Rage of Mages
Nival Entertainment / Monolith Productions
Hey, this looks familiar:
This game looks like, well, everything else
really. Name your RPG and that’s what it looks like, it uses the well-known isometric
view, it has characters that have been rendered in 3D but are used as sprites (with that
horrible "can only faced in eight directions" thing). The terrain is 3D, with
elevation and so on, but no one noticed until I pointed it out to them.
Now I’m not saying this looks bad,
it’s not, it’s just that I would like to see something new now, or atleast,
something snazzier. The characters are nice but lack that certain something and it is
annoying that your characters look doesn’t change so much (more on this later). The
monsters all look different and nice, the levels are well drawn, the textures are good,
but it doesn’t vary very often and sometimes it is a bit fiddley to tell where you
can go or not. No, there really isn’t alot you can say about it graphically, lets
just say it works, ok?
Sounds like a quest to me?:
First I have to get something out of the
way before I go any further. The music in this game is beyond compare; it is possibly the
worst music I have heard, ever. Remember back in the days of the SoundBlaster 8-bit card,
when all music was that bleepy midi crap, well that’s what we have here, nothing
makes you reach for the music control quicker. Bad music aside what we have left is good
enough. The famous vocal approach found in all Monolith games is here, something they seem
to be very good at. The characters all have a fitting voice to them; god knows where
Monolith found them though. The lines they have sometimes are so corny that it’s just
plain hilarious to listen to them saying lines such as "Don’t worry Peasant, we
will take care of this giant killer Turtle", all in an almost over the top old
English accent (sometimes). The other sound effects are fine although some irritate a
little, especially the bow noise, as it’s not quite right. Really it is the same
thing here as with the graphics, it works but it’s not the best you’ve heard.
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