deamon-infested streets) will have you smiling - it's just like real london!
it's difficult to really get a feel for how character development will pan out, since we only get 4 levels to play with and in character development rpgs, the early levels are always weak - no skills, no stats, wearing rags, few enemies - it's difficult to judge how the medium/high end game will play, but i have faith that it will be like diablo 2, only better
the demo also ends... or should i say deadends, we're left in a dungeon with no way to continue, the demo doesn't end and there isn't even a text message telling us it's over - never seen that in a demo before
overall, the switch to 3D has made the game chunkier and more awkward, and some of the elements which were unnoticable in diablo 2 (or, perhaps, forgivable) are simply not overlookable in a 3D game late in 2007 - but if you want to play a game that feels like the bastard child of diablo 2 and world of warcraft, a game which perhaps panders more to the fps crowd than the rpg crowd, then hellgate is definitely worth a look
while it has many pronounced flaws, i still think i'll get tons of fun out of it, playing online with friends - and it is fair to assume the high end game will be more engaging, since the act of developing a character is really what the game is all about, and we don't so much get a taste of that in the demo
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