SpellMaster: The Saga

Review

If this game was released in early access, I would have been far more comprehensive in regards to many of its problems, but I travelled for around 8 hours through the lands of Allion, only to realize at the end that the story is not even complete. The game only contains the first chapter of the saga and nobody knows if and when more content will arrive. From what I saw, it’s highly unlikely that it will ever be finished, but even then, it could take a couple of years or more with only two people at work. This is already upsetting players who are spending their money and time on the game, so I’m hoping to see developers turn this into an early access release as quickly as possible.

Going into details, SpellMaster is an open world action/RPG greatly inspired by Piranha Bytes works (Gothic, Risen, Elex), borrowing some good gameplay elements from them, but also many bad ones. First and foremost, character movements are really clunky (especially jumping) and they get worse during combat, when you appear to be slower than your enemies, and every time you push a button you can feel some input lag (using a controller). The combat is still somewhat acceptable, mixing basic melee attacks with spells, and including roll dodging, blocking and parrying. Since it’s an open world and you can go where you want from the start, it’s easy to encounter dangerous enemies who can kill you in one or two hits. Those who have previously played Gothic or Risen will understand that this can be considered part of the old school RPG experience, yet I think combat is still too much balanced in favor of enemies. The game doesn’t hold your hand, so I recommend following the main quest at least until you get inside the town where you can start grinding by completing a few optional side quests.

While the gameplay is generally sufficient at this state, though not complete (spells and crafting are still basic), the quality of the story is the biggest problem. The writing is bland, poor and badly localized, with some grammar errors probably due to the lack of an English writer or translator. Story has many plot holes and makes use of poorly designed cutscenes that simply alternate characters speaking in turns. What’s worse is that the game ends abruptly and asks you to wait for more content coming from the developers, which is simply terrible and unforgivable, especially for the price asked.

Artistically, the game succeeds at re-creating the Piranha Bytes style and graphics, and it’s impressive to see what a team of two can achieve compared to a full team of developers. There is a great level of interaction with items and environments, a night and day cycle and the open world, while not really that big, still manages to catch the player’s attention. The quality of the setting is probably the strongest point of the game, especially if you like dark worlds with realistic, rusty and old fashioned graphics.

The User Interface needs a complete re-work though. At its current state, it’s not easy to navigate and looks dated, while poorly mixing different fonts for the experience gained messages or when “X character will remember your choice” notification. Just to get you an idea, it’s like mixing Times New Roman and Arial fonts within the same page (really awful).

Unfortunately, the optimization is quite bad and, despite being above the recommended specs, I experienced random stutters and frame drops to mid-low 20s. The recent update slightly improved the performance, but there is still a lot of work to do on this front. There is no v-sync option either, so expect screen tearing and GPU often overheating for nothing. There are also some occasional bugs, such as getting stuck on terrains or falling through them, which will force you to reload your last save (pro tip: save often!).

If SpellMaster: The Saga was released in early access, then I would totally understand many of the above-mentioned problems, but it isn’t. It’s a full release, sold at full price, that doesn’t deliver what’s promised in the trailers and in the description. I would suggest waiting before buying the game to see if the situation changes and these issues are addressed by the developers.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

SpellMaster: The Saga Steam Store Page