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Mistmare (PC, Single-Player RPG)
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garrett
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Graphics Style and look reminds of me Nihilistic's Vampire
Post Thu Mar 28, 2002 8:19 am
 
Zephyr Elvirion
Baron of the Court
Baron of the Court




Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 336
Location: New Zealand.
   

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Mistmare and I can't understand why it's not more popular. Like any game it has it's positive and negative points - but to its credit the positive far outweighed the negative.
Mistmare's plot is excellent and it openes up nicely as it moves along at a good pace, with the nice twist near the end. It has good character development and Isador can be rounded out nicely with points in 'spiritual' and/or 'coporeal.'
At first I found it difficult to get to grips with the fact that you can't 'save' the game when you want to (although you can install a patch to remedy this), but after a while I found that the last game save was close enough anyway, so it ceased to bother me.
The, almost, complete absence of a soundtrack is somewhat disturbing. I guess I've gotten used to accompanying 'mood' music and the lack thereof was rather disconcerting - although the there were ample sound effects. I liked the main character voices, but thought that they might've been used more.
The graphics are superb and the cities beautifully rendered with wonderful attention to detail. It's easy to move around - with the exception of Anglia, where several incorrectly placed rocks makes movement unenessarily difficult. Several times I had to go back to a saved game because Isador had become 'stuck' on a boulder.
I liked that you could go back and replay a chapter a second time - or however many times you want - and your experience and Inv went with you. By the time you've repeated a couple of chapters you get to be very powerful and have some great weapons and magic enhancers.
The monsters in the fog are interesting - from the grotesque to the beautiful - and 'harvesting' them is fun so that they can be realeased to fight for you later on. However I had some trouble 'harvesting' them, but maybe it's just my style of fighting. I like to use my sword to almost kill the monster and then change to the Sharpness of Scythe to 'harvest', but often the change wasn't quick enough.
I'm not usually a magic user in games, as I find it's just too dammed complicated and Mistmare was no exception. The different 'schools' of magic was a good idea, but with so many choices it inevitably lead to confusion. Many times I was busy consulting the manual to see which key produced what magic result only to look up to find Isador was dead. But the magic's graphics are a treat.
All in all Mistmare is a game I thoroughly enjoyed playing and will, no doubt, play again.
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There're 3 sorts of people who're good at maths - those that are and those that aren't.
Post Sun Aug 24, 2003 12:33 am
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hoyp
High Emperor
High Emperor




Joined: 02 Oct 2002
Posts: 501
   

I probably would like it if the friggin camera wasn't' so floaty and if it ahd a different comabt system.
Post Sun Aug 24, 2003 12:51 am
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Vegeta The Butcher
Guest






   

This game is junk, I installed it and took it off my comp in about 30 minutes. The interface is jacked. Gothic 2 kicks it in the ass.
Post Mon Aug 25, 2003 9:05 pm
 
Sir RubberDuck
Head Merchant
Head Merchant




Joined: 20 Aug 2003
Posts: 56
   

Take a look at gamespots review. 1.7 out of 10. It's funny, because the reviewer mentions enough good aspects for it to score at least 4.0, but still he goes for the lowest rating.

So anyway, is the game that bad?
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Post Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:28 pm
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Zephyr Elvirion
Baron of the Court
Baron of the Court




Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 336
Location: New Zealand.
   

No, I don't think so. Maybe it's just not a 'mans game'. There's not as much killing monsters - unless you want to get to them in the 'Fog' then there're more than you can shake a Sythe at. A man could go nuts in there - if he had the patience to make it TO the 'Fog', lol. I admit it's a little slower moving at first, but it does get going - believe me it does
_________________
There're 3 sorts of people who're good at maths - those that are and those that aren't.
Post Wed Aug 27, 2003 9:22 pm
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Drakkar
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This game is very »slow« at the beginning but it becomes far more interesting after few hours of playing. I would give this game (as a hardcore RPG player) around 6.5 to 7.0 and this can improve up to 8.0 when properly patched. Don`t believe what Gamespot says. The game is NOT that bad.

Just two notes!

don`t buy this game if you have Sound blaster Live 5.1 or Value because these two cards have incompatibility problem with Mistmare.

don`t play this game until further patches are released. (one is already in the making). The game is quite buggy and have several slowdown problems (even with v1.6 patch)

Official site for info.
http://mistmare.arxeltribe.com/news/
Post Fri Aug 29, 2003 8:34 pm
 
TheCleric
Fearless Paladin
Fearless Paladin




Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 230
Location: Upstate NY, USA
   

I'd have to rate this one at about a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10.

The graphics weren't bad, but could have been better (windows half buried on city streets). Cool spell effects though!

The time system was poorly instituted (when you have spare time, you usually can't find anything you want to train in; when you find something you want to train in, you're pressed for time and often have to cut it short.

You can tell that it was localized (into English) at some point and not as well as it might have been. Some of the phrasing was confusing.

The manual does a poor job of explaining the controls. This is especially true for spellcasting. An insert with all the spells and their affects would have eliminated much of the confusion.

Definite internal problems somewhere. I've got an Audigy 2 Platinum sound card, 2.8 P4, Radeon 9800 Pro and a Gig of RAM and I had many slow-downs and a couple of crashes at 1024 X 768. If you pause the game, then Alt + Tab back to the desktop and go back, it usually corrects the problem. I'd say that there's a definate problem that still needs patching. Not a show-stopper, (as problems go), but still annoying.

As was mentioned, not much music. Or, it could be that there is and it's just not working properly. Most of the times I had problems, were when the music started playing. A few clipping problems here and there, but nothing major.

The keyboard needs better re-binding options. You can't use the arrow keys for direction, or re-assign any commands to the numpad keys.

The last couple of episodes/levels are short and seem rushed. Poor ending. It kind of leaves you wondering if you're finished.

They have released a SDK, available on "Sinister Systems" pages. (Sorry, I don't have the URL). So, I guess a modder could work on new levels, if they wanted to.

All in all, it was an OK game. Definitly better than it was reviewed. I'd say it was worth playing just for the original story. It also has a nice feature, where if you die, you can restart the area you're in with somewhat easier opponents.

I'd rate it higher, if the developers would release another patch to fix the slow-downs (I read an interview, where they said they knew about some memory leaks).

Sadly, there seems to be next to no fanbase or support for this game. I think the bugs and poor reviews really did this one in. It's a shame, because it's really not that bad once you get past the initial learning curve and get used to the controls.

One piece of advice. They say this game was developed for "Point and Click" movement. Although you can control movement that way, it's very imprecise. If you play this game, do yourself a favor and use the WASD keys for movement.

PS- Does anyone who's played this know where you can learn or train "Observation"? I went all the way through the game and never got off 0.
Post Sun May 30, 2004 11:52 am
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