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Diving into a role playing game should be an overwhelming experience, with vast worlds to explore, epic quests to conquer, and fearsome enemies to vanquish. The success of an RPG hinges on a unique version of a living, breathing world. You should be able to lose yourself in it. An RPG that shirks this responsibility to focus on action needs to have some truly extraordinary combat to stand out. It should thrill and excite at every turn. As an action RPG, Mage Knight: Apocalypse has its sights squarely set on combat. The problem is that doesn't even do that very well.
It was surprising to find that Mage Knight, based on the universe of a tabletop game, is essentially a dead world relying completely on its action to carry it. It's a good-looking world to be sure, but as the old adage goes, looks aren't everything. As one of five heroes, it's your duty as an Oathsworn to protect the land from the coming of the Apocalypse dragon. It's typical fare that unfortunately plays out in a linear fashion, with essentially no side quests to speak of. Towns are populated with NPCs that you can't speak or interact with. It's far from a living, breathing world.
As an action RPG, Mage Knight: Apocalypse has its sights squarely set on combat. The problem is that doesn't even do that very well.
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Entrenched in action, Mage Knight makes combat a constant by throwing tons of enemies at you and your party throughout its six chapters. Initially it seems a blessing that when you die you're revived from the nearest save point, and the enemies that you've killed stay dead and those injured stay injured. You quickly realize, however, this is because you're meant to die and pick up where you left off, as there'd be no way to progress without doing so. It's incredibly frustrating, especially at the beginning of the game when you haven't filled out your party yet and it's just you against wave after wave of enemies.
When you do snag some party members, they'll keep you from taking some hits, but not much beyond that. When an NPC joins your party, you get to pick a class for them based on what duties you want them to perform. Yet, they often don't seem to follow it. No sooner a long-range attack dwarf (with a mini-gun no less) joined my party, than I watched him charge forward to melee the first enemy in sight. Thankfully, there are some limited party commands. Frantically clicking stop is necessary as party members have the tendency to run ahead and attack, aggravating large groups of enemies in the process, just in case you could actually handle the dozen you were already fighting. At least multiplayer allows you grab some friends to round out your party. Playing with some friends is a blessing, provided they're in the average range of intelligence.
As a single player game, Mage Knight basically boils down to relying on your own abilities to forge through. Thankfully you do some have some good abilities in your arsenal. Each character class gets three different disciplines in their skill tree. The skills you use level up and unlock new and improved ones. Unfortunately, there are limited spots for them in your casting bar. The end result is that you don't end up using a large percentage of your obtained abilities. When you're being overrun by enemies shouldn't you have access to all of your abilities? By the end of the game you don't feel as powerful as you should because you are relying on such a small number of abilities.
Grabbing loot off corpses helps you power your character up, but only through a lot of wasted time. Due to the overwhelming number of enemies, you've got to check a ton of bodies for items. A lot of the time picking up the loot isn't worth it anyway. Even in the later chapters of the game, you'll still be picking up a lot of low-level garbage. The named characters often don't even drop anything of any use. Finding good equipment is a total trial and error crapshoot.
Technical difficulties hinder the experience, as well. I experienced several crashes on two different computers with increasing frequency during the last two chapters. The worst part was that the crash often corrupted my last quicksave, leaving me to retrace my steps. In total it ended up setting me back hours, leaving me to wade my way through tons of enemies a second or even a third time. At other times, the game refused to start up. Mage Knight has been patched once since release, but apparently is in need of another. If only a patch could solve all of its problems.
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