Can a game be retro to a fault? Let’s find out! Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements faces, the CHAIRQASITION.
Game: Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements
Webzone: Mages_Initiation_Reign_of_the_Elements
Devel: Himalaya Studios
Engine: Adventure Game Studio
Price: £11.39 / US$14.99 / CA$17.49
Wazzat: Join D’arc on a perilous journey across the medieval-styled land of Iginor. And ascend beyond the lofty mountain peaks where the mysterious and hostile Flyterians dwell, suspicious of all outsiders. It is time for D’arc to prove himself.
Venn:
Jordan:
Does It Launch
- Gotta play it in windowed mode if you want to actually see what’s on screen
- Lo and behold the game files actually contain a readme which tells you where the linux configuration files are
- Unfortunately, they make it clear that the only way to fix the game’s fullscreen issues in Linux and OSX in to change screen mode from the menu you can’t use in fullscreen mode because it’s chopped off
- You could theoretically get the proper configuration and share it, but I don’t have the wherewithal or inclination to do that
Performance @ 1080
- Rocking that 46 fps. G sync yo
Graphics
- They did a good job of capturing that sierra king’s quest feel
- The dialogue especially
Control
- There is no adjustable mouse acceleration and it’s fucking terrible
Pedro:
Does It Launch
- It launches well enough, in Windowed mode.
- You don’t get an option to set the resolution in Windowed mode.
- In Fullscreen mode the game appears ¾ of the way to the right of my UHD monitor and the last quarter is chopped off.
Performance @ 1080
- I guess that’s as high a FerPS as we get, then.
Graphics
- It’s a 2D point and click adventure.
- Though a few more resolution options would have been handy.
Control
- The mouse movement is a bit off but it’s certainly better than what it was originally.
- Where it would only take 5 X11 inputs per second.
Fun?:
Venn:
- Over ten years in the works and $125,174 of wet stinky Kickstarter cash.
- We get something that’s a Quest For Glory’ish point-and-clicker.
- Ya gotta collect three things because reasons, the game.
- Pointing and clicking.
- Tedious dialogue.
- Hella backtracking.
- Clunky interface
- A character that that walks on the backdrop, not really in it.
- At least you can WASD and Shift run.
- Combat is point and clicky.
- This is absolutely faithful to the games of old even down to dicking with config files in an effort to make the fkr work.
- The thing is Brad, I don’t miss any of that.
- Himalaya Studios did a great job recreating the DOS ages but those are not times I look back on with kindness.
- Retro to a fault.
Jordan
- Well, the game goes out of it’s way to make itself look and feel like a sierra style king’s quest game and it definitely succeeds
- However, king’s quest steadily advanced technology wise and started to leave a lot of those anachronisms it used in the past
- And that’s where I feel the gameplay falls shortest. Nostalgia trips like this need to identify the stuff that made those old games good and apply modern design sensibility to them.
- Those of us who played the older games had to suffer through it due to technical limitations that no longer exist and can alienate new players
- Thimbleweed park actually does a very good job about this
- But hot damn, does this game control like a butt, all that context aside
- When I play old games through dosbox, scumm or anything like that, it doesn’t slow my mouse down to a crawl
- Also, kindly don’t hide configuration options for screen resolution behind a startup menu that will disable things it view as “useless”
Pedro
- I can safely say I’m not a fan of the combat system.
- Since it is a point and click adventure, I feel like maybe a turn-based combat system would have been better.
- Maybe something like the Might & Magic series did back in the day.
- In Mage’s initiation, I can’t help but feel like a real time combat mechanic is a little bit out of place.
- Though, outside of combat, I think this could very well be a nice retro hipster point and click.
- It certainly does have the Sierra King’s Quest style going for it, as Jordan mentioned.
- And that’s a very good place to be for what they’re going for.
- The dialog isn’t terrible and the voice acting is just slightly on the stilted side, which fits in with the olden timey style perfectly.
- I just wish they had figured out how to fullscreen.
Fun Score:
Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:
