cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Mage's Tale: Review (Spoilers)

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

I'm a bit late to the game with Mage's Tale. I beat it this week and enjoyed the experience enough to warrant a Review.

First off, I love the fact that this game so casually transitions from cute things like fairies and dancing Trow's...


98ncj2ze5c12.jpg


To straight up Lord Satan's house of pain...

bxny20vuqawa.jpg


In some areas you can hear beautiful operatic singing, in others you hear howls of torture. Fantastic!

Storyline, combat, and controls are all very well done. Even though the game was made with Teleportation in mind, it supports full locomotion. However, there are specific types of interactions that simply work better with Teleportation. Not many, but few enough to where I would have liked to have seen a better implementation.

For example, walking through traps is very easy using the Teleport joystick. So instead of memorizing a pattern of swinging Hammers, you can just teleport through them and take minimal damage. That needs some work (but there's less than 5 of these encounters the entire game).

I love the Spells, but I was sad that the number of crafting combinations were so limiting. There is a Rack that carries great spellcraft abilities, such as being able to suspend enemies in the air helplessly. However, if you use that craft... then that is the only modification you can make to a Spell. I often faced choices like:
  • Do I want my Lightening spell to do extra damage and have more Arcs, or
  • Do I want my Lightening to turn enemies in to sheep.

There's a lot of missed opportunities for what I feel would be some great spell combinations. I presume that the reason is because it would make battles a bit easier, but that could be remedied by increasing the health, damage, and speed of the enemies.

That being said, there were some really epic battles in the game. I personally enjoyed coming face-to-face with a giant Ogre:


e2u4ei57b4j8.jpg



Another memorable battle takes place in a secret area where you perform an incantation on a corpse (you even get to wear a demon mask), and end up fighting an army of 99 enemies. At least that's what they were called; I didn't actually count them - but I felt like a damn Spartan from 300 by the end of the fight.

The puzzles and secrets are very well done, and easily my favorite part of the game (although I am biased towards puzzlers). They did seem to get easier more towards the end-game, as did the battles. My favorite room - as in most games that offer this type of thing - is the Space Room:


nwkm0751x55e.jpg
(click on the image to get the full view)

There are quite a few areas that are a unique and splendid visual treat. In fact there's one room that is just so badass that I didn't even bother taking a screenshot. Because a flat image doesn't do it justice. It's a room beyond that Space Room, and the Player is trying to save an ally from a cage while you appear to be inside a burning Star... as a giant demonic mouth is flying towards you both. I don't think I was breathing throughout that entire sequence.

This Space Room reminded me a lot of the main Space area in the game, Obduction. In fact, so did the "coffin" room. It isn't that visually appealing, but there's a  large room in Mage's Tale full of corpses that are all laid out similar to a corpse room in Obduction.

z7z531w0gdi6.jpg

mvh7vr6yh4lb.jpg


Overall, I would give Mage's Tale a 4 out of 5 rating, and highly recommended as a great VR-RPG-Combat-Puzzler. There's just so many great elements and nothing is overly easy. Normally when a game tries to be too many things at once (RPG and Combat and Puzzle Solving), there ends up being a sacrifice somewhere. But with Mage's Tale, I often lost certain battles repeatedly, and some puzzlers had me pulling my hair out. Role Playing the type of magician you want to be is also pretty badass. At one point I went full on "crowd control" with all my spells:

  • Ice Lance with enhanced blast area to freeze groups of enemies.
  • Fireballs that turn people in to Sheep.
  • A Drunken (unpredictable direction) Air Blast spell that knocks enemies down.
  • Lightning that suspends enemies in the air (anti-gravity).

That was a mighty good time!
28 REPLIES 28

SkScotchegg
Expert Trustee
I've been meaning to give this game a shot for a while, I fancy a single player mage casting game.

Thanks for review.
UK: England - Leeds - - RTX 2080 - Rift CV1 & Rift S - Make love, not war - See you in the Oasis!

