Customer Reviews

Mage Knight Apocalypse

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The title says it all. I ordered this game one-day delivery from EB Games (since Amazon didn't have it yet), hoping it would live up to my expectations.

It exceeded them.

The graphics are amazing, though the camera controls are tricky at first.

There are 5 pre-generated characters with different skills, but that does not mean you have to play each one the same way every time (unless you want to). Each character has three "skill trees" and using lower level skills unlocks higher level ones. The manual says that mastering one skill tree is an accomplishment; mastering two is possible, but very difficult. Mastering all three is impossible.

As I'm playing, I find I am focusing on one tree, but using another enough to build up some skills in that one. I completely disregarded the thrid because juggling them was causing me to slow down the progressions on the trees I wanted.

My only major issue, and the reason this game got 4 instead of 5 stars, is that when you save and reload a game, previously cleared areas are populated with monsters again.

The game's OK.

The Good

+ Lots of bad guys to kill and many ways to do it. If you like hack n' slash, there's plenty of it.
+ Lots of loot.
+ Potion crafting and item enhancement. You can harvest herbs, then make potions if you get enough bottles and have the stats for it. You can forge crystals and enhance gear in tons of combinations.
+ Gorgeous scenery. Lovely backgrounds.
+ Elaborate levelling. Characters have levels, which raise stats, and skills increase (level) through use, and new skills open up based on skill and stat status.
+ Choice of five characters that you can level. Some choice is better than none. At least both male and female characters were represented.
+ Death isn't permanent, and you can save at any time.
+ Levels respawn all but boss creatures. Good if you like killing things a few times or looking for that perfect gear. Bad if your game crashes after you've finished most, but not all of the level.
+ Teleport points allow you to return from one or two places in every area to the local store to shop, sell loot, and rest up. They also allow you to have a storage area available in every shop area to store those items your character hasn't quite levelled up enough to use.

The Bad

- Crash, boom, bah! The game seriously needed more testing. It froze up a few times randomly and ran slowly - on a quad core machine! The special attack that fires multiple arrows at a number of enemies at one time locks up the game fairly consistently after two or three shots in scenes with large numbers of NPCs.
- Graphics occasionally have issues. Although lovely most of the time, there are pathing issues, where your character is standing in another character, or a loot bag never goes away.
- Camera control stinks. The camera moves on its own at the worst times, yet requires the player to move it at other times isntead of following. This is a fairly common issue.
- Discarding objects destroys them forever. You can't see stats unless you pick up the item, so you might discard something good for crap.
- Potions require stats of a sufficient level. Has this world focused on childproof caps as the pinnacle of technology?
- Cut scenes always drop your character into the middle of a crowd of enemies, no matter how carefully you may have been sneaking up.

The Ugly

? Uneven fight difficulty. Fights should be challenging, not impossible. Instead, fights tend to be either easy or really difficult mob scenes where you plan on letting your character die a few times to eventually win.
? Female costumes. Female characters suffer Vallejo syndrome, where impossible physiology is barely covered by a little unlikely floss and a couple of decorative devices. The best gear for a non-epic Amazon is a skull with horns just barely covers her nipples? Really? One would expect, oh, something that covered vital organs at a minimum.
? The Plot. The main plot is a linear, extended fetch quest. There is 1 subplot the players can do anything about. However, all of the characters and places have a backstory, apparently from the card game it's based on, that the player can do nothing about. So you never get to uncurse the poor people in the cursed city, or help free more dwarves or anything.
? No dialogue options. That's just an aspect of the game style, but I would've preferred some interactivity.
? Unrealistic populations. The populations you see are wildly unbalanced. The Amazons have no men. The elves have no women. (If they'd given the Amazons pointed ears they could've avoided this). The dragons have no females (unless you count the mutant boss of one level, which looks like a fat, crazed hausfrau in a muumuu). The dwarves have a few women, but not enough for a viable population. No one has children.

Here is the main point: the game has promising concepts but is poorly executed. The dialogue is mostly emotionally flat. The game was shipped with many bugs, including quiting when trying to finish the 5th major quest, the sound effects are so poorly done as to be annoying. There are balance issues as well, there is no happy median between parts which are too easy and others which are to hard. If they properly patch it and redo all the voice acting and sound effects and the many bugs, then it might be a decent game (in the 3 star range).

Well, this game is not what you would call real deep though the plot has good details. Most of the other reviews have addressed the issues of the product both good and bad in one way or another. I would only add the following points:

1) I enjoyed the game enough to want to finish it and that says something in today's game market where only about one in ten games is actually worth playing.

2) I passed the game on to my eighteen year old grand daughter. She thinks it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then again, she has been game starved for the last year or so and is just comming out of that GOTH phase.

3) Because it is a 2006 game, just about any PC people own will play it today, including those 300$ laptops people are snapping up so no issues with minimum requirements for this one.

We all know there is down time while we wait for the next game on our list of desires. In this period we look for something to fill the void. This is a good choice for that.

Hail Flavius!

This is a middling role-playing game. The plot was OK and it was holding my interest. The game ran too slow on my 3-year old XP machine. It ran OK on my new Vista machine, but got buggier as I got further into the game. I finally had to give up, because the final quest crashed both computers. There are better games out there.

Yes, I do agree with the guy who said this was made to sell toys. Yet, I really think there is something in this game that would have made it great, if only it had been more enphasised.

Graphics. Ugh. Ugly. OK, maybe that was harsh. The graphics in this game are "passable." Let me just say, don't expect Crysis. Oh, yeah but do expect random, strange, and wierd lag.

Sound. Probably the same as the graphics. Not much good here. Voice acting is generally bad, but of course there are always those rare cases when it is actually pretty good.

Gameplay. This is were you can find a little innovation. You pick a starting character and that character basically has three sub-classes. Each one with many spells. The spells are fun to use, and (for the most part) look good. The experience system is where innovation can be found. Instead of fighting monsters to get more spells, you use low level spells to get high level spells. The more you use a certain spell, the more powerfull it becomes, and the better you get a casting that family of spells.

Multiplay. There is almost no one to play with and there is lots of lag. It is also very bugged.

Replay. No, I don't really think I will play this game again.

Story. Confusing, but nicely detailed, this is another strong point in the game.

All in all, it is not Diablo, but does incorperate a little inovation, and has a good story line.

Graphics 6/10 (For the nice spells effects)
Sound 4/10
Gameplay 7/10
Multiplay 3/10
Replay 4/10
Story 8/10
Stablity: Bugged, yet I cannot find any patches, were are the developers when you need them?

Overall - 5/10 Passable

Shame, it had a lot of potiential.

Oblivion has set the standard for the RPG genre. So, comparing " Mage Knight", "Gothic 3", Neverwinter "Nights II" or any other new release to that is like bananas to carrots. "Mage Knight" is "same old, same old". It's playable & entertaining, but falls short of great.