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It’s all too often that mages in video games get the short end of the stick. Usually, the hero is some warrior, a barbarian, or a paladin. Mages are usually in relegated to the back burner in RPGs, but this isn’t the case with Mages of Mystralia. In this game, mages are something to be feared, and magic has been banned by the leader of the kingdom.

You play as Zia, a young girl who discovers her magic powers and must flee to avoid persecution. Does this game do the magic-wielders of RPGs justice, or does this spell fizzle out? Let’s find out!

A Glimpse at a Unique Fantasy World

Mages of Mystralia places you into a fresh new fantasy realm penned by Ed Greenwood. He’s best known for creating the Forgotten Realms universe which is used in Dungeons and Dragons. It’s also the setting for 170+ fantasy novels.

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His latest creation is the Kingdom of Mystralia. While it has the usual trappings of a fantasy kingdom like trolls, a dark past, and a sinister leader, the plight of the mages stands out in the story. After a calamity that occurred in the past, magic and mages have been outlawed in the kingdom by its current leader.

You play as Zia. She’s a young girl who very suddenly discovers her innate magical powers at a very inopportune time. She’s forced to flee from her home village and comes across a mentor mage who takes her in and introduces her to a place called Haven. This sanctuary for mages can only be discovered by those who have the power of magic within them, so it seems like a safe place.

After discovering a talking spellbook that speaks in ominous undertones, Zia sets out on her adventure to assist the mages and discover her own destiny. It’s an intriguing coming-of-age story that is made all the better by the mysterious nature of the events unfolding all around you. Though the people of the kingdom fear and resent your kind, you may be their only hope against the coming darkness. It’s certainly a great premise.

There’s a consistent sense of mystery and intrigue throughout the story. There are some side quests to complete on your way, but for the most part that game funnels you through its world in a linear fashion. You can go in just about any direction you want looking for secrets, but the vast majority of the story has you moving in a singular direction.

The story overall is streamlined, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I did wish there were more opportunities to dive deeper into the kingdom of Mystralia. What we have here is a taste of a larger world that I would very much like to explore.

On the other side of that coin, is the fact that such a streamlined world and story also makes for a satisfying RPG experience that doesn’t take hundreds of hours to complete. If you’re looking for a deep and nuanced tale, you may want to look elsewhere. If, however, you want something more unique than your standard fantasy fare, this tale will certainly scratch that itch.

Spellcrafting Made Simple

One of the main mechanics in Mages of Mystralia, is the ability to craft your own spells with runes that you unlock as you progress. You’ll start out with some basic runes, and as you progress, you’ll earn additional runes that modify the behavior of the spell, or augment it with new attributes and abilities.

Once you progress far enough to have several runes unlocked, Mages of Mystralia begins to show off the full breadth of the spell crafting. There are an impressive number of possible combinations and spells when you have access to everything.

I wished the game had been more forthcoming with the runes, as the spell system feels very limited for the first several hours of the game. This slow progression is used to introduce new puzzle and combat mechanics, but I felt myself itching to get in there and make some crazy spells happen.

Once that access became available, I really had a lot of fun setting up different spells in Mages of Mystralia. You can make multiple versions of spells quite easily and give them your own custom names. During gameplay, you can switch between versions of spells you’ve made on the fly as well to quickly match the combat situation.

With a few quick clicks, I can add an explosion to my fireball attack, or give my melee swing some extra stopping power. I can also add movement to my shield spell to create a dashing spell that works great for dodging enemy attacks.

These are just a few quick examples, but these combinations of runes will play into both the combat and the puzzle solving as you progress. Optional puzzles are plentiful and tend to be scattered throughout the game world, or hidden behind portals that take you to a challenge room.

Solving these earns you soul beads that can be used to upgrade your health and mana capacity. Another currency is discovered in breakable objects and throughout the world. The puzzles themselves range from simple solutions to head-scratchers where you must arrange dots in a symbol to open an ancient door, and even timed challenges that require both cunning and reflexes.

