Customer Reviews

Avencast: Rise Of The Mage

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

From Moses and Oliver Twist to BALDUR's GATE and FABLE, the story of the gifted orphan who has to fight hard to eventually find its niche has been told again and again. This one turns out to be a mage...Not that original a story but they manage to pull it off - as it gets really fun!

You may have no choice on your character and only limited customization options, but the novel gameplay and innovative controls will reward you. Tapping sequences for combo attacks and dodging in a PC cRPG?! I loved it!
You can opt for either Blood Magic (melee) or Soul Magic (ranged), but to mix-and-match from the skill trees is a solid advice.

As with another cRPG gem to come out of Eastern Europe this season (THE WITCHER), loading-delays are a nuisance; surprisingly, though, they are shorter than those encountered in games developed by much larger studios. The BALDUR's GATE Saga had long loading times as well, yet I hardly ever noticed.
What WILL get on your nerves though is the...camera. If you thought that NWN had bad camera movement, well, this is worse: it moves in a very limited range and will take some time to get used to and find a comfortable setting.

Graphically it would be placed just above DUNGEON SIEGE: the spells have been impressively designed and the cut-scenes have been done in stills of exceptional taste. Moreover, one has to appreciate the fact that all dialog is spoken, not just written. The music though is a collection staple cRPG themes that are neither annoying nor unforgettable.

The official Minimun Requirements will hardly ensure a smooth gameplay, so make sure your system at least meets the Recommended Requirements (provided below):
· P4 3GHz (or AMD equivalent)
· 1GB of RAM
· nVidia 256MB 7600GS (or ATI equivalent)
· 4.4GB HDD free space
· WinXP

This is a long cRPG, spanning for over 20-25 hours if one undertakes all possible quests (ranging from funny to quite intense). Both cRPG fans and novices will undoubtedly enjoy this one!

RECOMMENDED!!

Did you know that with Avencast a small developer in Austria/Europe was aiming to challenge big names in the game industry (Diablo, Titan Quest, Sacred and the like) to a duel? Well, neither did I.

Nevertheless I bought the game and played it a lot. The first thing I have to say about the game: In it's handling it's very different from other Action-RPGs. The second thing: Once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun!

Even though the textures and leveldesigns sometimes seem to be a bit rough, the effects totally make up for that. Some of the highlvl spells have effects that just leave your jaw hanging open when you use them for the first time. Pretty impressive.

The controls are different from other Action-RPGs. You move your character around with the WASD keys and cast spells or melee attacks with the right or left mouse button. If you wanna use combos, you just press a simple combination of keys and execute via left or right mouse button. For example: You run up to an enemy, press "a" and "d" followed by the left mouse button and your character does a neat 360° swipe with it's staff. I haven't seen anything like this in other games I've played and I really enjoyed this new approach.

The only problem I had with the game was the handling of the camera. Very often it's just not where you need it. Allthough when I found out that pressing the middle mouse button focuses the camera behind the main character it made the whole game a lot easier to play.

Overall I loved Avencast because it offers a new gameplay approach in a genre that's dominated by titles where you continuously hammer on the left mouse button until the last enemy has fallen.

I was immediately reminded of Dungeon Siege when the first level loaded and expected controls similar to that, but with "W A S D" keyboard movements.

Perhaps my patience level wasn't what it should be, but I just couldn't get into this game and it's because of the controls. To be fair it does offer 3 different camera modes (Easy, Expert and Chase cam) but it just didn't seem intuitive.

In summary, pretty good graphics, great spell effects and clunky controls. My 2¢ anyway.

Grab the demo and see what 'you' think.

In Avencast - Rise of the Mage, you play as a young mage recently enrolled in the Avencast school of magic (think Hogwarts). Found in a basket along a riverside you were raised as an orphan by a kindly old mage. As you grew older and yearned for more knowledge, your tutor decides to send you off to Avencast Academy. The game starts with your character preparing to take final examinations in order to obtain the official title of Mage. Unfortunately, just as you finish your final test, events occur (I'll keep it vague but it's not good) that forever changes the day to day life at Avencast. It's up to you, as a newly titled mage to uncover the truth of these mysterious events. Here are my thoughts on Avencast - Rise of the Mage;


Pros

+ Beautiful spell effects. Each effect is graphically crisp, clean, unique and a sight to behold. Clearly the developers spent a lot of time on this aspect of the game. They definitely realized that people who enjoy being a spell caster would be playing this game.

+ Most of the games npc dialogue is spoken by voice actors.

+ Plenty of unique environments to explore and dungeons are well laid out.

+ Summonable pets are useful and fun to use. The winged seahorse was my favorite pet. Very useful!

+ Respectable number of enemies to combat and defeat.

+ All spells overall are fun to cast and useful.

