The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story - Freedom Fighter
Ah yes, League of Legends. I quit playing that game since 2015, and my mental health has improved since then. Jokes aside, I do think it's interesting that Riot has opened a subdivision to make these spin-offs. No, not the Teamfight Tactics or Wild Rift. It's the single-player story ones.
And The Mageseeker would be the third one released so far. After Hextech Mayhem and Ruined King. They seem to have been getting a lot of traction as of late, and might be Riot's way of splitting the income source, and help establish their champions better just like with Sylas here. Whom I've never played, but judging by how he plays here, he seems pretty intriguing to try out.
While I did find something to enjoy and worthwhile to go through, there are numerous shortcomings that really drag it down. Even some that might be nitpicks, I've really wished this game had changed its approach to presentation and allow itself to be much more than a League of Legends spin-off.
A man forced to accept his faith finally decides to break from the shackles that held him for 15 years, after escaping from the prison and creating an uprising for other imprisoned Mages in Demacia, Sylas makes a run for it, before swearing his revenge against those who've wronged him.
Which sadly is not much of a start, he meets Garen and battles him but being defeated before also ultimately saved by his old tutor. This was a big prologue affecting several characters, including Jarvan IV, Shyvana, Garen, and Lux. But man, does things start slow, the story just doesn't have the emotional beat and intensity to keep things going at the moment.
Killan guides him out of the city, and the game explained to me about the fundamentals of the combat. Which also had a pretty slow start too, I thought at first it was ok, but the boring pace of the story and little action did not help to set the mood much.
That being said, though, the gameplay design is also pretty fun. Sylas's ability stealing skill is in the game, which is cool for casting some magic to certain enemy mages opposite to the one they cast. Eventually, later on, I get to unlock, learn, and equip other elemental skills to be cast on my go.
Melee combat is easy with light and heavy attack mix, and with the chain gap closer to reach enemies and do swipe attacks. They can even be used for helping with exploration by reaching places not normally possible, and solve level puzzles as well.
After an hour, the gameplay picks up and provided myriads of challenges. It's not enough that Demacia army has only mages, knights, and soldiers, but they also leave a few creatures to battle as well. Sadly, battling them doesn't drop anything, and are just there to be path blockers for the next route. And is also an issue of the game's lack of RPG mechanics in an RPG style action game, I would have really liked it if I didn't have to always resort to opening chests all the time for loot.
Combat is fun though, I think I was really invested in how tough each of the fights can be and yet fairly balanced well enough to not feel like it was pandered for players to easily breeze through either. The mix of different enemy types helped to take away the repetitiveness.
Progression does pick up when I get access to the hub, before taking missions. These missions can also come in secondary ones where I basically dungeon rush the level, before battling out with either a high number of mobs or have a boss fight. And man, those boss battles are something else entirely.
As the story have progressed, after several missions, I was tasked on to find one of the rebel leaders leading a group of mages against the royal kingdom. Sylas and Leilani do what they can to free other prisoners on the way. The game makes use of these story events by embedding certain mechanics into them.
And might I add, the story was actually picking up from here. I thought I wouldn't care about the story and would try to rush it, but was nonetheless invested in it as well. The boss fights are what makes the combat exhilarating, they push me really far and put me in chokeholds too.
This particular one was simple, but had me grabbing the other ledges to avoid its super area attack. Changing elemental form, I mean, I was 2 and half hours in and already was this making me panic on the controller a bit. There were rocks also falling too, and had to dodge by jumping on the next ledge.
I haven't died yet in this run, yet I did feel like I was close to death at certain points, making me adapt to the combat. There were more stuff added to the game, with an interesting upgrade system within the hub area. Rukko as a young smith can upgrade my health, damage and other stats, while Leliana allowed me to unlock new elemental abilities and increase mana slots. (sadly not there yet)
Sadly, this has one of those issues, being that it's limited to just coin farming. Which doesn't seem like is readily available everywhere. So I had to spend carefully on this run, before using them in combat. And I did really want to use these abilities, rather the ones limited to at first.
And the visual art style doesn't help to immerse into the world itself, I mean, granted there are level variations that does look great. But, come on, this is League of Legends. You could have gotten a little more than just pixelated visuals.
It makes some side activities like finding Silverwings look less satisfying without the visual flare. This game costs 30 USD even, and the low details kind of eats away the charm, why forsake on the production quality here? Heck, levels are so linear, it kind of ruins any interest I would have to explore more. At least, the way certain 2D textures reflect when I move looks nice.
I never got around to finishing it, reaching around 1/3 of the game, but the story picks up, finding mages to rescue helps out a lot providing different combo abilities to use too. I think, putting aside some of the issues it does have, this makes a pretty great spin-off story for Sylas. If it wasn't for the high asking price, however.
This is obviously a LoL game, so I never expected less from the writing itself. It still kind of rubs me the wrong way when a game showing this much promise wouldn't offer more, sounds like various missed opportunities, too. On its own, it is a really fun game especially from Moonlighter devs. Its build-up is slow at first, but it gets there.
I just wish Riot gave these guys either more time or told them they could have done better. I've also done my research, and you can finish playing this even from 8-14hrs even. Really questionable value proposition. I am somewhat looking forward to Riot Forge's other offerings, but I hope they don't go wrong like they did with this.
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I've heard of the game before but this is the first time I've seen it here, to be honest Riot isn't always good at making games, the game doesn't look bad but I wouldn't say it's very good and it has a lot of shortcomings, especially as you mentioned. I hope they will be more successful in their next game.
They are hiring a lot of good indie devs for these releases. I've heard good things about Ruined King tho, so waiting out to see if the later ones coming out do the same.
It's a popular opinion from what I've read. A lot of people think the game is "okay", but coming from Riot, people expected better, especially for the price they've priced it at. It's like the game just can't quite get off the ground. Personally I've seen it on stream and it doesn't appeal to me at all, the only thing I liked was the pixel art which is cute.
Man, either it could have chosen a better art style with vibrant detail or a better progression system where there are more than one ways to earn currency to unlock stuff, least pad the game's length by doing so.