While the magic and spell-crafting components are absolutely amazing, the game is lacking everywhere else. Spell crafting includes a wide variety of sigils, or energy-types, like fire, ice, time (phase), and necromancy. These enrgy-types are crafted into "shapes" like a ray, homing-missle, area-affect, shield. The spell shape is then given an additional layer of effect by an "augment" focusing on destruction (damage), control (paralyzing emeies), and mastery (stacking damage with a sigil-specific special effect). Additional, you collect a wide array of these different components, each with their own bonuses, which can then be combined to increase their rarity and effect. The result is a very rewarding game of exploring spells and experimenting with the results of these combinations.

Unfortunately, that's where the fun of this game ends. With an uncompelling story, the painfully liniar route quickly has you begging for anything different, until the different appears. The linear routes are replete with magically poofing-in enemies in clearly delineated battle arenas connected by short narrow walking paths from one to the next. As predictable as it gets, until one member of the third identical wave of enemies spawns in right behind you. Five enemy types over and over again: archer, swordsman, mage (archer who teleports), wraith (flying enemy with an unblockable freeze attack), and "captain" (one of the previous types with tripple-health and boosted damage). After your fifth arena battle of cheapness on both sides, you're ready for a change... the bosses. Unfortunately, boss battles just turn into drawn-out pattern matching endurance games. 1: Spam damage. 2: Retreat and kill small mobs. 3: Dodge. 4: Rinse and repeat.

This whole leaves you nothing but frustation, unless you happened to already know the best spell combos, in which case you're just blowing through everything. Unfortunately, if you DIDN'T already know those combos, it will take a LONG time to re-collect enough components to craft a new set, now that you know what you SHOULD HAVE done with those spells. Realizing that your best option is to start the game over, you will most likely quickly decide against going through the same linear repetitive grind, just to try a new spell combo.

I really wish the story and journey had been better thought-out.

While the magic and spell-crafting components are absolutely amazing, the game is lacking everywhere else. Spell crafting includes a wide variety of sigils, or energy-types, like fire, ice, time (phase), and necromancy. These enrgy-types are crafted into "shapes" like a ray, homing-missle, area-affect, shield. The spell shape is then given an additional layer of effect by an "augment" focusing on destruction (damage), control (paralyzing emeies), and mastery (stacking damage with a sigil-specific special effect). Additional, you collect a wide array of these different components, each with their own bonuses, which can then be combined to increase their rarity and effect. The result is a very rewarding game of exploring spells and experimenting with the results of these combinations. Unfortunately, that's where the fun of this game ends. With an uncompelling story, the painfully liniar route quickly has you begging for anything different, until the different appears. The linear routes are replete with magically poofing-in enemies in clearly delineated battle arenas connected by short narrow walking paths from one to the next. As predictable as it gets, until one member of the third identical wave of enemies spawns in right behind you. Five enemy types over and over again: archer, swordsman, mage (archer who teleports), wraith (flying enemy with an unblockable freeze attack), and "captain" (one of the previous types with tripple-health and boosted damage). After your fifth arena battle of cheapness on both sides, you're ready for a change... the bosses. Unfortunately, boss battles just turn into drawn-out pattern matching endurance games. 1: Spam damage. 2: Retreat and kill small mobs. 3: Dodge. 4: Rinse and repeat. This whole leaves you nothing but frustation, unless you happened to already know the best spell combos, in which case you're just blowing through everything. Unfortunately, if you DIDN'T already know those combos, it will take a LONG time to re-collect enough components to craft a new set, now that you know what you SHOULD HAVE done with those spells. Realizing that your best option is to start the game over, you will most likely quickly decide against going through the same linear repetitive grind, just to try a new spell combo. I really wish the story and journey had been better thought-out.