The Legend of Thabor - Rise of the Mages

This appears to be entirely linear for a game that wants to claim to be a metroidvania. The game lacks a map (something you would expect in most metroidvanias) and isn't full of branching paths (a staple of metroidvania design) as far as I have seen anyhow. The second boss fight was pretty annoying to deal with (where I dropped it). I think it's a neat proof of concept kind of dev project, but as a gamer looking for videogames to play, well I'm not exactly enthralled by this.

I’ve finally beaten the game and I can tell you first hand, it’s trash. The game has SEVERAL poor design choices including checkpoints spaced too far out, cheap bosses that are too tall to jump over, a final boss that can KILL YOU AFTER YOU KILL IT RESULTING IN YOU HAVING TO DO THE ENTIRE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FIGHT ALL OVER AGAIN, and hands down the worst part is the wall jumping. It sucks, it’s easily the worst wall jumping a game has ever had. You can’t press jump while on the wall, you have to press it just after you let go of it. It sounds easy to do but the game will ♥♥♥♥ up constantly and you’ll die because of it. And even worse, THE DECS HAVE THE GALL TO PLAN FOR A SEQUEL TO THIS CRAP! I’M SERIOUS! IT ENDS ON A “To Be Continued.” NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WANTS A SEQUEL TO THIS! I certainly don’t!

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For a free game it's not terrible, though it does feel a bit jank and it's pretty simplistic in general. Not really a good example of a "metroidvania" I'd say, but I've definitely played far worse games that I had to pay for. I like the setting/story concept though the story pacing is kinda wut. Like seriously, you just barely became a mage and your second major challenge is one of the so-called "masters" of magic? I tend to be really big on some games if they have a good story even if the gameplay is absolute trash but this game kinda hits "mediocre for a free game" dead center. Hitting recommend only because it's free and is a solid short-term distraction and has solid pixel art but it's definitely not a game I'd recommend if it cost money.

"The Legend of Thabor - Rise of the Mages" is one of literally thousands of retro 2D platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere... and I'm not kidding. Searching for "platformers" on the Steam store page yields over 17,000 results! Is this one of the best of those? Absolutely not. This is a poorly made and painfully generic pixelcrap platformer with a fantasy theme and the somewhat bogus claim that it's a Metroidvania (it's not, it's a mostly linear brawler slog of little to no value). There's some insanely boring, cludgy fan-fiction backstory, but that's not well explained, and because it starts out so bad, that's really a good thing. The cringe doesn't really end there, this platformer is a fan-fiction about some internet non-ebrity streamer's "Dungeons and Dragons" campaign. I can understand some people simp for e-girls online, that's cring enough, but simping for some dudes D&D campaign is a whole new level of cringe that may well be in breach of the Geneva Conventions. Platforming is an old, mostly dead genre, and this lacklustre experience, while it doesn't have an upfront cost, isn't saving the genre... it's no surprise…

The only problem I have with this game is that they didn't include support for ultrawide monitors. The top and bottom of the screen are cut off. Can't read in game text (which is especially a pain in the ass when a trivia section comes up). The story is meh, but overall ok. I like the way the character controls. It's a challenging game, but as they say, git gud. Oh, and also double jump :D