We appreciate a quality “bad game” here at Enemy Slime. Some of us more than others, and that’s why our dear Jay has volunteered to head up ‘Terrible Tuesdays”, a special day where he’ll highlight some masterpieces that you may have missed. Check back every other Tuesday to see what glorious games we pair him up with.
When a medieval fantasy starts up with bullet time set to dramatic operatic music while your badass, generic bald protagonist ducks out the way of an arrow that’s how you know you’re in for a quality experience. You better hold on to your asses, kids, because here’s my Magus review.
In Magus you take on the role of the cool, edgy, and titular Lord Magus. Just how cool and edgy is Lord Magus? Well when you meet the game’s femme fatale your first dialogue choice in response to “You seem to be well dressed for a convict” is “Great. Fashion tips from a tavern wench. Who the hell are you?” In fact, every single one of Lord Magus’s lines seem to be dripping with sarcasm. It’s impossible to have a straight conversation with the dude. He’s that incredibly smug guy you meet at a party who tries too hard to be alpha and you have to withstand the urge to pop him in the mouth.
See? I didn’t make it up. We’ve got a real badass over here.
It’s the 223rd Year of the reign of the Kings and the titular protagonist Magus has been in prison for two decades, since he was a child. He has no real crime to speak of so I can only hope he was locked up for being a massive smug dick. Though if this sentence was meant to rehabilitate him from being one, it hasn’t worked. Apparently it’s completely fine that Magus gets to be radical and spit in people’s faces, because it turns out he’s a god reincarnated in human form. Anyone familiar with old pantheons and mythologies knows being a god does give you license to be a dick, albeit in more creative ways than simply calling someone you just met an idiot.
The graphics are kind of terrible, at least by this decade’s standards. Everything lacks textures, and the few places where you might find them they are painfully flat. Think of it this way: Instead of lining your apartment with floorboards of carved oak, you hire a six year old to paint over one long piece of cardboard for you. Then you get the same six year old to repeat his intricate design for every single room, making sure things remain consistently boring to look at. It may have been the cheap way to do things but don’t expect anyone to be impressed when they come over to your pad.
Now let’s discuss character design. Magus and his best friend forever Kinna are both as inspired as a jar of mayonnaise. A jar of spoiled mayonnaise. Magus is just kind of young and bald while Kinna is… Good lord Kinna what the hell is wrong with your chest?
Aksys insisted on the watermark, so it stays.
Aside from just not wanting to bother with basic anatomy there are several other graphical and animation related problems with this game. Such as Magus’ awful hunchback, which I suspect was supposed to make him look twisted and terrifying, but really I only thought someone should get the reincarnated god to a good chiropractor. I initially assumed enemies also had their own magic, as they randomly teleported and phased through walls, but I later realized the truth (and by later I mean always): These were simply glitches paired with poor walking animations.
Anyone who’s played even one RPG knows certain stats are pretty standard. Health, Strength, Dexterity and so forth. So our Magus has the normal set, and then his own unique stats simply titled “Blue” “Green” and “Red” each to denote a different kind of magic. Now initially I thought each color of magic and their related skill tree would represent a specific type of related abilities because that would be the sane thing to do. Magus delightfully surprises you by breaking convention and assigning completely random traits between skill trees why? Because I don’t know. Red is kind of sort of your summoning skill tree, while Green has an area of effect fire spell. But green also has bubbles. While blue is gravity. Are you following along here? Because I’m really not. You can also refill your magic by absorbing rocks. Yep.
When using magic Lord Magus will chant something entirely different each time the single, same spell is used. So one minute teleport is “Miomortus” and the next it’s “Bullshitus Forwardicus” just cycling through random recorded dialogue. J.K. Rowling would inform you this is a faux paux. But let’s cool the snark for a second, because it turns out your magic is mostly completely irrelevant in this game that I’ll remind you is called Magus. Your big spells are only really good for a short burst of extra damage for the hordes and hordes of enemies you’ll face, but combat essentially amounts to “hold down the fire button and strafe until everyone dies.” You get three types of basic attacks: Green, Blue and Red (have you been following along?). Green is a straight forward bullet attack, while Blue is some kind of weird… bouncy… electric thing and Red is sluggish but does higher damage. Let’s be honest though, you’re not going to use any attack but your basic Green one simply because it’s your most instantly effective attack.
You can customize Magus stats with armor and skill points. Which if you haven’t been paying attention – Always focus in Green. Power it up, set it and forget it, enemies provide no real challenge, they’ll often group around Kinna attacking her instead of actually trying to kill you, and it’s not like they’ll get close to you anyway since your green bullet hell will decimate them from miles away. – Actually, scratch that, you get more than enough opportunities to boost your stats in the game, from converting unwanted item drops into stats to your boring uninspired armor augmenting your stats further, you’ll likely become a powerhouse by say… Level 7 or so. Right out the first dungeon. There are also “bosses” in this game which Magus wants you to badly believe you’ll need a strategy to fight. Here’s my strategy: Always Bet on Green.
There are dialogue choices, for some reason, but they all devolve into New and Clever Ways To Tell People You’ll Kill Them. Which are actually not new and clever at all, it’s just Magus once again, being a smug cocky cock. I would describe the dialogue choice system similar to a BioWare or Bethesda title, you know, if dialogue gave you an actual choice. It’s not even the illusion of choice, it’s just “how long can you keep this boring inane conversation going before the killing begins?”
I would like to mention this game gives you trophies for every single thing you do. Talking to someone? That’s a trophy. Refilling your mana? That’s a trophy. Pausing the game to take a bathroom break? That’s not a trophy, and I’m kind of surprised it isn’t. It’s almost as if the developers said “No one is going to buy this game anyway so let’s just make the meta reward actually playing the title.” That said if you are playing this game, you’ve already lost.
The parts of this game that aren’t utterly boring are utterly childish. I don’t know what exactly went on at Aksys to make them think a dude with all the tact of a fifth grade school yard bully was cool and badass (and for the record a video game does exist where you play as a school yard bully who is -actually- cool and badass, which just goes further to show how little Aksys tried.) If you’ve played one ‘revenge of the god’ story you’ve played them all, and if you haven’t then go play those, The Elder Scrolls are always on a Steam sale, God of War can be found cheap these days, but Magus is not the budget title worthy of your wallet. For these reasons and more I score this…
Well what the hell do you think I scored it? One badass out of five.
