Magicians' Legacy: Prologue

⠀

"Magicians' Legacy: Prologue" is not a game. It's an advertisement for a product called "Magicians' Legacy". Magicians' Legacy is a mobile app tier turn based tactical strategy game... think Heroes of Might & Magic but worse in every respect, dumbed down and shallow, and designed for mobile phones, although this never made it that far. But this isn't completely relevant because this is not Magicians' Legacy, it's just an advertisment for it, so it's not correct to try to review that completely distinct product. We must instead review this for what it is... an advertisement. If you enjoy advertisements, you can consume them for free on the web or on Youtube without needing to add them to your game library, download them, and then launch the advertising. It's impossible in a general sense to recommend people should do that over playing real, full games on Steam, and that applies here with "Magicians' Legacy: Prologue" too. Usually the purpose of these advertisements is to get you to shell out money to the developer to buy the full product, but the developer hasn't bothered actually making a product you can buy (probably as a result of the downright cold reception this advert …

There isn't much of a game really. It's just a demo for an upcoming game, a fact not clearly stated on its store page. I'll start with good things first: The combat system in this game draws heavily from Heroes of Might and Magic III. It introduces some new ideas, but most of them have already been done by other HoMM-like games. Some changes feel interesting, others are questionable, such as archers being able to walk away from melee units and then shoot them point-blank. The battles themselves lack challenge (at least for me). There's always enough gold to fully replace all the losses, making the impact of good tactical decisions feel less significant. The map is where it falls completely flat. You can only progress in a single direction. There are no interactive map objects, no towns, no power-ups, you just click on a point to move to the next battle. You can teleport anywhere you already visited but it feels completely pointless, you only do it to hire more troops, could be easily replaced by just some "summon" dialog. Overall, the game looks like it was designed for mobile, which doesn’t inspire much confidence in its future depth or complexity.

Игра 'Magicians' Legacy: Prologue' — это захватывающее введение в мир магии и приключений, которое моментально погружает игрока в атмосферу таинственности и волшебства. С первых минут ощущается внимание разработчиков к деталям: проработанный мир, интригующий сюжет и приятный визуальный стиль создают основу для действительно запоминающегося опыта. Управление интуитивно понятно, что позволяет быстро освоиться и сосредоточиться на исследовании локаций и решении головоломок. Каждая загадка ощущается как естественная часть повествования, а не простое препятствие. Хотя это лишь пролог, он умело намекает на глубину истории и потенциал будущих частей, оставляя приятное послевкусие и желание узнать, что же будет дальше. Это отличное начало для любой истории о магах.

‎

6/10 Heroes 3-like TBS with mobile-like gfx and progression. Good: - battles are similar to Heroes 3 and enjoyable - the art style is nice although casual and seemingly mobile-targeted - music is fine (not great but above average) So-so: - English localization is shaky, it needs proofreading by a native speaker - the strategic map is a graph of nodes like in mobile games. You win a battle, move to the next node, the another battle. You can teleport back to a creature shop to replenish troops. Compared to Heroes or Disciples or other similar franchises, this feels simplistic. There is no sense of exploration, you don't have castles, and the conversations with NPC don't feel important - sfx are rather simple, and some are missing (e.g. when upgrading your character). Actually UI actions seem to have no sfx at all - the 2D art of the strategic map is nice but also feels somewhat too simpllistic, with flat-color fills and shapes Bad: - the character faces don't look good at all Overall, it feels like a mobile, simplified port of Heroes 3. It's unclear why this game should at all be on PC if it doesn't expand on Heroes 3 formula but instead takes away from it. But it's a free prolog…