Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements

An incredible game by Himalayan Studios -- i.e. the masters of the modern point & click form. Specifically: 1. They took the best parts of old and modern games. Combined the charm, mystery and compassionate values (e.g. you can play as someone who harms no animals and respects nature) with modern luxuries like multiple choices that impact the story. And you can't get permanently stuck like in King's Quest back in the day. 2. The combat does not get in the way of traditional point & click adventuring at all. Very artfully blended in. You can even disable most of it. (Or ramp it up in the options if you like the challenge.) 3. Don't listen to some of the nitpicking reviews. This game is like a dream come true if you love fantasy point & click adventure games in the same vein as King's Quest or Monkey Island. 4. The story is deep, with a powerful message. 5. The main character develops as a person as you progress. It's subtle, but at the end you'll feel like so much has changed. 6. The developers spent 10 years on this thing. Most teams who work that long on a relatively low-priced consumer product barely release anything noteworthy. But Himalayan went through countless obstacles and *over-delivered* to its loyal fanbase. You guys rock! PS: I almost never write game reviews. I dug up my old GOG password just to write this. Because this kind of art deserves to be praised.

I got this recently so issues that were present early on may have been fixed. I encountered a couple of minor glitches around the UI (I used the Sierra icon bar UI) but other than that, the game ran well and was fun to play. It's nice that the game supports different UI-s. Backgrounds and animations are really nice although I have to say I agree with those reviews that point out that the cut-scenes are far lower in quality than the rest of the game. I get it that full-screen animation is difficult but these looked more like cheap Flash animations. Music, sound effects and voice acting are nice. Like other reviewers, I found the main character's voice somewhat irritating but I got used to it after a while. I liked the story - it's reminiscent of Quest for Glory or King's Quest. The puzzles are not too complicated and - for the most part - logical. So far I only played as a water mage so I can't tell how much replayability it has but I liked the spells and the RPG elements. I saw several reviews mentioning that it's hard to get money / mana but I had no issues with either - I ended up carrying a number of health / mana potions and a bunch of gold by the end. I wouldn't call it the best adventure game ever but I got it on a sale and I'm happy I bought it.

It's pretty clear that Mage's Initiation draws its inspiration from the Quest for Glory series and no insignificant amount from King's Quest V. But this title really lacks the depth of character and coherent message that made those series stand out. The result is a one-dimensional delivery of an adventure that doesn't bring much to the table and seems to get lost in the telling. But what really holds this back from being a well-delivered, if bland, work is the inconsistency that the game manages to provide in its several components. The voice acting throughout the game is excellent -- with the glaring exception of the plodding, halting delivery of the bloody main character himself. The art style is well-done, particularly personal portraits and backgrounds, but the mid-chapter 2D animated cutscenes are laughably bad. They are so far out of the artistic character of everything you've seen to that point and such low quality that I'm honestly stunned they were not cut altogether from the final product. Combat magic is interestingly thought out in terms of spell variety and exploration of your element, but spells available for puzzle-solving are so limited as to make the solution trivial. You may encounter interesting choices, but these will either be without consequence or simply be morally incorrect and used to punish you. This badly needed more aggressive editing. It's a routine problem in adventure games that you'll need to pick up weird, trivial objects in order to solve problems through lateral thinking later on. But it's a terrible problem if your main character is fine with this in some cases and actively laughs off the idea of doing so in others. When the same voice can say "Anything not nailed down..." and "I have no idea why I'm holding onto this" while also saying it's not worth his time to check under a rug during a desperate search, this reeks of inconsistency and simply insults the player. This was simply limited and uninventive.

Mage's initiation is a charming and enjoyable adventure game that strives to break out of the traditional point and click routine with more action oriented mini-games involving timing and basic combat, with varied success. The main quest is a series of three adventures to collect various exotic items located throughout the realm, and upon completion the young adventurer is rewarded with the title of mage. The protagonist is assigned to one of four elements: earth, fire, water, and air. Each element includes different spells and abilities, which impact how you complete challenges, which also gives the game some replayability. The main story line is an enjoyable adventure game experience, with plenty of exploration, dialogue, practical puzzles, and characters to interact with. Dialogue is optional for the most part, but there are many gems to be found if you follow all the conversation trees. At certain points in the game you must complete combat sequences, which amount to a lot of mad clicking around on the screen to cast magic spells against your foes. I found these sequences a distraction and would have been quite frustrated if I hasn’t turned down the combat difficulty to a point where success was all but guaranteed. The main character's narration can be hit and miss. You know that trope where a character waits to meet someone important and rehearses a meaningless line like “it is nice to meet you”, placing emphasis on different words until the phrase becomes comically overthought? It is like the voice recording for the main character went through that process but selected the wrong take for inclusion in the game. I could put the odd inflections down to a character trait, but still chuckled to myself at the delivery of some of the lines. This game is not quite as polished as some other retro-style adventure games, but despite the points I mentioned above, it is an enjoyable game, and worth buying if this is a genre you enjoy.

To start off with, my score translates to a 9/10 but 4.5 stars is not an option. Given that I read some of the reviews saying that the combat is the game's weak point I have to say that it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. Some pointers for the game's combat, your first 10 points of mana regenerate (and even quicker during combat itself). Thus, your basic spell will "always" be available to you. There are four stats and the choice for investing points depend more on your strengths and weaknesses as a gamer. Strength: Choose this stat to make your cantrip ability more reliable. Especially useful in the early game. Intelligence: Choose this stat if you have trouble aiming at enemies or rely on status conditions. Magic: Choose this stat if you like to use mana-intensive spells. In my experience this is only worthwhile against bosses as you need to chug a lot of potions or mage water to make use of it. Constitution: Choose this stat if you are slow to react and have a hard time dodging or outrunning enemies. The trinkets, for further boosting those stats, that you find have got a "health bar". I have to say that I count it as a mark against the game for not properly explaining what happens if they reach 0. In some games you simply cannot use such items but here they are destroyed. I am curious to see what a sequel would bring to the table in terms of combat now that D'Arc is a mage. Maybe you regenerate the first 20 points of mana or perhaps someone will teach you how to use melee weapons? As for puzzles, you won't get stuck on most of them but there was one puzzle that I could not solve and that was because you can only know the answer to this puzzle if you fail. To unlock your final power you must go to the hall described as being "most bare" but you will only encounter this hall if you use a wrong combination which led me to assume that I had to go to the Fountain Hall given that there is a description which talks about its "minimalist approach".