Mages of Mystralia (PS4) Review

Got a black magic woman.

There’s always those one or two games that pop up out of nowhere that take me by surprise. They usually only come around once or twice a year. So far, Get Even and A Hat in Time were a few of those gems and now, Mages of Mystralia is the next small game to hit that I think everyone should check out. With it hitting the consoles after being on Steam for months, this is becoming yet another sleeper hit of the year.

Players control Zia, a young mage in a world where magic and mages are outlawed. She accidentally burns down her house and is cast out from her village. She then finds another mage in the wilderness who shows her the way of the mage and tasks her with stopping a war that is about to occur that could devastate the land.

Platforms: PC, PS4, XB1
MSRP: $19.99
Price I’d pay: $19.99

The game itself is mostly a puzzle game in the most basic sense. Zia starts off with four main powers like fire, lightning, a shield, and ice. Over the course of the game, she will learn modifiers that will alter these abilities that can serve as attacks for combat, but more importantly, for the puzzles Zia will run into. The use of these magic abilities to solve both simple and complex puzzles is what really makes Mages of Mystralia feel rewarding. Choosing the right ability and modifier for a certain puzzle where the combinations are vast really added variety to the game and allowed for me to experiment with my creativity to figure things out.

The combat usually ends up being a type of hack ‘n slash style; once I found a combination that worked, I mainly stuck with it. It never got overly difficult in that sense, and many of the boss fights usually had a special gimmick to beat them making players rely on both timing and usage of Zia’s magic.

The world is broken into pseudo levels players can travel through to reach a different area. This will result in some backtracking, and if players want to complete side quests, get ready for some walking. Because of this, I felt the pacing of the game to be slightly off. It felt a bit like busy work just going from one place to the next. Now, it was never a deal breaker by any means, but it did grow tiring after a while.

Another small issue was the way Zia controlled. It felt like she was just a bit floaty for my liking. As in, she would continue to walk ever so slightly after I had stopped pushing on the analog stick. It wasn’t much of an issue unless I was in the heat of battle or in an area where I could possibly fall off an edge. After a couple of hours, I began to get used to it.
One thing I want to mention is the presentation. This game has some wonderful presentation. The look is colorful and cartoony, and gives off this whimsical feel to it. The soundtrack is phenomenal. The ambient music evolves as Zia goes into combat, sounding very fluid and so well done. It really is a spectacle to both see and hear.

I really enjoyed my time with Mages of Mystralia. It’s a neat little game that has a lot of heart. There are a few issues here and there, but nothing that really bogged down the experience for me. The presentation is stellar, and me being a video game music fan I found the soundtrack alone worth the price of admission. It helps out a lot that the puzzles and abilities feel rewarding and fun to use. I would suggest picking this game up for anyone that enjoys an action adventure game with some puzzle solving thrown in. It’s a pretty great time.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Written by
Drew is the Community Manager here at ZTGD and his accent simply woos the ladies. His rage is only surpassed by the great one himself and no one should stand between him and his Twizzlers.