Revenge of the Mage Review Summary

Extremely fun core gameplay, beautiful visuals, and great low-price value are undercut by poor optimization, frequent crashes and freezes, and slow, grindy progression.

Core Gameplay Extremely Fun: Many reviewers highlight the core gameplay as incredibly fun and addictive, with repeated praise for its enjoyability and excellence.

Beautiful Graphics and Visuals: Graphics are often called beautiful, great, and visually incredible, with nice visual design and effects.

Overall Game Fantastic: Reviewers frequently describe the game as fantastic, amazing, or really good, indicating strong general satisfaction.

Great Art Style: The art style and visual style are consistently praised as great, impressive, and beautiful.

Polished Fluid Gameplay: Gameplay flows well and feels polished, with mechanics described as fluid and engaging without becoming boring.

Poor optimization and performance: The game suffers from severe FPS drops, stuttering, and overheating even on powerful hardware and low settings.

Frequent crashes and freezes: Players report repeated crashes, freezes, and lockups, often mid-run, causing loss of progress and requiring force closes.

Bugs and technical issues: Numerous bugs, including broken skills, stuck bosses, missing health bars, and interface problems, disrupt gameplay.

Progression is slow and grindy: Players feel progression is abysmally slow, requiring excessive grinding for minimal gains, with punishing gold loss and steep unlock costs.

Runs feel repetitive and boring: Runs lack variety, with similar maps and enemies, leading to boredom and a repetitive gameplay loop.

Roguelite FPS core: The game is predominantly described as a fast-paced roguelite first-person shooter, often with a wizard/mage theme. Multiple clusters emphasize the fusion of roguelike structure with FPS combat.

Magic-based combat system: Combat revolves around magic and spells rather than traditional weapons. Players use magical abilities to defeat enemies.

Fast-paced arena shooter: Reviewers highlight fast-paced action and arena-style combat. Movement and magical powers are central to the experience.

Roguelike runs and upgrades: The game follows a roguelike structure with runs, leveling up, and home base upgrades. Each run is unique.

Card system for upgrades: A card system adds strategy, with players choosing card upgrades when leveling up during battle.

Frequent Game Crashes: Players report the game crashing or freezing completely, often requiring force closing. Crashes occur mid-run, on first run, during boss spawns, and repeatedly on the second day.

General Performance Issues: Performance is described as poor, with slowdowns and chugging. Issues are particularly bad later in the game and persist despite updates.

Severe FPS Drops: FPS drops significantly, from 200 to 20, 144 to 20-30 on the last map, and when many enemies appear. Drops occur even on medium and low settings and in crowded zones.

Freezing During Gameplay: The game freezes during fights, during level-up card selection, and when the boss appears. Freezes require force closing the game.

Poor Optimization on Hardware: Optimization is awful, with barely 60 fps on an RTX 4070 mobile in crowded zones. The game runs poorly even on lowest settings on average rigs and causes high hardware load.

Excellent value for low price: Many reviewers highlight the game's affordability and substantial content relative to its price, calling it a steal and a must-have for budget-conscious players.

Recommended for roguelite and FPS fans: Players frequently recommend the game to enthusiasts of fast-paced roguelikes, first-person shooters, and similar titles like Risk of Rain 2, Hades, and Vampire Survivors.

Not recommended due to crashes: Some users advise against purchasing or playing the game in its current state because of frequent crashes and instability, with one reviewer requesting a refund.

Mixed feelings on current state: While some recommend the game with reservations, others do not recommend it at all, citing issues like gold loss and incomplete development.

Performance and optimization issues: Technical problems such as poor optimization and performance hinder enjoyment, leading some to refund the game and others to conditionally recommend it.

Community fair range: $7.99 - $12.99.

Session length: 1.5h.

Endgame: 20.0h.

Most players report immediate fun from smooth, addictive combat and upgrade chasing, while a notable subset is slowed by repetitive runs and grinding progression. Multiplayer and stronger progression are recurring conditions that could improve enjoyment.

Friction: repetitive runs with little variation; slow and grueling progression; low drop rates and few crystals per map; combat cards feel unimpactful; high difficulty even on easy; loss of progress after defeat.

Unlock drivers: adding co-op or multiplayer; retaining some progression after defeat or saving runs; making combat cards more impactful; spells that preserve meta-progression Gold stones.

Fast-Paced Action Roguelike FPS Fan: Dives into levels to kill enemies, collect currency, take upgrades, and experiment with spells across runs. Motivation: Frantic first-person combat and roguelike run progression, benchmarked against Risk of Rain 2. Stance: buy.

Co-op-Seeking Social Player: Wants to team up with friends or random players, chat while playing, and tackle more enemies together. Motivation: Playing with friends or a co-op group; the current solo-only design is the main gap. Stance: sale.

Casual Quick-Session Chill Player: Plays in short bursts, often while chatting or relaxing, focusing on easy shooting rather than deep optimization. Motivation: Relaxed, low-commitment shooting in short sessions with light progression. Stance: buy.

Game is in early access: Many reviewers note the game is currently in Early Access and still feels raw or buggy. It entered Early Access on January 16, 2025, and is planned to remain for about two years.

Active development and updates: Developers are actively updating the game, with frequent patches and new content planned. The team communicates via Discord and responds quickly to issues.

Low competitive price: The game is frequently described as cheap, affordably priced, and offering great value for its content. Reviewers highlight that the price is very low compared to the value provided.

Compared to Vampire Survivors: Reviewers often compare the game to Vampire Survivors, describing it as a first-person version with similar gameplay loop. Some mention it captures the sense of power from that game.

Roadmap and future content: A roadmap to 1.0 has been released, and developers plan to add more realms, enemies, bosses, spells, and upgrades based on community feedback.