Mages of Mystralia

DO NOT PLAY ON ARCHMAGE FIRST PLAYTHROUGH. IT IS NOT FUN. IT IS NOT THE INTENDED GAME DIFFICULTY. I haven't finished the game yet, and I don't know if I will. I'm torn. I was pleasantly surprised with this game, but as it went on, it just got more and more difficult and hasn't been fun for half of the playthrough. I only JUST found out that the difficulty I chose was a post-launch update for a much harder mode. When you start a new game, it gives you the impression that this is the intended difficulty, and the base difficulty is a story mode. You also cannot change the difficulty mid-playthrough. Pretty much all of my issues with this game are the unnecessarily difficult combat and horrible enemy/boss encounter designs. I had a huge rant in my head ready for how disappointing this game became just because of that, and now my feelings are mixed knowing the intended experience isn't like that. Do I want to start from the beginning now? Not particularly. However, based on what I assume the intended experience is, I do think this is a great and underappreciated game worth trying!

Great game! Scaffolds well and allows for a lot of creativity in gameplay! Loved this gem!

A fun little game with spellcrafting being the core focus of it. Mix and match runes to make new effects. Has a nice mix of puzzles and combat. Story is decent. My only real gripe with the game is that by the time you finish unlocking every rune the game is pretty much over. You don't get much time to play around with the full arsenal.

This is a brilliant game, and one produced with a deep love for the medium. I found its "normal" mode to be a little easy, especially once you fully grasp what the spell-building system can do, but the hard mode beefed up the challenge, not by simply adding more life and damage to the enemies, but by dramatically changing things up - new placements, new patterns, new attacks, new effort, clearly made by the devs to give the players a new experience. The music is catchy, the graphics, while cartoonish, are well done and convey a feeling of the world and its story eloquently. The controls are spot on. Some people may not like even the minimal backtracking that goes on, and fair enough, I suppose, but the design makes doing so as easy as it can be without directly forcing you to advance. There are several side quests to be done, and various clever exploration or spell puzzles to unlock them. I thoroughly approve of this game.

A cute little game for shorter experiences. It features Zelda-esque puzzles that are fun, while the story is kept simple and unremarkable but that’s ok, nothing more, nothing less. The game isn’t very long. I spent about 14 hours to achieve 100% completion. For a small studio, that’s okay. I’d definitely recommend it over not recommending it, especially if it’s on sale.

I understand that this is a very old game, but of the 5 hours that I played it the game was very frustrating. The enemies in the game don't lose aggro when you try to just run away from them instead of fighting them. You're never fighting just one enemy at a time, it's always like 5-10 goblins at a time. The delay of trying to attack and using your shield defense is frustrating as well, there's not even a cooldown and I don't run out of mana it's just an annoying delay that gets me killed half the time.