In one of my favorite combinations, for instance, I might first root an enemy in place with a kinetic lobbed spell and then follow it up with a targeted ice blast. The road to revenge here is littered with spell components of varying quality that drop as frequently as guns in Borderlands, and finding the best playstyle for each situation requires constant and careful experimentation. Here, however, the focus on crafting allows for a considerably rich gameplay experience. Superficially, a Battlemage in action looks like a cross between the double-handed magic of Skyrim and the plasmids of BioShock.
You can equip three sigils at a time, which is just enough to add meaningful spell combinations without getting overwhelming. (I never quite mastered the counter-attack spell that helps survive close-range encounters, but it didn’t feel important enough to bother with.) You instead expand your powers with eight sigils that run the gamut from simple fire and ice to telekinesis and corruption, and then focus those energies into a targeted ranged attack, an area-of-effect spell, and a magical barrier. Melee combat is not an option here, and it never feels needed. Further exposition reveals itself in the purple "echoes" enacting scenes from the past, but it tends to get lost among the banter and superior performances of voice actors Jennifer Hale and Troy Baker.īut provided your system can handle it, these concerns never entirely undermine Lichdom: Battlemage's primary goal of taking the archetypical mage class and realize its full potential by unshackling it from the mana bars and cooldowns that normally confine it. Choose the male, and the roles are reversed. Choose the female, for instance, and the male alternative becomes a sidekick that flits in and out of reality and informs you of what lies ahead. Developer Xaviant here gives us a flimsy tale of revenge against some ruffians known as the Cult of Malthus, but the hows and whys of the simple fiction are never so meaningful as the playful relationship between the two playable characters.
My early troubles were appropriate for a first-person roleplaying game that follows the exploits of a mage that only learns his or her craft after a grizzled wizard slaps some magic cuffs their wrists seconds after the opening cutscene. Lichdom: Battlemage thrives on these moments, and they soothe the burns inflicted by the poorer aspects of its design.
I adjusted my strategies and, at last, I was victorious. But then I took a step back, studied the tooltips, and made new spells accordingly. All of the strategies and spell combinations I'd spent the last couple of hours perfecting on weaker enemies now proved no more powerful than feathers against a freight train, and I'd steeled myself for the possibility that I'd never see the second stage. Had I been playing Lichdom: Battlemage with a gamepad, I'm sure I would have flung it across the room during the first boss fight.
0 kommentar(er)
