MAGE DUEL - The Original

Intro

"Mage Duel - The Original" is a turn-based RPG that was being developed by Max McGee using RPG Maker VX. A game whose development was cancelled for an extreme remake that was also cancelled. Which I suppose is kind of hilarious since it means the evil people running this mage arena will never face the justice they deserve. That justice being a zombie munching on their poisoned remains.

Story

You play as a mage whose fallen into debt hell and been sold to the arena where you can earn money by entertaining Lord Algus and his guests in fights to the death. Though why the arena would spend massive amounts of money on training gladiators to just quickly do away with them is beyond me considering it takes a lot of time and effort to turn someone into an effective fighter. I suppose one can argue this is a fantasy setting where any old spellslinger can be turned into a legendary gladiator in a short period of time, but it still seems like people would appreciate seeing matches between experienced fighters over watching random amateurs trying to kill each other.

At any rate the people running the show appear to be evil, but if the player was ever going to get a chance to do anything about it remains unclear. This is because the demo ends shortly after you've won a major fight against another undefeated gladiator, but the people running the show heavily suggest your powerless to stop them since your never going to be able to form an effective resistance with them controlling the whip as it were. And I'm not sure how were supposed to fight back when there are old legends floating around the place that are probably willing to hold up the system even as the bodies pile ever higher.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front the game features your standard turn-based combat system. As such there really isn't that much to talk about when it comes to the game's mechanics. Though I do question the game's balance considering it was pretty easy to get through the demo using the conjurer. Though I'll admit the greatest strength of that class is that the zombie is overpowered since it can slowly destroy any and all enemy units by inflicting them with the poison status effect. And while a few enemies can remove this status effect using a cure spell. This also leaves them open to being stunned by the zombie or getting inflicted by the poison status effect again after removing it.

About the only thing that holds the zombie in check is that it has a limited amount of health and that the player can't heal it using a basic heal spell. I'm also not sure how the conjurer class gets rid of their defeated summons, but I'm guessing it involves the use of the banish spell which I suppose is meant to help check the power of the conjurer class by making them spend an entire turn on summing an ally and another turn on removing a defeated one to summon additional help. Albeit this isn't particularly needed in the demo in my experience since your summons will be more than a match for most of the enemies you'll be facing off against.

And the lack of enemy variety means the only major status condition you'll need to worry about is poison if your playing as a conjurer. This is because the game lacks useable items like antidotes to get rid of this status effect nor does it wear off over time. And while you do get to pick a secondary class during character creation. The obvious choice if your not a healer is to pick the healer's basic healing spell as your secondary class ability in order to make yourself more durable.

And the game makes picking your starting spells a bit interesting by giving the player four class points to spend on their spells with the more powerful abilities costing more points. So you can get access to an unstoppable demon lord as a conjurer, but then you'll have to give access to spell variety by spending most of your points on it.

As for how potentially broken the other classes are I couldn't say since I wasn't willing to play through the game a second time in order to test them out. This is because a lot of the time spent on the demo is just wasted on panning shots of the arena and on the announcer telling you who your opponent is. And this gets very annoying in a hurry. This game is even worse in this department than "Jotun Colosseum" by Illy.

To make matters worse the arena's interior is needlessly huge in my opinion. So much so that I wish the developer had copied Illy's layout for "Jotun Coloseeum" when it came to the stores since it would make getting to the shop you want a little less time consuming. Though at least this game allows you to level up your character.

Graphics

The game is mostly comprised of RTP assets, but does include a few assets that were taken from elsewhere.



Unfortunately these lifted graphics don't necessarily blend in with the look of the rest of the RTP in my opinion. As a result they tend to be a bit jarring and lower the overall quality of the game in my opinion.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game was alright in my opinion. Which is to say I can't think of anything particularly positive to say about this aspect of the game, but I don't have anything particularly negative to say about it either.

Conclusion

On one hand the game's demo does function and allows for a few challenging battles if you decide to forgo spending your cash for appropriate upgrades when necessary. At least if you play as the conjurer whose ability to overwhelm opponents in one on one fights with backup is the stuff of nightmares. After all, how does one balance this ability while allowing for other classes to seem equally powerful?

I suppose I'll never see the answer to that question unless this class was reworked in the remake, but in this game it seems overpowered even with the player being forced to spend an entire turn on summoning a single ally. After all you can summon up to three additional backup dancers if you pick a bunch of low level summons.

Though the sheer amount of time spent on panning shots makes this one feel like a game best avoided in my opinion, but if you were one of those people that enjoyed watching that gate open in "Jotun Colosseum" and were simply turned off by the sheer amount of grinding needed to beat this game. Then this project might appeal to you.