You can find my full thoughts here. If this ever leaves early access and sees a full release, I will do a full review at that point.[www.the-backlog.net]

Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to play Diablo with poor English and horrendous movement? Well you're in luck, because here's Magician's Apprentice! Magician's Apprentice is an early access Action RPG that attempts to give that old school Diablo feel. What it actually comes out as is something that looks like it was run through Google Translate (note: with English set as the ONLY language), and combat and movement that feel extremely clunky.

Movement is available in 8 directions through WASD usage. As of now, there is one area in the Prologue where you can climb to the top of a building to kill some zombies and skeletons. Once you're up there, have fun getting down. I was stuck for several minutes out there as I tried to find the exact right angle to get down, nearly giving up thinking I was just stuck there for good.

Combat comes through setting up runes (spells) for use. Certain runes will let you continue chaining them across and down, while some will only let you continue down. Once you've set a rune, it's stuck there unless you set one that will end the across setup. I couldn't find any sort of key that would let me remove them from being set without doing that. You can also set special abilities to these runes which are extremel useful but do increase the MP cost (MP cost also increases based on how many pieces you have set for that key). If there's any sort of melee combat for those times you run out of MP, I couldn't find it. MP and HP do recover fairly quickly however, with HP often recovering faster than enemies can hurt you!

Right now, I don't see much hope for Magician's Apprentice. The developers have not responded at all in the discussion board. They do state that the price "will increase over time", and right now the game doesn't even feel like it is worth the $10 asking price, even if you do get "all future updates for free once you buy it". Unless the game improves by leaps and bounds, you're much better off just avoiding Magician's Apprentice and finding a better Action RPG to play instead.

[url=http://www.the-backlog.net/initial-thoughts-magicians-apprentice/]You can find my full thoughts here. If this ever leaves early access and sees a full release, I will do a full review at that point.[/url] Have you ever wondered what it'd be like to play Diablo with poor English and horrendous movement? Well you're in luck, because here's Magician's Apprentice! Magician's Apprentice is an early access Action RPG that attempts to give that old school Diablo feel. What it actually comes out as is something that looks like it was run through Google Translate (note: with English set as the ONLY language), and combat and movement that feel extremely clunky. Movement is available in 8 directions through WASD usage. As of now, there is one area in the Prologue where you can climb to the top of a building to kill some zombies and skeletons. Once you're up there, have fun getting down. I was stuck for several minutes out there as I tried to find the exact right angle to get down, nearly giving up thinking I was just stuck there for good. Combat comes through setting up runes (spells) for use. Certain runes will let you continue chaining them across and down, while some will only let you continue down. Once you've set a rune, it's stuck there unless you set one that will end the across setup. I couldn't find any sort of key that would let me remove them from being set without doing that. You can also set special abilities to these runes which are extremel useful but do increase the MP cost (MP cost also increases based on how many pieces you have set for that key). If there's any sort of melee combat for those times you run out of MP, I couldn't find it. MP and HP do recover fairly quickly however, with HP often recovering faster than enemies can hurt you! Right now, I don't see much hope for Magician's Apprentice. The developers have not responded at all in the discussion board. They do state that the price "will increase over time", and right now the game doesn't even feel like it is worth the $10 asking price, even if you do get "all future updates for free once you buy it". Unless the game improves by leaps and bounds, you're much better off just avoiding Magician's Apprentice and finding a better Action RPG to play instead.