The Mageseeker: a League of Legends Story, analysis

hand in hand Digital Sun (Moonlighter) we have been able to delve into a new adventure published by Riot Forge: a 2D action game with pixel art aesthetics and that is part of the expanded universe of League of Legends. We have invested almost 17 hours in completing 100% of what the title offers, delivering chains left and right, absorbing and using magic of all colors and we have also taken a look at the complicated political situation of Demacia… almost nothing. The Mageseeker will especially resonate with fans of the lore of the League of Legends universe because its plot is interesting and it’s canon, but it can be enjoyed perfectly if the famous moba of Riot Games we are indifferent.

Sylas of Dregbourne

Wrongly imprisoned as a teenager by an inadvertent mistake, Sylas escapes from his prison 15 years later after stealing the powers of an innocent Luxanna Crownguard, a member of the Demacian elite who had taken pity on his plight. Sister of Garen, captain of the guard and personal friend of regent Jarvan IV, she is exposed by her mage status to Demacia’s harsh and intolerant anti-magic policies and is forced to flee from it. sylasStraddling between doing the right thing and doing what is necessary to survive, he escapes leaving the city on fire and begins to build a revolution with the hope of changing the vision that the people have about magicians, but especially driven by the thirst for revenge against all those who so many years ago condemned him to die while alive.

Sylas is a wizard, but not an ordinary one. He is a magician capable of absorbing the powers of others and then using them at his convenience. This is so in League of Legends and the way he has brought himself into the game is almost the main mechanic on which The Mageseeker rests. There is a remarkable and truly well achieved effort on the part of Digital Sun to capture the essence of the multiple characters of the “lore” of the game and transfer them to the screen. It is a fantasy to see how well this section has been carried out in the sense that all the abilities of the champions that we see on the screen are perfectly consistent with what we already know, along the lines of what we saw in Ruined King, for example.

Structured as a 2d adventure, we will be executing missions in a completely linear way from the beginning to the end, where there will usually be a boss or a series of waves of increasing difficulty. The title offers minimal exploration to the player and very little penalty for dying due to the abundance of checkpoints, but during the moments of combat there is enough intensity. It’s very clear when the game expects a fight from us because the character almost always arrives in an arena designed for that purpose, much like Doom or Bayonetta do. But it is also true that the game contains a lot of these arenas, both in the mandatory and secondary missions, and all it does is remix the type and number of enemies on the screen, leaving a certain feeling of tiredness over the course of the screens. longer. Especially in the optional content, which adds nothing to the story except the stellar appearance of a prestigious secondary at the end, we will even repeat the same boss during many of those campaigns, perhaps changing the pattern of his attacks but nothing more or the number of attacks. enemies that will appear

puzzle-style combat

The combat in Mageseeker uses a rock-paper-scissors system that works quite cleverly. Enhanced to the max, sylas you can equip a maximum of 4 spells simultaneously and use them when you have mana; however, he can steal the spells of enemies he comes across and almost always has an opponent who is weak against that element and can use it against him. This is how we basically play the game: we draw, throw, dodge, melee combos (which are generally strong against almost all enemies), repeat. Sometimes maneuvering exactly where we want to go or acquiring the magic we really need is a bit rough, really. And there are also quite a few combos that we can do depending on how we are equipped but it will be very common to see us dancing from side to side of the screen drawing and casting spells without sometimes knowing exactly what is happening and why or limiting ourselves to what we know works without need to go further.

But instead the bosses are another matter entirely. Without being extremely difficult by any means, we’ve had a great time fighting against those characters that we’ve seen so many times in so many League of Legends games. It has managed to create interesting combats, with mechanics that synergize wonderfully with those of the protagonist, and that require us to do more than just pound buttons without meaning. And as the rivals grow in power, we too improve Sylas and the camp from which he plots his revenge. There are characters to talk to, collectibles to collect, and overall a sense of story progression that carries over to all the elements that come to us from the screen.

There is close to 30 spells that, once learned, we can take with us on each mission and change on the fly at each checkpoint of the same. It is possible to create a previous strategy knowing what weaknesses will abound in each mission but normally the game has a tendency to give you everything you need at all times without having to do your homework. Magicians of fire with ice usually come out, so that you can tickle them yourself, and similar. In a way, it’s a shame that we’re left with the feeling that the possibility of needing to equip correctly to guarantee the success of the encounters has been wasted; there are at least half of the magic that we never got to equip permanently because it was never necessary to do so, really.

the aesthetics pixel art It may not be liked by everyone but at the Mageseeker it has its charm; the title moves smoothly, we’ve hardly encountered any performance issues, and the abilities look terrific. From the forests to the prisons, laboratories or the capital itself, everything looks more than good even with the scale of some encounters. A separate mention should be made of the encounters with the bosses, which are usually with multiple phases, and with spectacular animations that are not usually look at this level with pixel art. It is also seasoned with a wonderful soundtrack that gives even more color to what enters our eyes. I wish there was a voice over all the dialogues beyond some as a testimonial because it would have embellished the set more, but at least it is available in a lot of languages ​​(also in Spanish) and when there are voices it is the original actors who give them voice in League of Legends. thumbs up.