Mages of Mystralia

It’s not a bad game but to me personally it was often more frustrating than fun. First of all, mana management kills the fun. In most fights, even small generic ones, you will run out of mana and you will need to run in circles and wait to do anything, even block or dodge as those are spells. There are “mana potions” but replenishing them is super tedious. Combat most of the time is annoying due to mana and the fact that enemies are swarming you and have all sorts of CC (knockdown, freeze, magic blocking). I would be OK with super fast combat if the player character was more responsive. Third thing, puzzles. A lot of them aren’t hard to figure out but a nightmare to execute. You need to stand in the exact spot and be turned by an exact angle otherwise you won't score the hit. Fourth thing, spell creation is very limited and you won’t be able to create anything fancy. It’s more about maxing out damage than being creative. And even if you’ll really try to be creative restrictive mana pool will kill the fun because it’s all about efficiency. Fifth and last complaint is about the story. On a high level there are some cool ideas with a bit of dark humor but execution is very questionable. Dialogues felt lifeless. Twists were predictable. Some parts were outright dumb just to make other parts better. On the bright side, the game looks like an animated Asterix comic book which was a treat (there’s even a boar meat cooking). Some enemies are really creative and fun to fight with as they require a bit of thinking (gargoyle-cyclops is the best). I wish there were more of those rather than cannon fodder spam. Bosses were fun to fight. I also enjoyed the seal puzzles required to open doors. I played the game on hard difficulty (Archmage) so maybe it’s less frustrating on normal. Unfortunately the game doesn’t allow to change it so I decided to go through after reaching 50% rather than starting a new run. I wanted to like this game but after it showied something cool it followed up with something frustrating so my whole experience was a rollercoaster that, in the end, I cannot recommend. Good to know (no spoilers): - If you want to give it a shot, choose the first difficulty. Extra things from “Archmage” aren’t worth the frustration. - No missable achievements - No technical issues

cute idea, but it's completely half-baked. controls and combat are awkward, and QoL is non-existent. just a few examples: very limited fast travel, no way to manually save or load saves, no way to change difficulty, and no way to tell which things you are supposed to do now (and can get locked out of doing later) versus which things are impossible now and should be returned to later. small areas with frequent loading, and everything in an area resets everytime you enter or exit an area. for example, i beat the first boss, left the arena, walked back into the arena and had to fight him again.

Honestly, a pretty dope game. Never heard of it until it popped up on Humble Bundle then I saw that you could make your own spells and was sold. I'm an absolute slut for games that make me feel like how a mage is meant to feel. A legitimate mage would never settle for the arbitrary ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of pre-defined spells. A fireball that travels in a singular straight line? Please... that's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I want a fireball that hits a target summons more fireballs that then in turn, summon even more fireballs. Only drawback is that the random rune makes spells way too powerful. Oh, you mean I can kill the last wave of the Mage's Trial with two spells? Because with random, you can! Slap that badboy on a Creo path spell that summons more Creo paths and g ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ g... you've nuked [i]all[/i] of them.

A very earnest and solid video game. I can't say anything about the atmosphere is particularly exceptional. The world, story, and characters are meh. The 'main' draw of the spells is definitely interesting! And the progression is really quite good for the first half. These runes give some serious upgrades that feel great. And the puzzles are really quite good! Definitely fun to figure out and seeing the new options afforded by these spells. The biggest criticism I'd give is that 90% of enemies can be 'solved' in the same way - especially after the midpoint. The magic system makes it so that most damage dealing methods are pretty equivalent - and in order to do more damage you must spend more mana. So even though new opportunities are afforded by new runes and spells - they don't really serve to change how you might play or deal with enemies. In the end, you are just trading mana for damage. It would definitely be cool to see some more enemy variety or obstacles that reward players for having a diverse set of spells lined up. Or create more interesting/impactful runes. Overall though I enjoyed myself. A solid 7.5/10.

I love getting stuck in kill animation. It could have been good had it not been for the animations being uninterruptable, meaning you cannot dodge or block on time. Making the game unplayable, it's not "get good" it's simply god awful design.

