Game: Avencast: Rise of the Mage

From: http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/avencastriseofthemage/review.html

As I have said, I bought avencast as some reviews sounded interesting. It has good ideas but I will need to return to it and play it some more before I have any opinion.

Gamespot of course have an opinion

Every dungeon in Avencast is loaded with brainteasers both big and small, so it feels like you’re engaged in a more momentous task even when you’re really just playing delivery boy or killing a boss monster. You gather the runes needed to complete the inscription on a shrine; tread carefully across platforms labeled with letters and symbols that must be activated in a specific pattern; weaken invulnerable creatures with beams activated by manipulating telescopes. Many dungeons have an adventure game-lite vibe. None of the puzzles are all that difficult, although each requires just enough thinking that you can’t sink into the typical action RPG stupor that resembles something akin to a hypnotic state. You’re not handed solutions, either, which means you often have to experiment with levers and the like instead of just reading books and scrolls as in so many other RPGs. If anything, the many riddles serve to more thoroughly immerse you in the gameworld and make the game feel like more of a traditional RPG epic than a hack-and-slash, despite the arcade-oriented combat.

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