Completed Mages Tale earlier today. It took me just a little over 10 hours to finish so here's my mini review on it:
I enjoyed the exploration and puzzle solving the most. It really rewarded you for checking every piece of the environment with secret passages and rooms (reminded me of hogwarts in harry potter lol), the developers really put a lot of love and effort into this aspect of the game. For example, theres a place early on in the game with a large mural high on a wall with a bordered wall underneath it (like a doorway bricked up). The mural shows a mansion with fire on the sides and a lightning bolt striking in front of it. Hitting the mural with both fire and lightning spells will light up those elements on the mural and open the wall to reveal a secret room. This mural was something I missed on my initial visit (you can revisit old dungeons so nothing is missable). The rewards range from collectibles, spell modifiers and EXP.
The story is pretty basic and nothing special, its also move along by an annoying blue goblin companion who had zero character development throughout the entire game so he was always a douchebag towards the player unfortunately (was hoping he'd grow to respect the player as the player grew stronger). The story won't be the driving force of the game. You're basically chasing an evil sorceror who has kidnapped your master. Along the way you have to collect special artifacts and rescue some important mages who will then allow you to reach the final encounter. The game sets itself up for a sequel though which I really hope happens.
The combat had a lot of flaws but was still enjoyable. There are only four elements (fire, ice, lightning and air) which can be tweaked using modifiers you find throughout the adventure (most are hidden in secret areas which serves as a great reward for exploration). These modifiers range from blinding, turning to sheep, draining life, adding a new elemental effect (like adding burn damage to fire), homing, colour changes, strength increase, triple fire, cooldown reduction etc. Leveling up, lets you upgrade your hp or spell cooldown as well as unlocking extra abilities for your shield (combining 2 magic shields to create a larger one or reflecting enemy magic). You're limited to 2 modifications when crafitng spell and you can only equip 4 spells so unfortunately I wasn't motivated to experiment too much as the +strength and +effect modifiers were the most important.
My biggest complaint with the combat is that the enemies did not have much variety in their behaviour where it was just shoot from afar or rush you like a bull. The tactics required for defeating them was rarely challenged too, enemies with shields are weak to air spells and then later on enemy sorcerers require specific elements to take damage. Also enemy variety was a little on the weak side at the start (you're fighting goblins for what feels like 5-6 hours), only in the later part of the game do you start to see new enemies,but the lack of variety in behaviour makes them feel like a skin change.
There are a few encounters in the game where the difficulty spiked insanely (one that comes to mind is an ambush by human enemies that keep spawning and rushing you which took me a lot of retries and camping in a corner to get past).
Overall, I really enjoyed the game and recommend it to anyone looking for a good adventure game in VR. It balances puzzle solving, exploration and combat well so that the 10 hours don't become a grind. New games will outshine this game when it comes to utilising motion controls for spellcasting but its exploration and secrets will be hard to beat for a while. Also its one of the few vr single player games that actually respects the consumers money with a meaty campaign.
Pros:
- Amazing Exploration
- Puzzles were fun to solve (never fustrating)
- First time going up against a giant was cool in VR
- environments look great
- Tons of secrets to find
- That feeling when something looks off in an environment, you fire a specific spell to see what happens and it unlocks a new passage
- Great movement options for all
- Game length (took me 10 hours and I was still missing some secrets and modifiers)
Cons:
- Annoying companion
- Story is forgettable
- Repetitive battle theme (theres only one battle theme)
- Story Character animations were really stiff (like the companion, other characters you find in the story etc. They felt very robotic in their animation with little to no facial expressions, they wouldn't even look at you when talking unless you were standing in one specific spot)
- Battles can become spam fests
- Enemies could mostly be killed with any spell, doesnt encourage experimentation