Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements Reviews

[b]Mage's Initiation[/b] is a fine tribute to the legendary [b]Quest For Glory[/b] series. As a hybrid RPG/adventure game it almost perfectly captures the spirit of the first [b]Quest For Glory[/b] game. It's not as humorous as its source of inspiration, but the game is very well balanced and does a couple of things better than its classic counterpart. No repeated spell casting is required to improve your stats. You gain xp points by solving the puzzles and once you cross a threshold, additional points can be assigned to your stats. I quite liked this mechanism. You can play as one of four classes of mage. Each class adds a little variation to the puzzles throughout the game. Each class also has a class-specific quest which warrants a playthrough per class. Achievement hunters will have a field day with a wide variety of possible play styles: kill all types of monsters, kill no monsters at all, kill 1000 monsters... The puzzles are decent and never get frustrating. Art is what you'd expect from a pixel-art type of game; although some of the cut scenes look out of place because the drawing style seems quite different than the rest of the game. The quality of the voice acting varies a bit; personally, I don't quite like the main character's voice but other characters really stand out. All in all, I really enjoyed this one. Just like in [b]Quest For Glory[/b] you can save your character for use in a sequel. Unfortunately, the developer has made it clear that a sequel is very unlikely to ever see the light of day. That's a real shame; I would have been a day-one-buyer.