Mages Intiation - Reign of Elements (english review)

The Retro-Sorcerer's Apprentice

D'Arc is sixteen years old mages apprentice. He has trained extensively in the elemental arts for the past decade of his young life, under the discerning eyes of the Mage Masters of Iginor. Confined to the existence of academics and magical mastery in their towering hall, the inquisitive initiate often wonders what it would be like to set foot outside in the world he has been secluded from.
As with all young Mage initiates in training, D'Arc's moment of reckoning arrives as Mage Masters put him to the test. D'Arc is tasked with completing three quests and save the kingdom as a bonus.
The game has been under development for whopping ten years and it Quest for Glory/Heroes Quest and Kings Quest-series of adventure games.  Himalaya Studios has been known before as Anonymous Game Developers Interactive (AGDI) and they have published several remakes of the old Sierra titles.

Game information

Name: Mages Intiation - Reign of Elements Publisher/Developer: Himalya Studios
Platforms: PC Type: Point&Click-adventure, retro, rpg, puzzle
Age Ratings: ?
Reviewer: Rami Sihvo
Links:
Tease trailer

From the perspective of the gamer?

Mages Initiation owns a lot from cult classics from Sierra. The player can fight Goblins, there are bird people at mountains and local town resembles Spielburg from Quest for Glory. Dialog tries to be funny and sometimes break the fourth wall, much like adventure games of Sierra. The interesting feature is to offer optional ways to solve the puzzles. Biggest changes on the playthroughs depend on what element do you play?

The RPG elements exist. Player character gathers experience and level-ups offer skill points. The player can gather gemstones that improve his combat power. The butchering of Goblins doesn't yield experience points but solving missions and puzzles. So the old 'score' value of adventure games is finally put to real use. Some tasks can be failed without change to the game and in these situations, player loses only some experience points. Generally, you should do what you promised to.

I was absolutely thrilled about the game looking like a game from the 90s. The pixel graphics are hand drawn and a stunning. The control scheme offers three versions of the mouse-driven UI, which is quite nice. The game is fully voiced although D'Arcs comments did bug me at times. There are many discussion options from the important NPCs and game is well interactive. Morally the story is good - D'Arc refuses to use magic against ordinary 'Giftless' people. The biggest theme is power and hunger of it, which becomes quite apparent towards the end of the game.

The story resembles old Sierra games so faithfully and includes many of the cliches of the golden era of the adventure games. Sometimes this is a bit embarrassing -evil priestess walks around half-naked, and mages guild sends male students to fetch thing from her. We are once again seeing a quite familiar fairy tale tropes, like Kings Quest Graham finds princess Valanice from the tower because that's where fairy tale princess is (2010 Phoenix Studios ‘The Silver Lining’ delves more deeply to this story, giving a lot more meaning to Valanices captivity).

So, yes. Old adventure games were slightly sexist. The reason was that players were male, thus they were preferred as the target audience. The game advances through this train of thought, the protagonist is male, he gets help mainly from male side characters. The fact that story is this mono-focused is hidden a lot better than many games because extra characters from both sexes populate the tower and streets.

I don't know how self-critical adventure game developers are. I do think it is commendable to simulate old phenomena without trying to 'modernize' it. Some might say reboots are often modernized too far. Because Mages Initiation is faithful to the old style by the letter we can now talk about it and point out the flaws in storytelling. 

Another aspect which the game doesn't sidetrack is retro-playability. The game has a bit of the same kind of problems that Sierra had. Then again, the main character doesn't die all the time but problems are level: find a person who tells how to build a raft, find four boards, rope and barrels. No, you can't make it with three boards. The problems are not hard or have leaps in logic like Sierra had, but I did spend a lot of time to ponder how to get sweat from the blacksmith or how to feed a fish? The first problem was solved when I visited the top of the tower and found a handkerchief from the floor.

These kinds of games pay attention to the detail, if the player walks past the important object then he could get stuck. Puzzle parts of the game do need some brain capacity. They are not hard but then again the help is pretty nil. I would have hoped that the fortune teller could have offered some real advice like phoning to dad in Cognition: Erica Reed Thriller.And that is something that would sorely need modernization.

The players might get blind and running around pointlessly does annoy the hell out people. The problem is - there is just one way to do things. For me the game too 13 hours to complete and the final score was 450 points out of 500, so couple side missions might have passed. The game has two compulsory fights, so reserving pack back full of HP and mana potions is mandatory. However the last surprise was the save file, the game tells to wait for the next game!

Mazes are part of the gameplay and these can be solved with some sense of direction. However, this is another classical source of annoyment. For example, the desert is a pretty dull place to set the game at:

Perspective of the ratings?

The adventure games weren't graphical and their language and topics were quite subtle. First, mature-level games appeared at the end of their golden era. Mages Initiation deals with the topics with smooth hands. The player character can die at some points of the game but they are not graphical. The dialog is quite safe to work, but then there are few NSFW scenes. Not many but few that you shouldn't show to young kids. Finnish age rating would probably treat these at 7-level, and PEGI could possibly give out 12 age rating from implied violence.

Parents and game education?

Point&Click-adventure games lost their appeal at the millennium. The gaming moved more towards the action-adventuring. I have previously suggested that point&click could be a good choice for parents and kids to play together although Mages Initiation offers old fashion game problems which can be only won by understanding the logic behind then.

During the game you can talk about

• Easter eggs that make homages to the earlier adventure games.
• How would different elements deal with this problem?
• Fire mages - evil or not evil?