RattyUK
Trustee
@Zenbane  - how long did it take to finish the game?  Any sort of dungeon crawler appeals to me, so being naturally curious.
PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

RattyUK said:

@Zenbane  - how long did it take to finish the game?  Any sort of dungeon crawler appeals to me, so being naturally curious.



There are 10 levels, and each level takes 1-2 hours on average to complete. So we're talking 10-20 hours. The difference is on how quickly you can solve puzzles, and also if you choose to spend time looking for secrets. I'm pretty sure I went over the 20 hour mark easily.

I uncovered around 90% of all secrets, but I still missed a few. Obtaining some of the cooler Spellcraft abilities takes quite a bit of work. They are secrets that are off the beaten path (and there are some secrets within secrets). Sometimes you have to figure out a clever puzzle that is easy to miss; other times you have to look for a secret wall button, or a secret wall altogether.

So if you play at a normal pace and try to uncover every secret of every level, then you're easily at 20 hours of gametime.

Not to mention the amount of time spent experimenting with Spellcrafting, which you can test out in a Horde Mode arena (after you reach player level 3).

Uncovering as many secrets as possible is the best way to get to the max level (Player level 15) in the game. Which  means that you'll be quite powerful (the highest Spell recharge rate, the best shield, and the highest Health points).

Levels are gained after achieving key milestones, such as winning an entire battle or uncovering a secret. You can't just pharm enemies to hit max level. This makes it even more enticing to explore off the beaten path.

I've uncovered most of the hardest secrets, with only 1 or 2 that I still need to revisit. So feel free to ask if you run in to any issues.

Applecorp
Rising Star
Bought it at launch, got about 3 quarters of the way through, got distracted with other games, went back to Mage's Tale and for some unknown reason my game saves were completely gone (game bug?), which really annoyed me as I couldn't face playing it again.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

Applecorp said:

Bought it at launch, got about 3 quarters of the way through, got distracted with other games, went back to Mage's Tale and for some unknown reason my game saves were completely gone (game bug?), which really annoyed me as I couldn't face playing it again.



Possibly the result of an update?

Another playthrough would go much more quickly (about 30-45 minutes per level). Once you know all the secrets and have a strong understanding of which spells are better for which battles, the game becomes much easier.

ploog
Protege

Applecorp said:

... went back to Mage's Tale and for some unknown reason my game saves were completely gone 


 Mage's Tale games are saved within your Windows user data folder, and should be recoverable via backups, assuming...

Game save location info: https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/comment/555711/#Comment_555711

Incremental game saves: https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/comment/555703/#Comment_555703

RattyUK
Trustee
Thanks Zenbane.  Looks like the old-age pension is taking another bashing... Just bought Elite Dangerous from Humble Bundle for the future...  Mage's Tale will have to join it 😛
PC info: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Sapphire 7900XTX - 32GB DDR4 4000 - 3 NVMe + 3SATA SSD - Quest 2 & 3

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Nice round-up. I have a question though. This is from the makers of A Bard's Tale correct? How's the humor in this?


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


Nice round-up. I have a question though. This is from the makers of A Bard's Tale correct? How's the humor in this?



Yep, same folks from the Bard's Tale series:

The Mage's Tale is a first person virtual reality dungeon crawler role-playing video game developed and published by inXile Entertainment in partnership with Oculus VR. It is a spin-off of The Bard's Tale, set before the events The Bard's Tale IV. It is inXile's first virtual reality title.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mage%27s_Tale


I forgot that it was the same folks; glad you asked the question. I like their back-story.

The humor is quite constant, the game never skips a beat. Your goblin companion follows you everywhere, and has some pretty comedic things to say. There's also the insults that come from the goblin enemies which tends to be pretty funny (e.g. they call you names like "piss bucket"). Rock walls tend to be entertaining as well - they have mouths and will either give a riddle, a song, or drop several insults.

Plus that dancing Trow in a bottle was highly entertaining.

There's humor all over the place, I could probably type an essay on it (e.g. the Frog that appears to eat your collectables; the talking skull at your spellcrafting table).