Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements | PC Review

April 16, 2019 Tomas Becks

Mage’s Initiation: Reign of the Elements is the latest point and click adventure game by Himalaya Studios. They previously released Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, which was a humorous wild west adventure. With Mage’s Initiation, they go into a different direction, namely that of high fantasy. And it’s not afraid to wear its influences on its sleeve, because this game is above all else a big love letter to Sierra’s Quest for Glory.

A Kind Of Magic

D’Arc is a sixteen year-old initiate of the elemental arts, and he is about to start on the most important journey of his young life. In order to pass his initiation, he is given three quests by the Mage Masters of Iginor. If he passes all three tests, he will become a true mage. But first he needs to answer a few questions. These questions will decide which element he will belong to, influencing the kind of spells he will be able to cast. Will he become a Water mage, a Fire mage, an Earth or an Air mage? It all depends on the answers he gives. Once that is done, D’Arc is on his way to explore the city, forests and wasteland of Iginor.

So You Want To Be A Mage?

Mage’s Initiation is a rare hybrid of point and click adventure and old school RPG. The best example of this is the aforementioned Quest for Glory series. In that classic Sierra game, you could pick a class to play the game (fighter, rogue or mage), which heavily influenced how you played the game. MI:RotE does the same, but here it’s the type of elemental mage you become that influences that.

Once you get your initiation underway and you’re exploring the world, you start earning experience points. There is a total of 500 XP to be earned, and every 100 xp, D’Arc gains a level. With that level, he also gets new abilities, spells and character points to improve his magic. This then influences his combat capabilities, because yes, this game has combat. Arcade, real-time combat.

Luckily, the makers have realized that not every point and click adventure gamer is good at this, so the difficulty of the combat can be adjusted. I played the game at the lowest difficulty, because I prefer to play for the story. That way, I kept the game going smoothly, and didn’t get too frustrated by the arcade sections. The game also auto-saves when it gets to a dangerous situation, so in the case of death, you can easily return to the moment before that. I still highly recommend saving often, especially if you want to try out different moral choices.

Old (Mage) School

The game’s graphics are charmingly old-school pixel art. There are some beautiful shots in the game and the animations runs really smoothly. The cut scenes between chapters are a different kind of animation, a more traditional one. This I liked a bit less, as it clashed a bit with the pixel art. It worked really well to propel the story forward though, by showing some plot development as D’Arc is trying to finish his initiation quests. All characters are voice acted, and the music adds to the high fantasy atmosphere.

The controls are very simple: point and click! But the makers actually enable you to choose your favorite way of using the game’s menu (for instance as a wheel, or as a menu at the top of the screen). When combat is entered, the keyboard can also be used in cooperation with the mouse, which makes it easier to control D’Arc. This leads to perfectly smooth gameplay until you run into a bit of scenery while running away from a redcap goblin. I hate it when that happens.

The Saga Begins

The game took me 22 hours to finish. That includes replaying a few sections to try out different choices. The game was challenging enough in the puzzles to keep me pleasantly occupied, but not get frustrated. When I finished the game and sat all the way through the credits to get a nice little post-credits sting, I got the opportunity to export my character to be used in the sequel. I really hope this sequel gets made, because Iginor is a very interesting and intriguing setting that I want to explore more while continuing D’Arc’s journey. Himalaya Studios have created a fantastic game, with a massive franchise potential, and I really hope we get to witness that potential be made real.