+ Highlight examinable items/objects key really helped and saved me a lot of time searching needlessly.

+ Storyboard cut scenes looked great and noir/parchment graphic novel feel.

+ Nearly all of the puzzles required actually reading the quest and or items picked up.

+ All backgrounds had a very high attention to detail. Rooms were populated with detailed furniture, dungeons had rune covered stones, crystals etc. and all of the architecture were quite impressive.

+ Plenty of skill points awarded upon leveling allowing you either upgrade your character stats or choose spells.

+ Some nice ambient music. Music is very important to me in games as it allows for immersion, especially the ambient score.

+ Great first game developed by an independent studio. Kudos to Clockstone and kudos to Lighthouse for publishing.

+ Physical packaging and contents were very high quality. The box itself had fantastic artwork, screenshots and game descriptions. Even the manual was detailed, lengthy and on very good quality paper.

+ Separate backpack for quest item drops.

+ 3 camera control/view options. Enough variance to fit most play styles.

+ Ability to summon an astral projection/doppelganger of the merchant anywhere via an unlimited use scroll he gives you.

+ Enemies don't respawn in areas once they're cleared. This is very nice considering you have to do a bit of back tracking for some of the quests.

+ Many items have cool but simple particle effects when worn or wielded. Important only if you enjoy those sorts of little touches.


Cons

- Character models were bland and overly blocky, especially up close.

- Spell casting combos on the keyboard can often be challenging and frustrating during panicked combat.

- Some mediocre voice acting. Also, a lot of the voice acting sounded like it was done by the same person, even though the credits list plenty of people. Although, this is expected from a small studio who can't afford to hire a plethora of voice actors.

- Rather cliché story. The Harry Potter comparisons can easily be made if you so choose. Avencast is Hogwarts, Gorlin is Dobby etc.

- Only 2 main schools of magic to chose from (Blood = Melee, Soul = Ranged) with Summoning as a small addition.

- Bad and extremely repetitive combat music.

- Inventory space is rather limited.

- Pet summoning is limited to only 1 at a time. If you summon another, the first disappears. Disappointing but understandable as it would most likely unbalance the difficulty of the game.

- Limited number of weapon drops. Since staves are the only weapons you can use in the game besides spells they could have increased the drop rates of these items. I found enough belts and bracers to shake a stick at but barely any sticks themselves! Robes also seemed a rarer drop.

- Combat can get a bit repetitive.

- Some quests require a fair amount of back tracking.

- Many of the spells, once upgraded simply replace your earlier version. It would have been nice to see a bit more variance in the spell system.

- World of Warcraft style weapons and armor. Everything is oversized, exaggerated and ugly. This could be a plus if you enjoy the WoW style.

- Boiling Pots quest was a total pain. I was never able to complete it.


In the end, Avencast - Rise of the Mage was a satisfying caster focused dungeon crawl. The game was the perfect length for me. I finished the game primarily as a L38 Soul Mage with a few Summoning powers (Shield, Obelisk, Seahorse and Golem which I regretted choosing). This game is clearly geared towards those who enjoy playing spell casters, so if this is your thing definitely give Avencast a go. The game is extremely affordable now as well being available for direct download at $9.99. Overall, I was extremely impressed with the quality of the game considering it came from a small and independent Austrian studio. Clockstone should be very proud of their work and I look forward to seeing more games from them in the future!

I originally bought Avencast a few years ago when it first came out, but I was so turned off by the camera angles and spell aiming that I abandoned the game after about an hour of playtime. Recently I decided to give it another try, because something about the idea of a game devoted solely to being a mage was exciting to me. And I can definitely say I am so glad I reinstalled it and tried it again! I had such a blast playing this game that it's a shame to think I could have missed out because I didn't give it enough of a chance the first time around.

In the game you play a young mage studying magic at the Avencast university. After a few brief starting quests (during which tutorial messages will pop up to guide you), your mentor decides that you are ready to take the examination to become a full mage. Upon completing the examination, you will have the choice to follow the Blood Magic path or the Soul Magic path. Choosing the former will enhance your combat skills and choosing the latter will enhance your spellcasting skills, but it should be noted that neither choice locks you out of the other one. You can create a hybrid mage who uses both melee and magic skills, but it's probably advisable to devote yourself to one or the other.

After the examination you will discover that an event has occurred in the university which will propel you through the rest of the game. Side quests pop up frequently, so there are plenty of little things to do as well. The game also makes use of puzzles such as directing a beam of light across a set of mirrors or figuring out the proper sequence of tiles to step on to advance across a room -- thereby giving the game a somewhat diverse set of gameplay mechanics rather than constant fighting.

