Mazes of Fate
Nothing new here.
Tags: Mazes of Fate Categories: GBA Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Michael Hanning on Jan 9th, 2007
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazes of Fate (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Role-Playing | No | ||
It turns out that the GBA is the home for a new renaissance of RPGs. The Final Fantasy series has moved there en masse and new classics such as Riviera still appear. Mazes of Fate is a first-person RPG hoping to capture that same magic, but falling pretty far short.
Unfortunately, Mazes of Fate doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. You start your quest by choosing to play as a brawny warrior, brainy mage or busty rogue. They all have their distinct stat differences and slightly different playing styles that will be familiar cliche to anyone who’s ever played an RPG before.
The actual gameplay is where MoF tries to throw in more depth. The game is a series of dungeon crawls connected by some conversations in an overworld. You’ll find yourself drifting from townsperson to townsperson to find out who needs some rats killed/a box found/their missing friend returned in safety, try to navigate the conversation menu to a point where they offer you something in reward for taking care of it and then you hit the dungeon. The playable characters are all blank slates as far as personality goes – apart from the brief piece of backstory you get when you choose them, you’re not going to be finding out anything new either. The character illustrations are large and detailed when you’re talking, at least, so you have a good idea of whatever effect your words are having.
The parts where you’re wandering around the villages or in the overworld don’t look as good, though – the buildings and people are relatively small and smooshed-looking, your avatar in the game world looking particularly like a troll doll. It’s a relatively short walk from one location to the next, however, and the game at least does you the favor or marking the name of locations so you’re sure which drab-looking house is the one you’re after. Without that the entire thing would probably take twice as long.
Unfortunately, the game begins to go downhill once you enter a dungeon. Despite its first-person viewpoint the game doesn’t handle like a FPS or even other first-person RPGs such as Oblivion. Instead the thing is turn-based, even in walking – you don’t smoothly move from one area to another, but you move ahead one tile. This bears in mind for turning, combat and manipulating objects. The tile-based nature of the walls and floors make the jerky motion headache-inducing in short order.
Combat is about the same – an enemy will wander in front of you, you’ll choose to either attack or use magic. If it works he’s dead more or less instantly, if not you’ll repeat it a few times. It’s pretty rare that you find an enemy that will beat you in your first encounter and your health regenerates quickly as you walk. Individual fights are only really good for the XP, not the fun.
Also, what nobody seemed to remember when making Mazes of Fate that nobody likes being stuck in a maze from the first person viewpoint. Mazes on the backs of cereal boxes and such are interesting because we can see them from above and make decisions, but when you’re in the thing just running around it grows frustrating quickly. There’s an overmap you can reach by pressing select, of course, but running a short distance, stopping to check a map, running a short distance and then stopping again grows old quickly. If this were a DS title and the map filled one screen it would be a different affair, but this quickly grew tiresome. You’ll also have to check the map every time that you flip a switch or push a button – due to the exceptionally limited field of vision, pressing a button means you can’t see anything but the button in front of you. You have to refer back to the map again if you want to see what door, if any, that button opened. Again, frustrating.
Mazes of Fate is a good attempt to bring the old-school style of the first person RPGs to the GBA, but unfortunately it just can’t compare to likes of Riviera or the re-released Final Fantasies. The story never manages to capture you, and the stale repetitive visuals aren’t any better. If you’re really jonesing for an RPG you might appreciate the memories this title brings back, but you can still do much better.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Old-school flavor + You can make a few choices in the dialogue |
4.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Jerky motion will probably give you a headache - There's nothing here you haven't seen before - Drab looking, drab sounding - Would have been much better on the DS |
|
| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| You can find better RPGs for the GBA, period. It's something of a diamond in the rough, it's just a bit too rough to recommend. | |
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Tags: Mazes of Fate
Posted by Michael Hanning on Jan 9th, 2007 and is filed under GBA Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
