The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story Review (Lilatoxin19)
I wish I could like this game. It feels like it's trying to be a similar game to Hades, without knowing what makes it work.
The Story:
I think it was nice to play a game from the perspective of one of Runeterra's more "morally dubious" characters. Sylas was honestly the most boring character out of the bunch. The rst of the "primary" cast was fine, but Sylas feels like he got everything handed to him. He got out of jail being a jerk, nobody wanting to join his cause, only to find someone that trusts him mere seconds after said dilemma gets mentioned.
I also have my grievances with Sylas' character writing and design, but the game couldn't really change anything from base lore, so...
The Gameplay:
I liked the idea of the ability to copy from the enemies. Kinda like fighting fire with fire. But the gameplay felt very clunky. Combat feels like a slog, since enemies are made to be nothing but damage sponges. The same applies to the player, since later they throw so many enemies at you with crappy hitboxes that it is basically impossible to go through bigger fights without having to heal multiple times. The movement and aiming is also very sucky. Firstly: You can only dash in 8 direction, which caused a fair amount of unnecessary hits to connect. Secondly: I shouldn't have to remove my thumb from the dash button (the only way to survive half the attacks), just to aim a grapple at an enemy I was already running towards.
The difficulty:
The game has a huge problem with difficulty. At the beginning, it's a struggle to fight the huge tanky enemies while coming to terms with the shitty controls. The game increases in difficulty only until you get the health and defense upgrades, from then on you're set for the rest of the game. But once you upgrade your potions, to heal more often and in larger quantities, you basically never have to use them. In a lot of stages there are enemies that give you the ability to shield or heal. Which takes care of health. Apart from the fact, that there is a healing checkpoint every twelve seconds of gameplay during the second half. I literally died only three times in the game, all before my save-state reached over 50% completion. Even though some bosses have interesting gimmicks, it turns into "how can I abuse my dash invincibility to not get damaged?"
TLDR: It could have been so much better. The gameplay was bad in just the right places as to not be able to enjoy it. Story could have given us some more depth (but that's a Riot problem). Difficulty curve dropped, because you fight the same 12 enemies over and over.
Can't recommend. Only in really big sale if you can't control yourself.
Or get Hades