В 2020 году приобрёл себе "Mages of Mystralia" и лишь в 2026 году прошёл её. Уже во время прохождения появлялись сомнения по поводу игры (причём некоторые негативные отзывы на странице игры показывались чаще, чем положительные), но раз начал, то нужно дойти до конца. И раз игра пройдена, то скажу одно: вызвала у меня она [i]противоречивые[/i] эмоции. Хотя поначалу может показаться, что тут всё отлично. [list] [*][b]Милый дизайн.[/b] Прикольный мультяшный дизайн мира и персонажей (ну или в стиле последних частей "Zelda" на Nintendo Switch). [*][b]"Детская" атмосфера.[/b] Хорошо передана атмосфера сказки и приключений, чего иногда не хватает. [*][b]Геймплей за мага.[/b] То, что и продаёт игру. Мы играем за юного мага, и весь геймплей завязан на заклинаниях. У нас тут их несколько типов и ещё разные типы стихий, которые придают заклинаниям разные пассивки. Также есть прокачка, которая представлена в виде классического увеличения здоровья/маны и улучшений для наших заклинаний. Вдобавок ко всему, тут можно с их помощью создавать связи между заклинаниями, чтобы при использовании одного сразу или спустя время активировалось второе. [*][b]Босс-файты.[/b] Они мне понравились: к каждому нужна своя тактика и стихия для победы. [*][b]Разные типы врагов.[/b] Не просто так у нас тут есть разные стихии, ведь у врагов есть свои стихийные атаки и сопротивление к другим (привет, "Shadow Warrior 2"). Сами враги на протяжении всей игры разнообразны: от скелетов до гоблинов. [/list] Но к сожалению, где-то со второй половины игры на сложности "Архимаг" (сразу оговорюсь: крайне не рекомендую данную сложность, т.к. моментами будет душно) начинают проявляться неприятные моменты. [olist] [*][b]Дизбаланс и нерабочий геймплей.[/b] Вот вроде бы и здоровья с маной стало больше, и достаточно улучшений получили, а в итоге вся проблема упирается в крайне быстрый расход маны, и в результате такой расклад получается: либо делаешь мощные заклинания, но тратишь дофига маны и кругами бегаешь по арене, либо делаешь слабые заклинания... и вновь бегаешь, но уже больше, по арене, т.к. урон твой ещё меньше... Так себе ощущается роль мага, когда ты еле-еле даёшь отпор несильным врагам. При этом их становится больше (а иногда ещё есть мини-боссы), у них сопротивляемость к разным стихиям и свои умения (кто-то станит, кто-то блокирует твои умения), что приводит к тому, что в толпе врагов уже неважно, какая у тебя стихия, ты просто спамишь заклинаниями, пока всех не убьёшь. И да, у нас тут ещё разные магические палочки со своими пассивками, но честно, лично я практически не видел в них разницы, мне даже палочка с постоянным отхилом слабо помогала. И в конце концов, битвы с врагами выглядят так: используешь 2-3 заклинания, нанося по ощущениям небольшой урон, бегаешь кругами (это если арена большая; в игре бывают и поменьше места), пока мана не восстановится, повторяешь заново, пока не убьёшь всех... и так каждую стычку. В итоге, ближе к концу начинаешь просто убегать от врагов, чтобы не тратить время на них. [*][b]Сломанная экономика.[/b] Вроде бы у нас есть валюта в виде зелёных сфер, но по факту, её некуда тратить, кроме как на ожерелье для возрождения, т.к. новое оружие, мантии и улучшения можно получить только после решения загадок или выполнения испытаний. Но с ожерельем 2 проблемы: почему-то (возможно, из-за выбранной мною сложности), мы можем нести только 1 такое ожерелье, пока не возродимся, а купить мы можем только в 1 месте, на которое попасть можно только пешком, без быстрого телепорта. [*][b]Скучные доп квесты.[/b] Номинально, всякие доп задания разбавляют геймплей, и первое время это работает, пока не понимаешь, что толку в новых умениях нет из-за большого расхода маны и толпы врагов, зелёные сферы некуда девать, а фиолетовые (для прокачки здоровья/маны) уже далеко не часто попадаются. В итоге, начинаешь их игнорировать с острым желанием быстрее пройти игру. [*][b]Сюжет.[/b] Честно, он не настолько интересный. Да, сам по себе он неплохой (хотя у меня вопрос: почему никто из магов не догадался, что книга заклинаний у главной героини непростая, а вообще-то от прошлого сильного мага, который владел запретными заклинаниями?), но на фоне душного геймплея он не спасает положение. [/olist] В итоге, на бумаге "Mages of Mystralia" выглядит занимательной игрой, а по факту, перед нами средний проект с неплохим сюжетом, который затмевается душным дисбалансным геймплеем. Не рекомендую к прохождению!

https://youtu.be/ccMOqFeCC-Y Oddly antagonist writing against the player is jarring and the inconsistent fixed camera angles requests frequent adjustments to play.

this is a wonderful game! my only critique is that some puzzles are unsolvable without google. its a very small number, but still. also runes. you have to try a lot of combos to make a spell work how u want it to with the runes. its a little frustrating but fun. personally, i like it. but its def not for everyone.

