Magical Mysteries - Path of the Sorceress

Find the source of your magical powers to vanquish evil in a daring puzzle challenge.

Aldera arrives at the doors of an ancient temple, weak and with a vague memory. She was once a great sorceress who protected her fantasy world from evil, but now, a mere mortal looking to regain her lost powers. While striving to restore her abilities, her enemies know this is the opportunity to strike a final blow. Can you help Aldera recoup her strength and defeat her enemies of darkness? Use your skills in 70 fantastic levels to search for enchanted scrolls and make helpful potions, then defeat opponents in head-to-head battles. Improve the effectiveness of your spells to dispense greater damage against the frightful creatures as you continue to discover the truth behind your lost memories. Play two extra mini-games, test three difficulties, and enjoy a fine balance between fast-paced battles and brain-teasing puzzles.

Introduction: Match 3 games have been made and remade into different sub-genres to try and make the most of the already monotonous genre to provide some fresh ideas that will launch the match 3 games again in the market at its full glory. There were some excellent ideas in the past, like the invention of the match 3 genre variant called Luxor games. This was only the beginning of the story that is ongoing as there isn’t much to change in a game that made on a core structure that is unchangeable. Story, of course, is important factor in a game, but what is a game with good story and poor gameplay…? The game you are about to play (played, playing) is something as a small experiment of introducing something new from already seen elements from previous games. Gameplay: The story is about a sorceress called Aldera who has lost her memory and is now left to regain her memory back and simultaneously fight other magical users like witches for survival… The whole game is made like a one big tournament contest full of dueling magical creatures which are striving to the ultimate goal, however the goal for you is not the same as for others as your stakes are much higher. During the match 3 matches you will be getting rid of magical tokens that are on the field. Those tokens when matched with other tokens, with the same color, release a certain amount of energy that will cause damage on the opponent you are currently battling. But besides the fact it inflicts damage on the opponent it also releases additional power that is used to fill the power-ups, to show the full power of the magic you possess, however the quantity of that energy that is needed needs a couple of multiple matches in one case. The tokens come in different colors, like mentioned, and those different colors give you’re the energy for filling up different types of power-ups that you can use in a game. For example the red tokens are used to fill up the fire ball magic, while the blue ones are used as a freezing power. The same goes for the rest of them, but if you can’t wait until the power-up is filled, and if you don’t notice the number of match 3 matches needed to fill a power-up is new known for sure. There is no meter that shows the current level of the energy that is collected so you will just have to keep doing it until it is finished. Your opponents aren’t left empty handed either as they have their own number of special powers that they can use on you. The only way of preventing this from happening is by preventing them to collect enough energy to activate their power-ups by simply being better then them. Now there is a slight catch to the power ups and their usage. As you get power-ups and unlock additional ones so does the explanations for them appear and tells you when the best moment (situation) to use them is. The thing is that after a couple of power-ups unlocked and more coming your way, you might stop for a while to figure out what is the best power you can use in the current situation. Because of this ‘stop to think’ you might lose more then you could gain by it. The whole process of getting new magical skills is connected to the other part of the game that is more puzzles based. You will be searching for parts of scrolls and making points. The scrolls search is quite obvious to what you need to do, while the potions are gotten from the tokens you match and fill the potion bottles with them. As a result to this you can learn a new skill or enhance a skill to a new level that you already possess. This will introduce some additional features though the gameplay making the game somewhat divers, however if you get too addicted to the power-ups then there is a way of instant reload of the power-up of your desire. The only thing you have to do is make match 4 and that solves your problem. For me this was a problem bigger than the match 3 filling as the number of match 4 was very, very low. This could be because I’m not a fan of the genre and mostly I stink at it, but who knows, you might be a totally opposite case. The game lacks a lot of documentation that will explain the whole game process and goal making you adapt the best you can and because of that oversights are almost a definite option in this game. Graphics and sound: The graphics of the game was for me, and will probably be for others too, a double edge sword. As you start to play the game, and open up those beautifully drawn levels that give you the inspiration to play, there isn’t much to say or do expect to enjoy it. But that feeling will pass not so long after as the graphics will stay the same to the end of the game, well not exactly the same but you get the drift. The music follows the example of the graphical part with some tunes that are a so beautiful, until you hear it one to many times. All in all a game worth at least looking at and to see if the demo will satisfy at least some of your conditions when it comes to match 3 games.

Magical Mysteries - Path of the Sorceress

2013-01-01

Platforms:
shareware
Developer
Magnetic Scrolls
Publisher
-Unknown-
Genre
Tags
shareware games classic match 3

Find the source of your magical powers to vanquish evil in a daring puzzle challenge.