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In my review of Monolith's original Rage of Mages, I noted that it was not at all a bad game, just not a game for everyone. It had some flaws, such as rather pointless multiplayer (nothing to do but hack and slash) and a boring beginning segment where you spent more time raising skills than actually completing quests. I also pointed out that it was a unique and innovative title, and I hoped we'd see more like it.

Apparently Monolith took that a bit too literally. Rage of Mages 2 looks, sounds, and plays almost exactly like Rage of Mages. Some improvements have been made, especially in multiplayer, which do make this a worthwhile sequel in that respect. But the graphics, sound, and control scheme are basically identical to its predecessor's.

This isn't an innovative title like Rage of Mages was, but on a similar vein it's also the ONLY game out there right now like Rage of Mages. So if you picked up RoM but disliked some things about it, or if you're considering joining the series for the first time in RoM2, read on to find out how the game has evolved.

Test system:

Rage of Mages 2 (henceforth RoM2 to save my poor typing fingers) plays almost exactly like RoM. However, I'll provide an overview of the gameplay for those of you who never played the original.

You start out by selecting either a fighter or a mage. The difference here is quite significant. A mage, even a powerful one, will only be able to take two or three hits before buying the farm and forcing you to hit reload. However, they make up for this with their wide array of spells, all of which are actually useful - and they can heal their allies (or enemies, if you so desire) which is a lifesaver in battle. The fighter has no spells, but can use powerful weaponry and can take a significant amount of punishment. I personally prefer the fighter, because enemies have a tendency to swarm you from nowhere. However, you will find allies along the way, both fighters and mages, who are treated as fully controllable, customizable, and functional party members once they join. So don't sweat your starting choice too much.

After selecting your class, you choose your weapon or spell specialization. In a much-appreciated change from the original Rage of Mages, the Shooting (archery) specialization has been removed, and all fighters instead start with a skill of 10 in Shooting and 20 in whatever they choose. This makes it actually possible to kill those pesky flyers (more on them in a bit...) Then, you customize your starting statistics (though you really can't do much with them in my experience) and start the game.

Your hero starts out in a town. In the town, you can go into the inn, where you hire mercenaries and get missions, or to the shop, where you buy and sell equipment. After upgrading to the best equipment you can afford and getting all the missions, you can click on the town gate to enter the real part of the game. Unfortunately, there is no real interaction in the conversations, and your character simply gives a pre-scripted response whenever the conversation requires it. This makes the game less of an RPG and more of a console-style "RPG lite". Not that there's anything wrong with console RPGs, I happen to love them...just warning you that RoM2 isn't a hard-core PC RPG.

Make sure to talk to every person in the inn every time you visit town, because they may have a new mission for you. This produces a new area on the overland map, which you can visit at any time to try your luck at that mission. If a particular mission proves too hard for your current skill and health levels (which improve through killing things with the appropriate skills), you can always go to the load game screen and load up "Abort and return to town", which allows you to try a different mission. This nonlinearity is new to RoM2 and really helped make the game more enjoyable for me than its predecessor was. A caveat, it's not completely nonlinear. There are certain "story arc" missions, which you have to complete in order to advance the plot and make more powerful items show up in the shop.

The missions themselves are not simply "Kill anything that attacks back". Instead, they require exploring large portions of the map, talking with various NPCs (and in some cases killing them, though killing an NPC the game terms "innocent" will end your mission immediately, so be good!), and following their mission directive. And yes, there's plenty of hack and slash too. Completing mission objectives will reveal new objectives, and occasionally new areas back on the overland map. These objectives generally take one of three forms: Escort NPC x to Location y, Talk to NPC x, or Kill Monster z. Occasionally one is thrown in that's more interesting, like where you're chasing down an escaping bandit with a powerful magic sword, and have to catch him before he gets off the map. The objectives help give more of a sense that you're not just killing anything that moves. The best analogy I can think of for the missions in RoM2 is to the puzzle-type levels in C&C/Warcraft 2/Starcraft, where you control a small group of units and follow scripted events to reach the end of the level. The Fog of War is also reminiscent of these games, where you only get an updated view of your current position.

The NPCs you hire or escort aren't just dead weight. One mission requires you to escort a traveler across a druid-guarded river. This traveler turns out to be a highly skilled, highly resilient fighter who helps immensely in completing that mission. And if you hire a mercenary in town, you don't have to worry about them dying - once they die, you can loot their bodies and take their usually powerful equipment!

