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| The game plays from a top-down viewpoint, as is tradition | There are a variety of colourful spell effects on offer |
The game opens with a lavishly-produced cgi movie depicting the fall from grace of a character named Modo. Exiled to Earth from a magical realm, Modo is supposed to live out the rest of his days as a mortal; however this is not to be. Angered by his plight, Modo chooses to attempt to regain his lost power and destroy the world in the process. So far so cliché, but the big twist in the story comes with the inclusion of a Bioware-style morality tree. You can choose to become powerful and stop the plight of the world, or alternatively you can take a darker path and assist your would-be nemesis in the destruction. Your appearance in-game alters as a result of your chosen route; with some suitably evil looking attire and character-morphing if you choose the dark side.
In fact the atmosphere in Dawn of Magic is suitably blood-curdling throughout, from the opening menu screen through to the on-screen action, the game oozes a dark and occult style which will appeal to a lot of people. It’s nice to see an RPG that doesn’t stick to the elves, trolls and humans approach, although quite how successful this will be as a result is open to debate. I guess we’ll have to wait for the sales figures.
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| World of BloodCraft? | The game has a very dark tone |
Actual gameplay is more routed in convention however, with a top-down perspective that can be spun around if necessary and traditional Diablo or Titan Quest-style click and hack mechanics. The usual graphical hotbar for abilities is on offer, and character progression is handled via a standard experience meter and levelling abilities. There are several different schools of magic to excel in, with the standard approach of offering more destructive abilities at the expense of defensive buffs and conjuration etc.
The game world itself seems suitably epic; with some of the towns we encountered spanning more space than a full level in a smaller RPG. There seem to be plenty of NPC’s to interact with and side-quests to complete, although these mostly fall into the ‘kill x number of beasts’ category that plague modern titles. Graphically the environments we saw were non-remarkable and fairly cluttered, but it’s entirely likely that this will change as you progress through the story. The final release should also see a comprehensive suite of multi-player competitive and co-op game types, which should extend the life of the title further. It’s always nice to have the option of playing through an RPG like this with a friend in tow.
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| Some of the town locations are absolutely huge | Suitable attire for a magic-wielder |
The version we tested was fairly complete, with a solid engine in place, if a little graphically dated. The game was actually released last year in Russia under the name ‘Blood Magic’ so it’s no surprise that it looks this way, although as a benefit should run on the more modest systems out there, which can only be a good thing. It appears that only localisation is left to be completed, so Dawn of Magic should be hitting stores soon.