The moment-to-moment gameplay is done from an isometric perspective as you swing your staff or hurl spells at your enemies. The combat and exploration feel good. The only thing I wished I had more control over, was the targeting system. Currently, the targeted enemy is based on where your character is looking, and while they’re highlighted, it can be finicky when you’re trying to be precise.

This is further exacerbated by enemies or puzzles on a higher or lower plane than you. It’s not game breaking by any stretch of the imagination, but it can result in some brief moments of undue frustration.

Then comes the boss battles. While they are not too difficult on the standard difficulty, they are well designed and offer unique opportunities to put your spells to the test. Mages of Mystralia also offers an Archmage difficulty at launch that pumps up the difficulty on the combat and the puzzles alike for those who want a challenge.

While I wish the spell crafting had a faster progression to give you more options faster, once I had the ability to make my own spells and experiment with runes, Mages of Mystralia fulfilled my dream of being a master mage and spell crafter.

Vivid Presentation and a Wonderful Soundtrack

Mages of Mystralia is a truly beautiful game in motion. There’s an excellent use of color that makes the environments pop at every angle. A nice mixture of warm and cool colors also ensures that the game never falls into a visual rut.

There’s just enough detail as well to make the world feel unique, but not enough to clutter the screen from an isometric perspective. It’s a visual treat.

The soundtrack is a treat for your ears as well. Composed by Antoine Vachon and performed by the Video Game Orchestra, it’s an appropriately polished and expansive collection of tracks. At full blast, it summons the full might of an orchestra’s sound with deep and solid brass, fast and furious strings, thunderous percussion, and precise woodwinds.

It’s also a soundtrack that knows when to rise and fall. When the time calls for it, it settles into a mystical atmosphere. Soft piano tones are matched with flowing strings for those excellent moments of quiet reflection.

It’s a soundtrack that would fit perfectly into a hollywood fantasy film, but it also fits perfectly into the world of Mystralia. It’s always exciting as a gamer and musician to experience what a composer can do for a title with a full orchestra at their back.

When we bring it all together, Mages of Mystralia is a game with a polished presentation, an incredibly soundtrack, and a unique world to explore. Its gameplay has some small quirks, and while the spell crafting could have progressed a little faster to offer more options more quickly, it’s one of the best spell systems I’ve encountered.

Mages of Mystralia may not be the deepest RPG you’ve ever played, but it is polished, well designed, and very fun. It’s absolutely worth the asking price, so if you’re on the fence, it’s time to dive in and experience what Mages of Mystralia has to offer.

Final Score: 8.5/10

A copy of Mages of Mystralia was provided to PS4 Experts for review purposes

Article by - Bradley Ramsey
Insert date - 9/4/17

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Share Tweet Email redditAt first glance, Mages of Mystralia is a light-hearted, magic-themed children’s adventure. The game is cartoonish in style and tells a classic fantasy story featuring a young girl learning magic. Mages of Mystralia quickly surpasses expectations with its sharp gameplay, namely its clever system of spell-crafting. Its story and presentation are not groundbreaking, but elements of its gameplay just might be.Game Name: Mages of MystraliaPlatform(s): PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox OnePublisher(s): Borealys GamesDeveloper(s): Borealys GamesRelease Date: August 22, 2017 (PS4)Price: $19.99Just looking for the review score?! The story of Mages of Mystralia is a familiar one. You play as a young girl named Zia who is learning to become a mage.

Along the way, Zia learns that something is off in Mystralia, and she must use her newly acquired skills to save the kingdom. Zia is impressionable and goes wherever the wind takes her.

Even when she must keep her magic secret because mages are outcasts, she never really seems devastated by that fact. She’s not the most complex character around, but Mystralia is hardly a character-driven adventure as none of the game’s characters really shine. Instead, you’ll find a simple, yet enjoyable fantasy tale where the character motivations and goals are clear.As is the case with these fantastical adventure games, you come to expect certain regions from the map. Lush and green forest regions, snowy mountainous areas, a molten lava stage, etc. There’s only so many ways to make an open map feel diverse and interesting. Mages of Mystralia manages to checks off all these boxes, due to the gameplay relying heavily on casting elemental spells.