The gameplay rating gets deducted a bit, though, due to an odd variance in the difficulty at various parts of the game. In the first mission, you're given the choice to go kill a troll for 700 gold (a fair chunk of change at that stage). However, at your character's ability level at that stage of the game, this fight is nigh impossible. Also, sprinkled throughout the maps are flying creatures. Flying creatures have the aggravating power of being invulnerable to all but missile weapons. Switching to your bow while being beat down by five or six bats is not an easy task. And RoM2 includes the Succubus, a flying magic user, which is extremely difficult to beat. Dragons fly too. Make sure to keep that Shooting skill up! Mages, of course, don't have this problem, as their primary means of attack is ranged anyway. But I end up saving every so often, since you never know when your doom is right around the corner. You'll get quite used to saving and reloading while playing RoM2.

Quite improved from the original game are the skills. In addition to the free Shooting skill mentioned before, skill improvements are better paced now, so your weapon and magic skills will generally be right at the level you need them to be at. You might want to practice with the bow a bit even when not necessary, though.

On a lighter note, much of the poorly translated humor of RoM has mercifully been removed. Some odd translations still exist, but at least they're not losing a punchline.

A good variety of missions ensures that this game will take you a while to beat. And once you beat it with one class, you can crank up the difficulty or try it with the other class. However, it's not that different the second time around. Multiplayer has been quite improved over the original RoM. Most prominent in the improvements is the fact that multiplayer missions can now be scripted like single player missions. A map editor is included on the game CD for this purpose. Unfortunately, at this time there is no Internet matching service support, so finding players might be a challenge. I suggest trying Kali when it is upgraded to support RoM2. But if you can find other people who like to play the game, you can have fun for a good long time with RoM2.

Control is accomplished through a mouse interface much like that of Warcraft 2. Clicking on a hero or dragging a box around multiple heroes selects them, then you click where you want them to go or attack. You can force them to follow a non-default action (for example, slaughtering villagers) by clicking a specific command in the upper right hand corner. Units can be assigned to hotkey groups by selecting the units you want grouped, then holding Ctrl and pushing a number. Then, pushing that number in the future will select those units again. If an object can be interacted with, like a road sign or a treasure bag, clicking on it with a single hero equipped will read or loot it. The controls can be somewhat sluggish, although that might have to do with the fact that I'm playing in 1024x768 at a fairly high game speed. The worst problem here is sometimes your clicks won't "take" and you'll end up being pummeled more than necessary while you try to pull out the bow to shoot down those accursed bats, or retreat from that line of necromancers you didn't quite notice before. Also, while the pathfinding over long ranges is generally quite good, short-term pathfinding leaves much to be desired. With multiple units selected, they will break up your carefully planned formations, walk over slow terrain while other units walk on flat earth, stand around while their friends get slaughtered, and generally act quite foolishly. The solution to these problems is to mess with the game speed at critical points (which is easy enough to do, just punch Esc), but a slightly more responsive engine would have been nice.

Task switching, or "Alt-Tabbing", by the way, works flawlessly. The game runs while in the background, as well, so you can read email or ICQs while waiting for your characters to heal up. And the game has not crashed on me once! Kudos on that, Monolith.

The graphics are unfortunately not improved at all from RoM. And this isn't a good thing, because RoM's graphics weren't that impressive at the time. There are nifty dynamic lighting effects, and the change from day to night is nice to watch. The character icons still represent the paper dolls, too. And the cutscenes are also quite well-done, running smoothly with just a hint of artifacting. But even in 1024x768 graphics mode, RoM2 just isn't that visually interesting. Also, it suffers from the same slowdown effect as RoM while it tries to animate hundreds of little trees and monsters.

The speech in the towns is a nice touch, and the voice acting isn't THAT bad. At least they're trying to sound like real speech instead of like someone reading off a cue card. But there is no speech on the missions themselves, unfortunately. It's still difficult to discern the difference between your character's "oof"s and your enemies' "oof"s...more distinctive sound effects for PCs would be nice. The music is similar to that of RoM, in fact I think part of it was lifted directly from that earlier game. However, for some reason I don't mind it as much as I did when I played RoM. It doesn't drown anything out, though it can get repetitive. You can always change to a different song, though, in the sound options on the Esc menu. Like RoM before it, RoM2's biggest weak point is its sound.

Installed, ran, worked. Not much to say here.

Rage of Mages 2 isn't a great RPG, or a great real-time strategy game. It's not the next Ultima or the next Command and Conquer. It does, however, mix these two genres together surprisingly well, and addresses many of the flaws from the first game. While hardcore gamers may find much of RoM2 a bit on the easy side, it makes a great entry-level title, and provides players with some not-so-mindless hack and slash. If given a graphics and sound overhaul and some more intricate missions, this series could be a force to be reckoned with!