It's a wizard game, so I have to give it SOME props. Obviously it's going to be fun for me specifically, which is why I'll probably play more of it even though I'm not reccomending it. I have a TL;DR at the bottom if you don't care that much, which is fair. The reason why I'm giving it a thumbs down is because it is a SLOG to get through. The game prides itself on its spellcrafting, but you get about one thing to adjust your spells every hour. I can't adjust or work on my spells in the beginning of the game, and most of the early adjustions are basically just upgrades. Based on the progress bar which you can see in the save menu and how slow the progression is, I could assume it'd take around 40 hours to complete the game (i'm not gonna look this up bc honestly I don't care THAT much), and most of that is going to be talking to people and fighting. Oh, and walking from point A to point B. That takes a lot of time. This would be fine and I would be okay with it IF the combat was quick, snappy, and challenging in very fun ways. It isn't really. You can't play offensively becuase you'll run out of mana and you can't play defensively because you simply cannot escape the melee enemies. The enemies also block you, so if you're cornered, you're boned. You'll get stunlocked and pelted with javelins before you can run away. Sucks. In adition, the visuals are just hard to follow. Each level has about one color that it goes by and the game loves particle effects. On their own, those two are awesome! But both of those together, combined with the high camera angle, makes it HARD to SEE. The thing that sort of saves the combat in my opinion is the afformentioned spellcrafting. It is VERY fun to make and name your own spells with different effects for different scenarios, and I'm willing to bet combat becomes EXTREMLY fun near the end. HOWEVER, the end is however many hours away and for the first real-life day worth of gameplay, you will have basically 5 spells, all of which feel ineffective because the enemies have so much HP and bodyblock you constantly. That's not to mention the bosses. THE BOSSES. They are gimmicky, which is fine, and they're easy to figure out how to counter, which is fine and dandy, and which I would be 100% okay with if not for how DANG TANKY THEY ARE. They take FOREVER to go down, and some of them are activily difficult to deal damage do--- And they're SITILL tanky DESPITE THAT. Again, this could be okay. The combat can be set to be easy. You don't HAVE to play in archmage mode, you can just enjoy the story! But the story is also not that great. this is subjective so it's not that important but the story is basically "One mage was real bad and now everyone hates mages." It's a little undermined by the fact that there's a wizard sanctuary where the mage all live peacefuly and not under the fear of prosecution, all of your old friends still like you even though you turned into a wizard after exploding a building and killing multiple people, and the people that are terrified of wizards can be swayed by about 3 dialog boxes each. That doesn't stop this seemingly cozy, bright game from being extremly mean to you. The mentor in the beginning was such an ass that I almost stopped playing from how much I hated him (not really, he's fine, but nobody likes him and his family deserves to be disintigrated). Every location you go to is bright and bubbly and ocasionally a little spooky, but all the dialog and information surrounding it is so sad that it just feels like the part of this game that wants to be cozy and bubbly and fun keeps clashing with the other section that wants to introduce some sort of brutal realism to this extremely cartoonish setting. TL;DR: the game is incohesive, the combat is frustrating, and progression is incredibly slow. I'd be shocked if this game was playtested by more than 3 people. i'm still going to play it because i CARVE for games about wizards CONSTANTLY and the few things that are done right are very nice, but i can't see many others having enough fun to play through the whole thing.

