Mage's Initiation: Reign of the Elements

It's got everything I love about King's Quest and Quest for Glory in a fresh new flavour. I took one star off because I wish the story had more depth.

This game was SO worth the wait!!! I love the depth of the story, the art and music. Great fantasy point-and click-adventure games are incredibly rare to find these days. This game has definitely surpassed my expectations and left me wanting more. I'm a bit of a granny when it comes to RPG games and don't enjoy anything more complicated than Lands of Lore. I was so relieved to see Mage's Initiation still feels like a classic adventure game, despite the combat. I've been raised on Sierra games - the King's Quest series in particular means a lot to my family and I. We've even made it a Christmas tradition to hibernate together and play adventure games (incl. AGD Interactive's amazing remakes). So thank you for making our Christmas with this game! We can't wait to replay and choose another element! It's early days but I really hope there will be a sequel (and maybe even merch, as I've sadly missed out on Kickstarter).

Full disclosure, the Quest for Glory series from Sierra was probably my favorite childhood game, so I am the definition of the target demographic for this game. If you like Adventure Games or RPGs, and especially if you like both, this game is a must! I have played quite a few indie adventure games, and this is MUCH more satisfying than one of those, it is definitely a professional-quality game that deserves to make some money. The art is fantastic, including cutscenes, and the voice acting is flawless! The gameplay is fun, the puzzles mostly make sense, although there were a few parts where the clue went over my head at first, I was never stuck for too long and there are guides online to help you out without spoiling too much. The plot well laid out with good world-building and a solid setup from which to build a series. I very much look forward to the next one!

I really wanted to like this game. What Himalya did with the QFG2 remake gave me high hopes that this team had the chops to do a great Sierra style old-school rpg/adventure hybrid with new ideas and mechanics. Frankly I'm astonished that it took 10 years to come up with this. A bland, cliched serious of puzzles with many unnecessary screens tacked on with combat that isultingly silly. The RPG elements are watered down to the point where they are almost meaningless. There's few to no alternative ways to solve puzzles, and even the different elemental mage classes feel like reskins of each other. The voice acting is...ok. The main characters voice feels irritatingly earnest too much of the time though. There are a few decent standouts, but voice acting is not what interested me about this game. The visuals range from competent to great looking, but there are strange cutscenes that are jarringly incongruent with the rest of the visuals. Running from screen to screen is ANNOYING. Thank god I figured out early that I could hit escape to cancel animations or I would already have quit playing. The character is WAY to slow (even with a double click to run) and there's WAY too much backtracking for this not to necessary. So If I find myself playing with one finger on the escape button about 70% of the time. Combat is a joke. I mean seriously. How can this be the finished product here? It's goofy, unbalanced, unsatisfying, and completely unnecessary. I really couldn't imagine much worse combat mechanics than what went into this game. Overall, this is pretty disappointing. There's some decent elements. It's an ok adventure game. It has ok dialogue and and ok plot. But for 10 years... it's not something I'd be satisfied with if it took that much time and money to produce, that's all I can say.

There are several problems in the game mechanics that ruin the fun. Mostly, about combat: * Killing enemies gives you no experience points, so you gain nothing by grinding other than money. * Mana cannot be replenished off combat by any means other than drinking mana potions (expensive) or mage water (even more expensive). Unfortunately, you cannot fight enemies without spending mana, so you're stuck in a mana poverty trap. *Because of this, there's no tangible sense of progression that makes you feel more powerful as you advance the game. * Enemy loots are worth 5, or 10 gold coins at most - but most of the loot has a sale limit, so past a point, you gain nothing by killing enemies. * Limited errands give you little or no opportunity to earn gold, especially after all the mana and potions you have to spend. * Enemy drops are lost if you switch screens. Combat needs some serious fixing (and there's no limit to enemies that attack you, making it a very steep "learning" curve). The main problem, is again, mana. You can't earn money by running errands when you use up so much mana that you have to spend all your earnings on mana potions. * Gems give you more power, but they're too expensive, so you can't save for mana. It's like having to buy a car to get a job, and you end up with a massive debt. * Traveling from point A to point B is tedious. There's no fast travel and no map; there's teleporting after certain level, but guess what? It costs MP. * Some quests have very hard to guess items, and solutions are no obvious. For example, to lit a brazier you can't find matches and there are no flints for sale. You have to carry the brazier to the tavern and lit it right at the fireplace. Combined with travel time, quests become a chore. After spending 10 hours pressing myself to complete this game, I realized I was't actually having fun. I was just pressing myself to complete frustrating tasks. Most of these issues should be easy to fix. I'd wait for the next version.