GB Feature: Dawn of Magic Review
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Oddly, Dawn of Magic almost requires that you play as a magician of some sort. You can play as a melee character if you really want to, but melee characters get all of two skills to help them out ((bash) and (weapon mastery)), while casters get 96 spells to play with. The press release I received with the game implies that this is a positive, but I thought it was strange. It made me think of a recent news article I saw where a game was called (innovative) for not supporting a single player mode. Since when did offering less turn into a good thing? Is there such a thing as a diet game? Fortunately, Dawn of Magic makes it expensive to build up spells, and the spells are linked (for example, the (fireball) spell has a chance to trigger the (burn) spell and set enemies on fire), and so you have to make lots of choices when building up your character, and the system works well despite the restrictions.
Also fortunately, the combat system is effective. Dawn of Magic uses a fairly standard point-and-click Diablo-style interface, and while it has a few quirks (for example, you can't map both mouse buttons to spells; you're stuck with one controlling your weapon, even if you never use it), it doesn't really cause any problems or get in the way of the action. Meanwhile, the enemies have a lot of variety -- some summon minions, some raise the dead, some teleport, and more -- and the bosses are challenging. During the course of the campaign, I never found myself having too easy or too difficult of a time, and that's a difficult trick to pull off.
