Mistmare Demo

Once people started the industrial revolution, things started moving quite quickly from a technological point of view. Soon, cars and planes were being invented, only to put a man on the moon half a century later. However, it really took a while until humanity started putting such tremendous efforts into technology, for various reasons.

Mistmare is a role-playing game that provides you with a different vision on the world, on in which the past took a wrong turn and the world as we know it today did not really get to exist. As a concept, the game is not that original to begin with, but the idea behind the plot is quite interesting and well told, at least when it comes to the characters and the explanation.

In essence, you play as an inquisitor monk as you try to hunt a dangerous man on behalf of the church, using any means at your disposal to accomplish the mission. However, although the year is 1996, things do not look more advanced than they did back in the 1500s. As it happens, Christianity managed to stop the Black Plague using magic back in the dark ages, which in turn increased their popularity with the masses and gained enough influence to hinder humanity’s progress.

The gameplay is nothing special, unfortunately, because the third-person perspective is about as classic as it can get in the genre and everything else adheres to standards as well. You do have to talk with many different people along the way, which means that the plot is emphasized by the developers. On the other hand, you do not really get to affect the events too much, so you can skip every sentence as well, in case you want to do so.

Not a lot of imagination went into the combat system, given the fact that all you have to do is click on the enemies and see who wins. You can obviously cast some spells and use weapons, but the system is nowhere near as intricate as it should be in order to make the experience memorable. The entire thing is complicated by many technical issues and terrible camera controls, just to make it as difficult for you to play the game as possible.

All things considered, Mistmare had some very interesting ideas to begin with, but they are pretty difficult to enjoy, due to the rest of the elements. The gameplay is dull and uninteresting, while the technical issues make it almost impossible to play it anyway.