Mage Knight Apocalypse Preview

Out of all the card games that have come and gone through my house, oddly enough one game not based on lightning tossing rodents or metal dragons with razor spatulas managed to make it in and stay around for quite a while. Mage Knight is a tabletop title that utilizes pre-painted figures that you move around anywhere on the table using rulers and inches instead of set spaces and gameboards, and the characters are allowed a certain range of movement, attack strength, defense, and life points until they die. There were also rules that were drawn up on team-based movements, terrain modifiers, and line of sight rules, and the whole thing was actually very entertaining and quite creative. Well, Bandai Namco games is now setting up to release MageKnight: Apocalypse on the PC … will it fly with MageKnight fans? Honestly, I don’t know …

MK: A is set in a fantasy setting just like the collectable miniatures, and centers around five separate heroes (Dwarf, Vampire, Elf, Amazon, and Draconis) as they are guided by a magical race of beings known as the Solonavi. The quest? Each must rescue their world from an evil army surging forwards and threatening to bring about the apocalypse and their evil champion, a five-headed Apocalypse Dragon. In order to do this, they must unite all of the factions in the land to rise up and fight against this army that threatens to destroy everything.

Exciting, huh? Well, in order to bring about a game that showcases action and adventure, MK: A is presented in a real time, top-down kind of format similar to other fantasy RPG titles. Each of the five heroes that you can choose and play with is customizable down to hair, color, and name, and each is outfitted with various strengths and weaknesses … such as one being better with magic versus melee-fighting ability and so forth. In addition, each area (strength, intelligence, etc.) will level up as each is used, different outfits will change appearance and can be outfitted with gems to boost stats, and you can even find recipes for potions and stuff and collect herbs and items to make them.

The title isn’t looking too bad so far, and the gameplay was pretty fluid. Movement is done using left clicks on the mouse or W,A,S,D, commands as is targeting and fighting, and there are hot buttons at the bottom to quickly change out powers or special abilities. You can also recruit heroes to join in with you on your quest and control them as well in simple STOP, ATTACK, or FOLLOW commands. The game is also very quest- and scenario-driven, so there’s not a whole lot of open area to explore and much of the game is quite linear, but there are plenty of action-packed fights to get into, boxes to smash and loot, or items and herbs to collect to make new things. There will also be a multiplayer mode in the final finished version of the game which will allow you to make your own character from scratch rather than picking a pre generated one and will allow you to team up with other players online or fight against them. I wasn’t able to play it, so I don’t know if this will be real time as well or turn based at this time.  

That last statement leads me to the biggest issue that you MageKnight fans may run into. It is the fact that the game isn’t like the table-top version, which is how I was hoping it would be set up simply due to the fact that there was so much strategy and opportunity that you could work with in the miniature game. Instead, MageKnight : Apocalypse follows in the footsteps of other fantasy titles in it’s presentation and the gameplay. While it’s moving OK and looking decent at this point, it is something that we’ve seen before multiple times and tends to get repetitive after long periods of playing. At this stage in it’s development it’s neat to see a game set in the MageKnight universe coming to life, but we’ll have to see how the final version turns out to see if it’s going to be worth the wait or if fans will just head back to the tables once again.