If you play video games or have friends that play video games, then one of them has come across League of Legends. When it comes to League of Legends, for many gamers it’s a love-hate relationship.
While they love the characters, the lore, the skins, and sometimes the core gameplay, they hate losing or toxic members of the community.
With competitive games, there is a certain level of toxicity that will happen, however, Riot Games’ competitive scene seems to attract a certain type of player.
Some argue that game’s rival factions and lore encourage it. At PAX East 2023, we met with Riot Games to preview their upcoming The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story.
The Meeting & the Story
On Saturday before we went to the show floor, we met with Riot Games to preview their upcoming game The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story. The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story takes place in Demacia and tells the story of Sylas Dregbourne.
After being imprisoned, Sylas is set to be put to death. Just before his execution, Lux Crownguard pleads for them to spare his life.
This pleading gives Sylas the opportunity that he needs in order to escape; stealing Lux’s power, he breaks freak and takes out his anger on those that imprisoned him.
After escaping the city, Sylas looks to liberate the mages enslaved and held captive by Demacia. The first level of the demo focused on escaping the Demacian capital and making his way out of town.
The first level is to give players a taste of what is to come and how to weave Sylas’ spells with the ones he steals from others. The second level takes place with Sylas searching for a powerful mage to help his community. Here you learn that the capital employs its own mages to keep others in control.
Gameplay
The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story is a top-down 2D pixel art game that uses the controller sticks to target enemies. The game’s controls do take a bit to get used to since all of the buttons are utilized.
The first level helped us get acquainted with the controller’s layout, but when we switched players, it through the other one through a loop.
The hardest part with the controller is remembering to target the enemy using the right stick. Combat within the game is rather straightforward with players weaving spells to fling at the enemies; each enemy has a weakness that can be targeted with a different kind of magic.
Outside of having to learn the controller layout and stick direction, the most difficult challenge is learning the enemies’ weaknesses. In boss fights, sometimes targeting the enemy is not always the easiest path to victory.
For the second level, attacking the enemy mage tickled them whereas attacking the jail cell did a lot more damage. Learning when to fight directly or kite the enemy takes a bit of time to get used to.
Fans of 2D dungeon crawlers should enjoy Digital Suns’ upcoming Game; players can expect to find various League of Legends characters throughout the game.
According to the team, the game features 10 to 15 hours of content with the main story taking 10 to 12 hours to complete; players can find more gameplay based on side quests or achievement/Collectible hunting.
Takeaways
Jumping into The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story was no easy task; this is not due to the actual gameplay, but because of the games I typically play. So due to not playing top-downs that often, there was a bit of a learning curve. How would the character move and would it respond within a split second? These were just two factors I had to figure out and thankfully the game was rather responsive.
The only real difficulty I had was when targeting enemies to steal their abilities. In order to steal an ability, you must point the right stick toward the enemy and hold it when taking the ability. During the demo, I kept pressing it toward and then releasing it resulting in having to start the process again. Yes, it only slowed down my plans for a few seconds but those seconds add up until you it becomes second nature.
The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story will be fun for those who love top-down adventure games, but may be a challenge for those who are unfamiliar with the style. The Demo was fun but it didn’t give you the true meat and potatoes that the game has to offer. You can see our playthrough of The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story down below.
The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story is launching on April 18th for Windows PC (via Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store), Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5.
