Mystic Saga reminds me a lot Lost Lands: A Hidden Object Adventure. Given the fact that it's Five-BN publishing, it's not a surprise. I don't know which one was the first but while Lost Lands was clearly based on a universe already developed with traditionnal games, Mystic Saga seems to have no counterpart.
The story isn't really the most important here but you're a young man that seems to have an extraordinary destiny: free the land from the Empress, who is evil.
You have an energy bar that will resplenish itself every 90 seconds. It's a reminder of the Facebook games, where you're limited to play because of that, which is also an incentive to buy energy. In Mystic Saga, like for Lost Lands, you can buy crystals that you can use to advance or buy items (like energizer) or the ingame money, used to buy items, mainly weapons or objects to exhange.
You have several quests to accomplish in order to advance: to do so, you need to visit locations with hidden objects scenes. You have three main modes: a list of words, a list of shapes and a night mode, where you have only a flashlight (or torch or choose anything that can light) to find items. Contrary to Lost Lands, Mystic Saga is showing you when it's day or when it's night in a location and which type of list you'll be confronted. I find it more interesting to have that data as you can cycle through the same location without asking yourself if it will take time to finally reach a night level.
When you complete a location, you're rewarded with items, money and experience. But it also means that energy is decreasing as each location costs energy (and it's increasing when you reach the upper level of the location - you have 10 - contrary to Lost Lands where you have 5 but it takes more or less the same time to reach the max). An unique feature in Mystic Saga (still compared to Lost Lands) is the fact that finding real fast items will give you bonus: experience, energy, coins but also items for collections like statues or unique coins. The game is still timed, so make sure not to be distracted like I was for a level, costing me 40 energy (or maybe half of it). I'll do the fail level achievement on my own with a low level energy.
You can also interact with people or creatures on the maps. In Lost Lands (Hidden Objects and Mahjong) and Clover Tales (a match-3 game based on the same mechanisms), you were scaring or killing enemies. Here, in Mystic Saga, you have people like a Merchant and a Sage with whom you'll exhange items. However, it's still the same item they need. But it's changing of spiders running around.
You can also collect items in a collection and exhange them once completed for tools, chests, experience, energizers or coins.
As it's implied that experience is used to level up, the fact to do it will increase your energy bar. Given the fact that some locations can cost 95 energy (I suppose that it will be the case, like in Lost Lands), increasing your bar is really advised.
The graphics are good but I'm just sad that clicking on the quest will make you leave the map and show you a full picture of the character concerned with their location. I prefer largerly how Lost Lands is handling it with just a pop-up. The soundtrack is also quite varied and nice.
Like Lost Lands or Clover Tales, Mystic Saga is free-to-play. However, as I've indicated, you can be tempted to buy money or crystals to advance faster in the game. And this is where you may be spending too much money if you're impatient. I will not point for a fourth time the hate I've for that kind of system.
But I will just give you a piece of advice: Mystic Saga will not disappear suddenly, at least, not now. Even if the stats of players aren't as high as a Killing Floor 2 or a Team Fortress, it's still enough for that kind of game. Besides, I suppose that from time to time, you'll be spending real money in the game, like I did for Lost Lands and Clover Tales. Thanks god, it's exceptionnal. In other words, you have time to complete the game. Just be patient and you'll see that you will not have the compulsion of buying more money or crystals.
In the end, I love Mystic Saga because it's similar to Lost Lands and yet so different and probably more adapted for me (an eastern setting, a soundtrack fitting and a better challenge). You can go ahead. Mystic Saga is really worthy.
