Lichdom: Battlemage

Every now and then, some company makes one of these spell shooters. I reckon they were more common back in the simpler days, someone taking one of the shooter game engines and going: "What if instead of guns, you'd have magic?" The Wheel of Time (1999) coming up eventually on my backlog is perhaps one of such, although it used an existing IP. A more recent example would be Immortals of Aveum (2023). This post's topic, Lichdom: Battlemage by Xaviant Games, is from 2014.

Linear and forgettable mage simulator

Lichdom: Battlemage is the game that started Yahtzee doing a dry heave every time a game title has an unnecessary colon: an expectation there would be a continuing franchise under whose title following games could be put, while just one of the titles would have been better for the game in question. Like in this case: Battlemage would have sufficed.

Battlemage was not received well and I would say that is for a very good reason: the game has a couple of rather big problems -- and a few smaller ones. One of the bigger issues can be worked around with a system which I think was a post-release addition. Hilariously it makes one essential feature of the game mostly obsolete. But without it, you'll have quite a hurdle to get over before you're able to enjoy the game.

You play as the "Dragon" who is put on a path of revenge. Choosing the male character, it's your wife getting wronged in the intro "cinematic" and as female it's your sister. I started as female Dragon but after I bricked my fire spells, I restarted from the beginning and chose the male one instead. The female voice is Jennifer Hale and she sounds exactly like Commander Shepard in this one. It was just too fucking weird.

She was not completely gone from the game, though, as she instead switched places with the male one, becoming the voice for the Gryphon, who is your partner scouting ahead. The characters have different lines depending on which one is voicing them. Only in the end credits I realized the male voice is Troy Baker. I could easily recognize him after that but somehow the realization never came to me on its own.

The Dragon and the Gryphon also have a guide of sorts, Roth, an old mage who hooks them up with a resurrection system and sends them on their task. I thought Roth highly suspect: he felt more like an evil master using unsuspecting minions to reach his goals. I expected him to be the final boss but that never happened. It is possible something like that may happen if you engage in the postgame grind but I was very much done after the credits had rolled. The story adds barely anything to the game.

Looks more complicated than it is

One might think that making a system of spells looted and crafted from randomly rolled components wouldn't be that difficult. And with hindsight I would say Battlemage's system is pretty simple. But somehow the game manages to present the whole thing in a very obtuse manner that makes it unreasonably difficult to grasp. The first time I tried crafting my own spells, I replaced all three fire spells at once, only to discover I no longer had direct damage spells because I hadn't used Destruction-attuned augment parts on them.

The main culprit for the perceived complexity is the inventory/crafting interface being absolute ass. It wastes screen estate for nothing, emphasizes wrong parts, and hides information that should really be visible at all times. It could have been made so much simpler and more lucid. The terms Battlemage uses tend to be somewhat unusual as well. For instance, how you "stack mastery" on targets (to enhance critical spell hits) -- why not just call it priming? That would have been far easier to understand.

You can go through the game without ever engaging with the crafting, instead letting the 'smart inventory' upgrade spells for you. The downside of not doing manual crafting is that the spells will always have the same cast pattern and shape they come with. That is just fine, though: I beat the game on the game's second highest, the default Battlemage difficulty with the smart inventory, although I did upgrade legendary spells because the system won't do that for you.

Legendary spells can be upgraded to have either a randomly rolled special effect or a synergy spell, determined by which two of the game's eight Sigils were selected. Casting the spells of one Sigil will fill up a synergy bar and once full, charging up the area-of-effect spell of the other Sigil will release the synergy spell. The fire golem from Fire and Corruption wasn't very impressive with its weak ranged attacks but the meteor from Fire and Kinesis was quite effective, hitting many targets at once for a lot of damage.

I went through the game mainly using the default lobbed Kinesis spell to prime targets and then blowing them up with a charged up Fire missile. Towards the end of the game, one combo was enough to kill all enemies.

Very definition of repetitive

The only time Battlemage got noticeably difficult for me was one boss fight against a demon in a dining hall with a lot of spawning skeletons. Melee skeletons would get in the way and archers deplete my shields. And if I didn't manage to block the boss's slow causing projectiles, it became a complete mess. Nothing in the game got as difficult after that. A bigger problem is how the game keeps going on and on while you fight the same enemies.

Battlemage runs on CryEngine and is quite pretty. The detailed environments feel bit of a waste, though. You barely interact with anything; the game really is a simple corridor shooter in that regard. But I did like the health system. You have three layers of magical shield. If not completely depleted, a layer will generate back to full after you stop taking damage. You also have an active block to reduce incoming damage and you can even block perfectly -- or "galvanize" -- to active your shield spell. Shield spells don't all allow perfect blocking and have a charged dodge instead.

The game's moment-to-moment gameplay is fun but the lack of variation combined with the overly long runtime is what truly is what kills fun. I paid less than one euro coin for Battlemage so it wasn't exactly a huge financial loss. But no matter the price tag, I don't think it's worth one's time.