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03-28-24 09:08 PM
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Last Updated
03-27-24
Staff
System:
DS
UPC: 891563001104

Released: 9-16-08

Game Genre:
Action & Adventure

Price Guide (USD):
Loose:  $7.25
Complete:  $29.67
New:  $23.50
Rarity:  8/10

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Mazes of Fate (DS) - DS

Mazes of Fate is an Action & Adventure game released in 2008 for the DS.

Mazes of Fate

Mazes of Fate Title ScreenMazes of Fate Screenshot 1
Rating: 7 (1 votes)

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Mazes of Fate Featured Review

Mazes of Fate Review by: EideticMemory - 7/10

An Older RPG ported to a Newer Handheld
In my experience, few NDS games manage to grab your attention within the first few minutes. Usually the characters and scenery will look decent enough, and the true fun of the game gets uncovered as you play, usually with others. In Mazes of Fate, the game deviates from this path, and does so quite successfully.

Released in 2008, Mazes of Fate is an adventure role-playing game for the Nintendo DS. It is the story of a kingdom in need of a king, and a character (of your choice) that must go from being nothing to becoming a great leader.

Most reviews I’ve read on the game have ripped on it for a combination of both inane and reasonable reasons. I’ve personally found plenty of redeeming qualities to the game, so while my analysis will include it’s faults, it will also go at length to describe it’s better qualities, something which other sites have neglected.

Let’s dive in.

Decent Graphics and Nice POV Changes - 7 / 10

The game starts off with a beautiful cut scene. It’s not particularly impressive in terms of the level of graphical detail, but it does look nice. This cut scene goes through the back-history of the game. It does name throw, which can be a bad thing if the game can’t grab your attention. Since this one does, it’s easy to remember both names and the chronological sequence of events that leads up to the game. The graphics are a utility; meaning that while they aren’t the fanciest, they are very useful.

You get to choose your character, which is nice because the extra effort was expended to let your choice of character play in the game. You get choose between 7 characters and an 8th customized character. The customizable character allows you to change stats for the most part, and the graphics for the character come from whichever of the seven characters you want.

While you’re traveling within a specific region, your perspective is third-person. However, this changes to first person when you’re exploring a particular place. There are some issues with the first person POV, but that’s for a latter section. The fact that they’ve integrated these two point of views is a definite plus to the game.

The in-game graphics aren’t particularly noteworthy, in fact, they could be considered bad by Nintendo DS standards. However, we would be remiss to stop the analysis here. To fully understand this phenomenon, we need to look at the history of the game itself. It was first released in 2006 to the GBA, and had positive reception. This version of the game aimed to improve upon that version with a 3-D aspect, while staying true to what the consumers had originally liked. With this in mind, I think it’s entirely possible that the graphics are part of what made the game what it is on the GBA, and that the designers wanted to keep it true to that, or at the very least, just release a more perfected version of the game on a newer platform, even if it wasn’t comprehensively better. This isn’t going to help the graphics score, for sure, but it’s clearly not a deal-breaker.

With its many ups and downs (as we have thoroughly discussed), it’s hard to come to a particular score. A holistic approach leads me to rate the graphics a 7 / 10.

Great Variety of Music - 7 / 10

The level of quality for the music was decent, but that’s to be expected of a portable system. So what struck me wasn’t the quality of music, but the variety that I heard. One complaint about the game I read was about the unoriginality of the the music. True, it’s unoriginal. The middle eastern music in the introduction wasn’t a track that seemed unfamiliar. Nor was the heavy adventure music track on the main menu and in-game. Nor was the mystery music that played in particular locations. It should be clear why this complaint about originality is shallow. This game somehow incorporated all three music types into its game-play. It didn’t choose the most original pieces, but how it incorporated them was excellent.

I do agree that the sound effects weren’t particularly good. However, few RPGs I’ve played have really amazed me with sound effects, and certainly not the older ones. I’m not going to bring undue attention to bad sound effects, because it wasn’t different than what should have been expected.

While I did like the track selection, my rating of this category as an 7 / 10 comes down to a more objective take on the variety of music and the sound effects in relation to the fact that this game is an older RPG.

Addictive - 7 / 10

It’s widely accepted that RPGs are addictive. Their storylines grab you and you hold those plotlines in your mind. This makes you keep playing. In part, because you want to see where the story leads, and in part because it can be a headache to try and pick up where you left off if you don’t play for a while. This one has addictiveness. For a console where virtually all addictiveness comes from multiplayer-play, this game does well for only having single-player.

The main menu allows for you to replay the introduction, in case you want to refresh your memory. In-game you’re also given the option to hear the ‘how-to’s. Meaning that if you’re re-playing, you don’t have to sit through all of the lessons again. That combined with the fact that there are six other characters you can choose from, this game is replay-friendly. It’s a long game, so you’re probably won’t want to play it multiple times within a few weeks, but if you return after a few months, you’ll enjoy the effort they put into the game in order to make it replayable.

With these factors in mind, it is no surprise that this category scores high.

8 / 10.

