Lichdom: Battlemage
| Developer: Xaviant | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Xaviant Games | Sound: |
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| Year: 2014 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: First person fireballs | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
6/10 | |
I’m going to tell you about a clunky but interesting game that I still remember, seven years later, to the point of suddenly wanting to reinstall it. Admit it—a specimen like this deserves a spotlight.
The premise is simple: take a first-person action RPG, something like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (2006). Now, remove the warrior and assassin classes. While you’re at it, strip out environmental interactions, multiplayer, and the ability to jump. What’s left? An overpowered mage, nonchalantly meandering around, unleashing elemental chaos on anything that moves.
Are you following, so far? Now throw in the last ingredient: a rune based spell creation system, similar to Lords of Chaos, for example.
The big innovation, according to the developers, is that there’s no mana bar, no cooldowns. The promotional spiel boasts thousands of possibilities in spell crafting, which is, if you ask me, outrageously exaggerated. Enough, however, to have fun experimenting throughout the campaign.
The campaign, let’s be clear, is just an excuse to test out your new powers on endless waves of obliging monsters. In that respect, the game might appeal to fans of modern hack & slash games, the ones with sophisticated skill trees (Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Path of Exile) paired, paradoxically, with simplistic and repetitive gameplay mechanics.
The spell creation system is dense and poorly explained. Numbers, jargon, and cryptic icons require real trial-and-error learning. That doesn’t bother me, as it aligns with my image of the fantasy mage whose power correlates to the years spent studying cryptic tomes. Magic is hard. Let’s just accept that.
However, what does shatter my fantasy immersion is the artificial approach: “weaken-control-destroy”. To maximize damage, the game forces you to apply different “markers” before granting you the right to let fireballs fly with reckless abandon.
They had the same idea in Borderlands 2—they called it “Slag”, purple paint you diligently applied to each target before drying it off with a shotgun. I find it ridiculous. I don’t like the visual effect that harms the atmosphere. Worse, this rigid mechanic slows down the pace, giving combat a systematic, routine feel. Shouldn’t a battle between wizards be spectacular and chaotic? Would Gandalf have defeated Saruman if he’d shown up with a paintball gun?
Here’s an odd quirk: while the developers didn’t let us jump, they felt compelled to include a button to run—but with no limitations, no stamina bar. You click on the “run” button once, and off you go, until the next loading screen. But who wants to walk? If the function only amounts to forcing me to press a button after each loading, I call that an idiocy.
Another curiosity I can’t explain: there’s no crosshair in the middle of the screen—presumably for immersion, which is fine. But on the other hand, you have these white text overlays beside elite enemies, barely visible, drowned out by the cascade of pyrotechnic effects. I only noticed them after taking screenshots, and now I can’t unsee them. It looks like a debugging feature a tester forgot to turn off. It’s ugly, and if you look closely, they’re even visible in the game’s official promo video.
I realise I’m roasting this game pretty badly here. So, you might ask, does it have any redeeming quality? Yes, the combat. The combat is insane! Things explode, burn, freeze, and bits of meat fly in every direction!
Unfortunately, boredom starts creeping in by the second playthrough (the new game plus mode), mainly because all the narrative scenes are inexplicably cut out. I didn’t think they were that thrilling, but they offered little breaks that helped ease the monotony.
I should also mention that the endgame is particularly frustrating. When a concept is built entirely around customizing and optimizing your “character sheet”, you expect some control over the process (in this case, rune synthesis). But here, it’s impossible to modify the characteristics of forged runes (no reroll option, for those in the know). Relying on chance means grinding the same monsters for hours and discarding 99% of the loot.
One last letdown: I waited all through the campaign for the moment when I would finally be introduced to this charming young lady glimpsed in a loading screen. Then I finished the game. No sign of the green-syringe girl. I sadly realised, while going through my screenshots, that she’s just a generic enemy you encounter by the dozen. Inconsolable…
And since I had fun with the screenshots:
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