Review 1
Purchased!
The spell crafting system and sheer number of them is fantastic, having said
that almost the entire game is about running in circles away from enemies so
they don't touch you. The maps aren't particularly interesting, and enemy
variety is more or less melee fodder, simple ranged wizard, weird boss remix of
one of those two.
I think a good sequel could be made of this.
Review 2
Purchased!
I really want to like this game, but simply can't. I really tried, too.
The main premise of the game is to combine up to 3 runes to make new and unique
spells, which sounds like it would be a lot of fun as runes drop like crazy. The
problem is that you need an additional item called a 'combiner' to create a
spell, and these are incredibly rare. 1 combiner is required for 2-rune spells.
If you want to create a 3 rune spell, you need an 'advanced combiner' which I
have never seen, though you can make one using 4 regular combiners. I have also
never seen 4 combiners in 1 contiguous game.
I was looking for a game that had a mechanic like this, forgot I had Runers and
fired it up. I got probably 10+ rooms into the first dungeon, found around 8
runes but 0 combiners, then got killed using the starting weapon, again, and
remembered why I stopped playing. I have put 6+ hours into this game and I've
combined maybe 2 spells total, and those I had to look up because I didn't want
to waste runes (well, not the first one because I didn't know about the combiner
mechanic the first time). This game should be about experimentation, but it
practically requires a guide so as not to waste the arbitrarily rare (and in my
opinion, unnecessary) combiners. Booooooo,
I know this game is 10 years old, and the developer is most likely long gone,
but this 1 mechanic has always kept me from being able to play this game despite
desperately wanting to do so. If there could be an easy mode without combiners,
or remove them entirely, it would be totally worth playing still. I'm honestly
surprised they thought this was a good idea since the game brings 1 thing to the
table, freedom of spell creation, but locks it behind this stupid rare drop.