His father has been killed, his sister kidnapped and Aurax has just discovered that he has magical powers. What a way to spend the day after your birthday!

The Art of Magic: Magic & Mayhem – from Climax, Virgin Interactive and Bethesda Softworks for the PC – is an intriguing, complex game that requires not only quick reflexes, but some thought as well.

You will have to learn how to control camera angles in order to see what is opposing you. But the trouble with all that is that the graphics combine a mixture of three-dimensional art and flat, pixilated two-dimensional graphics. But we will get to that in a moment.

The tale begins after the 18th birthday of Aurax. He is summoned by his father and told that his sister has not returned from the northern woods. He goes searching for her, only to find her embroiled in a lopsided battle with goblins – lopsided because she has magical powers and can dispense them quickly. She reveals to Aurax that he, too, has great abilities and must learn to focus them. Just as he is beginning to come to terms with these abilities, both must head back to the village of Olicano, which is under attack. While Aurax is seeking his father – who has been mortally wounded – the perpetrator of the attack, Milesius, has kidnapped his sister. Aurax must use his newfound abilities to find and rescue his sister.

But wait … there is more at stake here. It seems that there once was an all-powerful wizard, known as the Magistrator who held the magic powers of the Earth in balance by creating three orbs – the Chaos Orb, the Lawful Orb and the Neutral Orb. After the Magistrator’s death, the Neutral Orb was lost, and those with the Lawful Orb disappeared to an island retreat. The barbarians in charge of the Chaos Orb now, seemingly, have free reign over the lands and Chaos has run amuck. A new Magistrator is needed, could it be …?

So begins the tale. Aurax awakens after the raucous party on his 18th birthday, and begins the quest to bring balance to the land. There are many challenges to overcome, battles to be fought, and quests to accomplish.

Perhaps the biggest challenge to overcome is the player interface. This game is mouse- and keyboard-driven game, and requires players to work the camera angles just right in order to snag objects necessary to continue on. The camera angles are controlled by the numerical pad, and you can readily rotate the view to see what you need to collect. But therein lies a problem as well. While the overall look of the game is three-dimensional, some environmental elements are two-dimensional – like trees. They look like over-pixilated blocks stuck on the screen that force players to rotate around – which isn’t always convenient when confronted by an unrelenting attack. It is tough to try to rotate the camera view while fighting off attackers.

The game does feature some nice effects, like the magic. There are areas of effectiveness, clearly defined by a red zone, but the spell effects are very nicely realized.

The sound of this game leaves something to be desired. The vocal characterizations are derivations of a Scottish accent, and it is almost as though some of the characters are trying to emulate Sean Connery.

This game had the potential to be a truly wonderful voyage into exotic lands, but actually turns out to be only an average RPG. Sure, there are challenges, and the learning curve is about 30 minutes before you will feel comfortable enough to handle the vagaries of the control elements – which are exactly intuitive – but this game has some nice ideas.

The Age of Magic is rated Teen for animated blood and animated violence.

Install: Easy
At its maximum install space, this game can suck up 1 gig of hard-drive space. But you can install it at a lesser level, and it does go on fast and easy.

Gameplay: 7
There are many stalls in this game. Each time you leave one area, the game reloads and asks which level you wish to compete at.

Graphics: 7
This is a mixture of three-dimensional, and two-dimensional graphics.

Sound: 6.5
Who conjured up all the Sean Connery clones? The vocal characterizations are somewhat dull.

Difficulty: 7.5
This game asks what difficulty level you wish to play at each time you move from one level to the next. The player interface can be somewhat confusing. Though you can seemingly right click on most things to pick them up, sometimes you have to work the camera angles to get to the right angle to pick up the selected items.

Concept: 7
The evil taking over the world has been done before, but the sister kidnapped item is a nice touch.

Multiplayer: 6.5
This game supports IPX, TCP/IP and Internet play through the GameSpy network. It is all battle action.

Overall: 7
This game had great promise, but wasted it on static gameplay, overwhelming camera angles, time delay between scenarios, and a redundant storyline. All that said, it still is a challenging RPG though it must fall into the average category.