But let's not gloss over the obvious criticisms: the camera controls are awkward and the spell aiming takes a lot of practice. There are three options for the camera controls but two of the three are variants of each other and the third is not easy to use in combat. It's best to choose the "Expert" control scheme and just get used to it. You will use the WASD keys to move around (although these can be changed in the options) dependent on the position of the cursor on the screen. So if you run "forward" with the W key but the cursor is sitting on the right side of the screen, you will run to the right (in the direction of the cursor). The camera remains locked in place so manual rotation is required if you want the view to always be behind you. (The third control scheme will always move the camera behind you, which is handy for exploring but not easy to deal with in combat.) The view around your character is also limited, even when fully zoomed out, and you will often hear the combat music start before you even see the creatures in front of you. However, after an hour or two of play, you will adjust to this. But I can't deny that initially it is a huge turnoff.

The second criticism is aiming your spells. You cannot lock onto enemies, so you have to simply put the cursor over them and fire your spell. The spell bolt (or whatever it is) will travel in a straight line until it hits something. Of course, enemies can move out of the way, so if they sidestep your spell, it won't hit them. The positive side is that you can do the same. Again, initially this will be awkward and frustrating because you may find yourself missing a lot, but if you stick with it, you will adjust and find yourself killing things quickly. (Plus there is a freezing spell that will allow you to freeze an enemy in place, so you can fire at it much easier -- granted, you first have to hit it with the freezing spell!).

Ultimately, I had so much fun playing this game that I was a little disappointed when it was over. It's not a very long game, which may account for that, because I usually find myself (even with games I enjoy) ready for it to be over so I can move on. But since there are two mage paths you can choose, there is a bit of replayability.

What it comes down to is if you are able to outlast the frustration you will undoubtedly experience with the camera and the aiming. If you aren't the type of person to persevere through these types of things in order to play a game, then you may not enjoy it. But if you want to play a fun, somewhat different style of RPG, I highly recommend it.

Note: Ran fine for me on Windows 7 64-bit. Every now and then when I started the game, I would find that the resolution switched back to the default and I had to manually change it back to my native resolution, but other than that nothing strange occurred.

Picked up 2 copies(1 for a buddy of mine who is a big fan of spellcasting). I actually got to play it before him and here is my 2 cents. Game is fun but limited. You will not get much replay value out of it as there are not random enemy encounters. You follow a straight story line and foes actually stay lying on the floor were you defeat them so there will be no running around to power yourself up or going back to an area after reaching higher levels to have some fun with the enemies. That being said, when you reach higher levels many of the spells look amazing in the higher resolution settings for the game. A fun game for fans of spellcasters but others may want to think twice(although of the 2 power types you can specialize in, 1 of them allows you to power up your battle staff so it gives you more of the feel of a warrior).

Just about finished playing this game I picked up for a couple of bucks on Amazon and thoroughly enjoyed it. I got the game because of some of the good reviews about it and figured it was worth taking a chance on. The game ran flawlessly on my Quad core Windows Vista machine without an ounce of trouble. No DRM and no Steam nonsense, just an old fashioned RPG that reminded me of the great games gone by. The controls take a while to get used to because although it has the standard WASD movement,those very same keys are used for magic. You have to hit 1,2 or 3 keys rapidly and then the left mouse button to activate the blood mage spells or the right mouse button for the soul mage spells. At the beginning of the game you have to decide what kind of mage you wish to be because they each come with different spells. The blood mage uses closer spells and the soul mage uses spells from a distance. The game is really quite good and if you are an old gamer like me you will thoroughly enjoy it. The voice acting is excellent along with the story line. Some of the villains can be quite tough and if you can magic a golem to fight for you it becomes much easier to win the battles. There are puzzles that can be difficult at times to solve and hidden rooms that are hard to locate but that makes the game more enjoyable. I have to admit I did go to the game cheats to solve some of the puzzles that I was knocking my head over. Overall a great game you never heard much about, thoroughly entertaining and a definite buy especially at the price it's selling for now. I only wish there were a sequel to this game because I would pay more to play it. And as for comparing it to Neverwinter Nights or Icewind Dale, this game is far superior. Buy it and enjoy, you will not be sorry.

With so many RPG games out there, this one does stand out from the rest. It is very similar to the classic games such as Diablo and the Baldur's Gate series with one exception. In this game you are strictly a mage. If you like this sort of game and usually play as a mage using magic, spells and potions, you will enjoy this game. Since it is the only character class in the game, it does limit game play but again, if that is your "thing" they do a good job in making it fun being a powerful mage.

This game tries hard and runs well, but for one whose very favorite is Morrowind it doesn't cut it. Of course, millions were probably not spent in development and marketing and no one should expect it to be another Morrowind. To me, it is boring and I can't seem to make myself play it enough to get out of the academy.

The game was hyped up to me by a magazine article. I bought the game and now beleive I shouldn't have. It was not that much fun. But the graphics are great.