Plenty of Dialogue - 7 / 10

From the get-go, you see that the overarching storyline is an important part of the game. The depth of the storyline isn’t particularly deep, but the mini-quests that you complete along the way makes it feel so.

The storyline isn’t particularly unique. It’s about a foreign land that falls under chaos without a leader. A past leader managed to help the state of affairs for a while, but spent most of his final years trying to stop a new villainous creature called the ‘Underlings’. After his death, the land went back into chaos, and you, a character that’s starting from nothing, is going to become something… and just perhaps, you might become the much needed leader.

In order to follow this storyline, one must be willing to read dialogue and not skip through it. I know that as a kid I wouldn’t have been able to read all of the dialogue, and I wouldn’t have found the game enjoyable. As someone older, I see the amount of dialogue as a positive aspect of the game, and I enjoy it. But this leads me to label the game as one meant for an older audience. Others label it this way because of its older RPG-style, but clearly they’ve never seen Vizzed. People of all ages will enjoy it’s style, but it’s the amount of dialogue that will make this game attract an older audience.

7 / 10.

Decent Depth - 5 / 10

There is a persistent level of depth to the game. While you’re in the middle of one task (first person POV), you’ll be focusing on that, but when you’re at the region level (third person POV), there’ll be multiple things that you’ll be looking out for.

There’s inherent depth in the ability to choose different characters. It adds more to the appearance of depth. This works well when there’s actual depth in the game to complement this, and there is.
The open world is illusory in nature, but you can visit multiple places in one area. When talking to characters, there are multiple options for what you can say. It reminds me of Elder Scrolls in that some options are useful to hit, and some aren’t (but this is a feature seen in many RPGs). I consider these extra dialogue options to add to the depth, but this won’t help this category much since as an RPG, it doesn’t differ from the norm. It does, however, give the game the RPG feel that I like.

Overall, the depth isn’t particularly impressive. Earlier, I gave it leniency in certain aspects because this was an RPG, and in this case I’m being slightly harder on it because of that same fact.

5 / 10.

Minor Gameplay Issues, and Challenging Gameplay - 8 / 10

Between challenges, the game isn’t too difficult. The fighting system is fairly easy to get good at, and the learning curve isn’t particularly steep. The challenges, however, are difficult, and further point to the game being meant for older audiences.

I had some difficulty in the first person POV from the fact that the turns are 180 degrees. I experimented with the controls with little luck. Luckily most of the movement is head on. The first person POV shows the turn, so one can see what’s to the side of them, but it was annoying to try to get behind each creature, while they could deal damage from one’s side. It also made lever pressing slightly difficult. If the levers were on the wrong pairs of walls, one has to get very close to the wall in order to hit it. This would have been fixed fairly easily by implementing a 90 degree turning system. Ironically, this might have been meant to make the game easier because either you’re looking at where you’ve been, or you're looking at where you’ve got to go. In other words, if you’re directionally challenged, you won’t end up going the wrong way.

It is possible to get stuck in the game, both within challenges, and, when you’re new, within buildings. It’s not a persistent problem, which is a plus. However, it will happen to you at some point.

So, overall, this is a challenging game; one that is geared towards older audiences that can critically think, and read dialogue. There are some errors in-game, but they don’t affect actual playability. Therefore, this section rates an 8 / 10. (with a 7/10 ideal rating)

Decent. You might like it. - Overall: 7.0 / 10

Graphics : 7 * 10% = 0.7
Sound / Music : 7 * 20% = 1.4
Addictiveness : 7 * 25% = 1.75
Story : 7 * 25% = 1.75
Depth : 5 * 10% = 0.5
Difficulty : 9 * 10% = 0.9 (Optimal difficulty was 7/10)

Sum = Overall Score = 7.0 / 10.0

To sum up, Mazes of Fate is a decent port to the DS. It incorporated the 3-D and made other improvements, but it did nothing comprehensive. Yet it still manages to score high, which is impressive. It’s a modern representative of older RPGs, with both their flaws and plusses. Whether you should play this comes down to personal taste with RPGs. If you hate RPGs, this game isn’t going to satisfy you. If you like RPG, you might like this one. This is partially common-sense. However, it also depends on your taste for dialogue, difficulty in challenges, and ability to cope with minor in-game flaws.

I enjoyed my time with Mazes of Fate, and wouldn’t mind returning to it at a later date.

If you’re curious, check it out. Maybe you’ll feel the same way.

Have you played this game before? Thinking of trying it out? Comment below.
  Graphics 7   Sound 7   Addictive 7   Depth 5   Story 7   Difficulty 8

Mazes of Fate Reviews

Overall 7    Graphics 7    Sound 7    Addictive 7    Story 7    Depth 5    Difficulty 8


7
An Older RPG ported to a Newer Handheld   EideticMemory
In my experience, few NDS games manage to grab your attention within the first few minutes. Usually ...
  Graphics 7   Sound 7   Addictive 7   Story 7   Depth 5   Difficulty 8

      Review Rating: 3/5     Submitted: 02-28-15     Updated: 02-28-15     Review Replies: 0

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