The path towards competent and engaging virtual reality games is littered with the corpses of tech demos and half-baked products. The Mage's Tale fires on many cylinders and becomes one of those mythic "must haves" not because it is simply decent but because it proves that VR has magic in it.
The Mage’s Tale is an inspired piece of virtual reality entertainment that rekindles the feeling of the platform’s earliest of promises. This isn’t the hokey kind of VR from 90s media or even the gimmicky temptations of the Microsoft Kinect and PlayStation Move. Over the course of this fantasy adventure set in the Bard’s Tale universe, players will experience a fleshed-out game with its own identity. Rather than rely on crafting a patchwork quilt of familiar motion control implementation, The Mage’s Tale recognizes VR as both a genre and a platform on which story and gameplay mechanics can speak together to make something fun rather than tedious or clumsy.
My fondness for The Mage’s Tale began shortly after the game’s introduction. After watching a flashy duel between an evil magician and my master (yup, we’re the sorcerer’s/magician’s apprentice), I powerlessly stood by as my mentor was captured. Stuck in a dark cave, I was led by my master’s goblin helper to a rock shaped like a hand. Suddenly, the rock began to descend and I was standing at eye level with the face of a massive statue whose eyes bore a hole into me. I had pangs of God of War II‘s Colossus of Rhodes, a tiny speck against impossibly complex architecture. Those moments swept me up into the world of The Mage’s Tale. I felt like a lost puppy in a labyrinth and would only come out on the other end by fighting tooth, nail, and fireball.
As a dungeon crawler, The Mage’s Tale drops players in a series of cavernous trials full of puzzles and combat. It would have been easy for developer inXile Entertainment to pluck familiar motifs of fire dungeon place, water-logged place, and botanical disaster place and place them one after the other in a series of levels for the player to tackle. Instead, the whole of its “dungeons” flow together to create a game with a surprising pace for a VR title. With ten dungeons taking nearly an hour to beat a piece, The Mage’s Tale has lofty expectations of players when compared to the glut of shorter games found on the platform. While it bridges a narrative gap between the third and fourth Bard’s Tale games, I expect only the most hardcore fans to truly be attached to the plot. Much of the game is spent listening to the musings and verbal abuse of the goblin.
The story won’t shock for anyone who has cracked open a few works of fantasy but it serves to push players along and tie all the pieces together. However, what captures the eye in The Mage’s Tale are those usual fantasy trappings rendered in a virtual space. This is one of the few times in my life I’ve watched an armor-clad goblin dart right past me before taking a swipe with a sword. A towering giant looming over you is often thrilling in a game but it takes on a different kind of terror when feeling as if it is right there. The sword and sorcery aesthetic of The Mage’s Tale is elevated because it feels palpable in VR. Though many of its tropes appear throughout entertainment, being able to interact with those creatures and the world in such an intimate way resonate and wrap you up into the experience.
Oculus Rift users were treated to The Mage’s Tale when it first released in 2017. Outside of hearing about its quality, I’ve never touched the game until it arrived on the PlayStation VR. Those who have been behind the lenses of PSVR are familiar with a drop in fidelity when moving to this inferior piece of hardware–it’s not a knock on PSVR, just a reality. The edges on characters and effects are a little jagged but I was also playing on a PlayStation 4 Pro before a post-launch patch meant to boost visuals on the Pro was released. Even with that hit, reveling in the world inXile has made isn’t hard. One of the reasons the game is so engaging is because it looks good and efficiently tackles immersion without showing signs of buckling. Of course, it’s hard not to notice the screen door effect, especially considering how dark the game is by default. Being a dungeon crawler, there’s bound to be grimy corners of stone where firelight doesn’t flicker. But squinting your eyes trying to make out pixels doesn’t result in the most pleasant look.
Casting spells is one of the initial “look at this!” controller-free actions shown off by developers like it was a pageant child. I’ll never forget that E3 demo of Sony’s Sorcery which used the PS Move to flick spells and drink potions. At the time, it was probably the coolest thing in the world like Justin Bieber (remember the initial connect showcase!) or whatever cultural reference works best from 2010. The Mage’s Tale actually makes the execution of simple actions like this “cool” instead of “mostly lame.” So you don’t have to find out for yourself, I’ll just go ahead and tell you: clear some space in your play area, you’re going to need it. About half an hour into playing, I realized that to effectively play The Mage’s Tale and keep my electronics from being crushed under foot, I needed a wide berth. With two PS Move controllers, you’re going to require the clearance to dodge and cast without feeling boxed in.
Players are first given a fireball spell, charged by holding down the Move controller’s trigger and launched by a toss of the wrist. It’s satisfying but only when you get the hang of it. The Mage’s Tale allows players to use head tracking to target enemies or enables the use of a crosshair-like system. Depending on what’s most comfortable, there isn’t much time to wish for a free-targeting system. Players are soon given the option to craft their own spells back at their mentor’s workshop. By standing in front of a massive cauldron, a feast of spell-making options are available. Using the primary elements of fire, ice, wind, and electricity, spells can be enhanced with visual effects and modifiers. One of the first things I crafted was a homing ice spear, eventually I graduated to triple fireballs that bounced off walls.
Crafting spells is a delight because for most of the game, options feel endless. The result is always going to be the same in that it results in the death of enemies but players who wish to have fun with the system will relish in being creative. Four spells can be assigned at once and with the press of a button, a tiny glyph will pop up with each selectable spell at a compass direction. By simply grabbing at that spell, players are able to use it. The many visual cues used in The Mage’s Tale replace a traditional HUD to fully immerse players into combat. Spells need time to recharge and this is indicated by watching the magic of the spell build up in the dominant hand used for combat. Health and experience points are represented by small jewels on your hand while one button on either hand projects a shield that can block incoming attacks.
I was surprised at how intense the combat in The Mage’s Tale can feel, especially at first. The game isn’t the best at explaining all of its rules and there was a brief moment in the beginning where I could not for the life of me figure out how to level up. Because I couldn’t progress until I did it, I waved my hands around and pressed every button until eventually for some reason I took one hand and moved it over the other, initiating the level up process. I think the problem was either I didn’t hear my goblin friend yell at me, or his yelling got cut off. But there will be moments where multiple enemies are attacking the player at once and it’s not always easy to focus an attack, put up a shield, and dodge when need be. Before acclimating myself to combat, I would often throw dud spells because I hadn’t fully locked on to an enemy or I wasn’t throwing a spell as precisely as I should. These moments of frustration are alleviated after an hour or so of growing pains.
These VR quirks also extend to the movement system, another challenge that players will have to tackle before the game gets comfortable. The first method of getting around involves pointing the Move controller to a specific space and teleporting there with the push of a button; two of the face buttons take care of 90 degree turns. For VR games, this is not my preferred method of locomotion as I feel less in control of my space and more like a chess piece moving around the board. Alternately, players can use the other Move controller to move in the direction their head is pointing with one button and with another button, move backwards. While neither method feels elegant at first, most players should grow familiar with them after the first dungeon.
The Mage’s Tale pushes expectations of the virtual reality platform and what kind of games can work in the space. After using the world around me to solve fun yet short puzzles and seek out collectibles, I realized how well inXile Entertainment thought of ways to make VR fun and not a one-off gimmick. Few VR games integrate story, boss battles, combat, puzzles, and motion control into one competent brew–usually more than one of those things is absent from the end result. But as I lifted my controller to my mouth to drink a potion or something in the options menu, or looked behind me to toss a spell enhancement into a frog’s mouth, I didn’t feel like I was doing anything except having a great time with a good game which also happened to be one of the best VR experiences around.