Players will need to utilize the skills at their disposal to interact with and manipulate their surroundings. There’s enough original puzzle-solving and enemy encounters to keep things interesting.Mages of Mystralia begins by giving you four different basic spell types based on the four elements – earth, air, fire, and water. Players will acquire runes which modify these basic spells, allowing you to create multiple spells with different variations. These runes may change the direction or behavior of the spell, but you really won’t know exactly what happens until you experiment with the different rune combinations by placing them on the hexagonal grid map. Elements become projectiles, things detonate, change direction, and so on. Players will learn the art of spell-crafting just as Zia does, one step at a time. The spells are used in combat and puzzle-solving.

During combat, it’s more or less up to the player to decide how they’d like to attack. They can use elemental melee attacks or shoot projectiles at enemies farther away.

Some enemies are resistant to certain types of elements, but it’s fairly easy to tell when your attacks aren’t having an effect. You can’t really rely on button mashing, but with such an interesting spell system why would you want to?Boss battles are slightly different than normal combat. None of them are too challenging, but they do require players to take advantage of more specific spell modifications at their disposal. However, it never takes more than a couple tries to determine an enemy’s weakness and figure out which spells pinpoint that weakness.The puzzles encountered during Zia’s journey serve as obstacles to story progression, or to collecting more runes. Just like combat, players will use spells combined with different runes to solve them. Usually, a recently acquired rune is the answer to a new puzzle, but players must still determine which spell type to use in conjunction with the modification.

These puzzles might entail igniting torches, shooting projectiles, or interacting with a set of objects within a limited time frame. There are times that players will have to return to an area to solve a puzzle because at the time the player is not equipped with the necessary rune. It is not always required that you do so, but the map is small enough that backtracking isn’t a huge deal.I’ll admit that I was off-put by Mages of Mystralia‘s art style at first. The characters and environments in the opening cutscene were blocky and perhaps overly cartoonish.

It definitely made me anticipate that Mystralia would be more of a children’s game. However, the game really only looks this way during cutscenes, of which there are very few. The colorful presentation of the world of Mystralia did grow on me as I spent more time with it, but I still would have appreciated stronger character design. There were some very solid boss designs, however. The game carefully skates the line between being too childish or mature. The plot and its art style certainly have storybook qualities, but there are times it treads into darker areas.

There are low points in the story and you do encounter some threatening enemies. Hell, even Zia’s death state when you lose a battle – coupled with somber music – is kind of morbid. Achieving that balance between lighthearted and unsettling is hard to achieve. Nonetheless, Mages of Mystralia refuses to be a game reserved exclusively for adults or children.In short, Mages of Mystralia is an enjoyable fantasy tale with a great gameplay system. From a story standpoint, it’s hard to explain why a young mage would have all the spells at her disposal right away. Thankfully, the game’s spell-crafting system solves this problem, by teaching players to join and re-join spells with runes to achieve the desired effect.

It really feels as though you learn with Zia, and while the game might have benefited from a few story and character revisions, it’s ultimately too fun not to recommend.Review Disclosure Statement: Mages of Mystralia was provided to The OuterHaven by the publisher for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our for more info.Want more game reviews from The Outerhaven? Consider the following. SummaryMages of Mystralia is not without its shortcomings, but its gameplay is too fun not to recommend. Through the use of an insanely clever system of spell-crafting, there’s just the right amount of challenge in combat and puzzle-solving to be had.

By pairing a lighthearted adventure with solid gameplay mechanics, there’s something here for everyone.Pros:. Clever spell-crafting system. Fun and enjoyable puzzles. Endearing world designCons:. Story is somewhat predictable. Overly cartoonish at times, specifically during cutscenes.