[h1][b]🎮 Reseña de Mages of Mystralia[/b][/h1] [h2]Resumen del Juego[/h2] Mages of Mystralia es un Action-Adventure indie en vista isométrica donde encarnas a una protagonista femenina en un mundo de fantasía “adorable”… hasta que te das cuenta de que el juego quiere que pienses como mago, no como jugador que spamea botones. Aquí la magia no es un “hechizo de fuego y ya”: el chiste es combinar y ajustar conjuros para pelear y resolver rompecabezas. La propuesta es clara: exploración, combate ligero pero constante, puzzles y una vibra de rol de acción sin inflarse como RPG eterno. Se siente como ese tipo de juego que te sonríe con colores bonitos y luego te empuja a un cuarto donde la puerta solo se abre si tu cerebro hace clic. Primera impresión: “Qué lindo, qué tranquilo”… y de pronto estás rearmando tu build de hechizos porque el juego decidió que hoy vas a aprender a leer el entorno. Gracias, supongo. [h2][Magia Bien Hecha vs. Hechizos que se Tropiezan][/h2] Lo Bueno: ✅ Sistema mágico creativo y “de ingeniería”: combate y rompecabezas se alimentan del mismo diseño 🧙‍♀️✨ ✅ Aventura isométrica con buen equilibrio entre acción y puzzles 🧩⚔️ ✅ Protagonista femenina en un mundo de fantasía con personalidad (sin sentirse pegote “de marketing”) 👑🌿 ✅ Gran banda sonora: de esas que te hacen sentir épico aunque estés atorado en un puzzle 🎼🔥 ✅ Soporte completo de mando y extras de Steam (logros, cromos, Steam Cloud) 🎮🏆 Lo No Tan Bueno: ❌ Comunidad en “modo fantasma”: 0 jugadores actuales… básicamente estás jugando con tu eco 👻📉 ❌ Un jugador solamente: si buscabas caos cooperativo, aquí solo hay tu responsabilidad emocional 🤝🚫 ❌ Los rompecabezas pueden frenar el ritmo si venías por acción constante (sí, a veces toca pensar) 🧠⏳ ❌ Rejugabilidad limitada si no eres de exprimir logros o repetir por “ahora sí optimizo mis hechizos” 🔁😅 [h2]Tabla de Evaluación[/h2] [table] [tr][th]Aspecto[/th][th]Puntuación (0-10)[/th][th]Comentario[/th][/tr] [tr][td]Jugabilidad[/td][td]8[/td][td]La magia se siente como herramienta, no como adorno.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Dificultad / IA[/td][td]7[/td][td]Más reto por diseño de puzzles que por enemigos “genios”.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Contenido[/td][td]7[/td][td]Aventura sólida, sin inflarse de relleno.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Gráficos / Video[/td][td]7[/td][td]Estilo indie bonito y funcional, no busca impresionar por músculo.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Historia[/td][td]6[/td][td]Cumple: te mueve a avanzar, pero no te cambia la vida.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Ambientación[/td][td]7[/td][td]Fantasía agradable con identidad propia.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Efectos (VFX)[/td][td]7[/td][td]Hechizos legibles y vistosos sin saturar la pantalla.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Música[/td][td]8[/td][td]Gran banda sonora, suma muchísimo al viaje.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Voces[/td][td]6[/td][td]Correctas; no son el gancho principal.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Diversidad[/td][td]6[/td][td]Protagonista femenina: bien; el resto no destaca por variedad notable.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Rendimiento[/td][td]7[/td][td]Indie estable en general, sin presumir de tecnología.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Rejugabilidad[/td][td]6[/td][td]Volver depende de cuánto ames optimizar y completar logros.[/td][/tr] [tr][td][b]Total Puntuaciones (Muy Bueno)[/b][/td][td][b]6.8[/b][/td][td]Creativo y encantador, con ritmo que a veces te obliga a bajar revoluciones.[/td][/tr] [/table] [h2]Conclusión (Muy Bueno)[/h2] Mages of Mystralia es de esos indies que se ganan el respeto por una idea clara: “si vas a ser mago, actúa como uno”. La combinación de acción, aventura y rompecabezas está bien amarrada, y cuando el sistema de hechizos hace clic, el juego se siente más inteligente que la mayoría de experiencias “aprieta para ganar”. Ahora, lo controversial: que tenga 0 jugadores actuales no significa que sea malo… pero sí que llegas a una fiesta cuando ya están recogiendo los vasos. Aun así, 868 recomendaciones no aparecen por accidente: hay una base de gente que lo jugó, lo terminó y dijo “ok, esto vale la pena”. Si te atrae la fantasía, un enfoque creativo de magia y puzzles que no te tratan como adorno, aquí hay una aventura muy competente. Si lo tuyo es acción sin pausas y sin pensar, este juego te va a “educar” a la fuerza. [h3]Recomendación de Compra (Recomendado)[/h3] Puntuación Total: 6.8/10 Número de jugadores activos al momento de hacer esta review: 0 Descuento máximo registrado: -75% Veredicto: [i]Recomendado (para quien disfruta pensar y experimentar)[/i] Si te gustan los juegos donde el sistema principal realmente manda (y no solo está de relleno), dale. Si necesitas multijugador o una comunidad activa para sentirte acompañado, prepárate: aquí estás tú, tu varita y el silencio absoluto.