I want to note right away that I have been waiting for this game for at least the last few months, accidentally seeing it in the Steam store when I was looking for some kind of fantasy wizard simulator. Before that, I came across a kind of Hogwarts simulator on Unity, which allowed me to build rooms in a magic academy and teach NPCs magic. So when I saw a game being developed by homegrown developers Spell book Creations that promised a wizard game in the style of the infamous Gothic series and with the ability to create your own magic academy.
I immediately added Spell Master: The Saga to my Wishlist. And so, on February 17, 2022, the game was released. I go to Steam, I get a notification, I open the store page… and to my surprise, she has mixed ratings. In the reviews under the game, players invariably described the project as a crude game with poor optimization, and these theses were heard in both positive and negative reviews. In the latter, there were also threats of a refund. But this did not stop me, and I bought the game, since there was a 20% discount on it at the time of release. As a result, the game left me with rather mixed impressions.
For those who still want to get acquainted with the product, I will say briefly: the game is really raw and poorly optimized, but it has the potential to become at least a good clone of Gothic and just a good game in the spirit of the old school.
Spell Master: The Saga greets the player with a nice main menu. But version 0.8. in the lower right corner raises some suspicions…
Main plot
The story begins suddenly, from the moment the hero awakens in some ruins. Your nameless protagonist, whose gender and appearance are predetermined by the developers and cannot be changed, is a student of some magical academy that was attacked by enemies. The hero with a detachment of the same magicians as he hurried to the rescue.
but the teleportation process did not go according to plan and they accidentally activated a magic trap on one of the ancient portals far from their destination. Everyone died, except for the protagonist, who unwittingly privatized a magical sphere and an alien spirit in his head. From this moment the game begins.
The charred remains around the protagonist are the same detachment. It’s a pity that no one else remembers him in the game, including the main character.
It is worth noting that Spell Master: The Saga immediately confronts the player with the atmosphere of Allison’s cruelty – this is the name of the game world. The very first quest after a little training in basic mechanics is this tragic story of two sisters captured by robbers. One of them fled to the nearest ruins.
where she dies from the paws of rats. After an unknown time, the protagonist stumbles upon her ghost near a bloodied corpse, whom she asks to save her sister. Unfortunately, the player is not destined to complete this task – as soon as he leaves the ruins, a cutscene plays in front of him, in which one of the bandits kills the target of our task. Of course, the game allows you to try to avenge the girl, but the player will quickly realize that this is not such an easy task.
I would like to say that the rest of the quests are saturated with the same gloomy atmosphere of cruelty, hopelessness and powerlessness, but no. They are just made in the traditional style and in order to complete them you need to go to such and such part of the map and get X things. Only a few quests are very diverse, but the design of the world saves the player from boredom.
The scene of the events of Spell Master: The Saga is a certain Empire, about which almost nothing is known. From what can be learned in the dialogues, a few books and notes, as well as hints on the loading screen, we can conclude that the character has fallen into the wilderness, which is full of various ruins left over from various events of the past, whether it was orc raids or a war with rebellious wizards. In a word – a long-forgotten region, covered with forests and mountains and filled with ruins, wild animals, monsters, undead and robbers.
And the player will feel this atmosphere in everything. So, the quest will send the player to an abandoned mining town, in which the path to the mine has collapsed, and giant spiders filled the dilapidated wooden buildings. In another quest, the player will be sent to the ruins in the mountains, covered in a deadly fog. And just exploring the world, you will surely come across many empty and destroyed houses, the remains of carts and long-extinct fires.
The only inhabited place in the game is the village of Foothills in the center of the map. However, although it is clearly intended as a kind of hub, in reality, the player will return here solely to turn in the quest and take a new one. Yes, it will be possible to relax in it, but the game will allow the player to do this exactly twice, and at strictly plot points. Moreover, even now it is clear that this mechanic is also conceived as a way to restore the health of the protagonist, but in practice the game simply does not allow you to use it.
Concluding the topic of quests, it should be noted that they have their own nuances. The game has a quest log that briefly describes quests, including directions on where to go and where to complete it. In very rare cases,
