Indie Game of the Week 316: Mages of Mystralia

This week I dug real deep and managed to find the one game from 2017 I haven't played yet. Mages of Mystralia starts as a by-the-books Zeldersatz but starts to emerge into something a little more interesting as it progresses. Created by Canadian studio Borealys Games, with financial assistance from a successful Kickstarter, Mages of Mystralia sees the young woman Zia suddenly burn down her cottage as her innate talent of fire magic suddenly emerges: as magic is forbidden in the titular kingdom of Mystralia and its practitioners, known are mages, are outlaws, this thrusts poor Zia into a life on the run for which she was unprepared. After some tutelage from a friendly mage from the mage sanctuary village of Haven, Zia is ready to protect her homeland from enemies the local populace know little about—enchanted creatures and dark conspiracies that threaten the kingdom's fragile peace—all the while staying one step ahead of the ruling Marquis and his mage hunter army.

Mages of Mystralia wears its influences on its sleeve, presenting an open world that branches off into self-contained dungeons that Zia visits in a story-mandated order, each containing a mix of environmental puzzles and enemies to fight. Her only tools, though versatile, are four spells that represent the classic elements: fire, air, water, and earth. The way the game works around this limitation is to provide runes: each rune will, once edited into the spell's make-up, change the behavior of that spell, sometimes enhancing its inherent destructive or defensive capabilities or switching its usage completely. For instance, the earth spell in its default state creates a shield that allows you to block enemy attacks to give you a window to respond during the enemy's cooldown. However, you can apply to it a rune found shortly into the game that changes its nature to a short burst of speed, handy for some of the game's more timing-intensive puzzles or to escape an enemy getting too close. The fire spell begins as a short-range burst of flame, only capable of lighting torches, but becomes a handy ranged weapon once the "move" rune is applied to it. Your spells continue to improve and evolve as you find more runes, and the game encourages you to tinker with the in-game spell editor to get the desired effects: the only limitation is that the more runes a spell has, the more mana it costs to use. However, since your mana regenerates quickly enough there's scarcely a drawback to packing as much into every spell as possible.

It's because of this system that Mages of Mystralia starts relatively slow, with a bunch of useless spells and some annoying goblin enemies to kite around and fight, but starts to become more compelling once more of its tools are available to you. The puzzles have been increasing in complexity as well, though the game is generous enough to let you know if you're currently able to complete the nearby puzzle with the runes you have (given it's an open world game, there are times where you might poke into a location or bonus area you're not supposed to be in yet). Likewise, the game's generosity with its transparency also means its world map lets you know how many chests and runes have been found (and can be found) in each area: in most cases, the overworld areas are full of items you might have to backtrack to later with more runes, but with dungeons it tends to be the case you can grab everything on your first visit. The story will also have you whizzing around to various NPCs and recurring locations like the farming hamlet of Greyleaf for the sake of the story, creating a dynamic narrative that isn't just pointing you to the next dungeon in the sequence.

The game has three difficulty levels and I opted for the middle one, yet it's proven to be unexpectedly tough. The versatility of the magic system means it might be prone to abuse later on in the game where you might be throwing nukes down left and right, but early on there are fights which you really need to keep on your toes about. The bosses in particular have been beefy damage sponges with few opportunities to apply damage, creating some endurance-style battles. So far I've been surviving thanks to scarabs—single-use items that revive you upon death, another Zelda staple, but you can only hold one at once—but between the situational awareness and the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of certain spells against color-coded foes there's a lot to keep tabs on in its frantic, tactical battles. Spells tend to occupy specific roles regardless of their current function: whether the earth spell creates a shield or a quick dash or a decoy, either are meant to be defensive measures. Fire tends to be good for distant targets, air (as lightning) is melee-range, and water (as ice) provides some mid-range AoE with a heavier cooldown. With those roles in mind, you can edit together new variations on your magical repertoire without changing the core strategies that have become muscle memory. It's a system that takes a while to find its footing, and there's a lot to keep in the back of your mind as you gather more runes to use, but it's kinda neat the degree of customization on offer. It reminds me a lot of the magic editing system found in RPGs like Tyranny, where instead of spells offering fixed, pre-determined effects you're free to create your own parameters to suit the purposes you have in mind for them, like an unholy merger between conjuration and programming.

Mages of Mystralia doesn't look all that impressive at first blush, with Zia tossing around basic cantrips in a pleasant if blobby and cartoonish art style which serves its purpose but doesn't stand out much, but the game's deeper waters soon become apparent the more you play and the more you delve into its gradually-unlocked mechanics. In fact, the simple and straightforward look is probably beneficial to just how arcane and complex it can get under the hood. I've yet to find out what the latter half of the game is like and whether it can maintain this pattern of tossing runes at you which completely change the way you use the spells that can apply them, but it's definitely been a game that has grown on me with its surprises the more progress I've made. That said, the combat can still be a little too chaotic for its own good and the enemies way too accurate and fast at times (that might be more the fault of me choosing to take on the serious difficulty level for a bit more of a challenge, however) and the story and characterization have been relatively dry and uninteresting so far. Otherwise, I'm intrigued by what I've seen and intend to press on further. If nothing else, it'll be a fun exercise to figure out where it'll fit into my ridiculously overstuffed GOTY list for 2017.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)