Mazes of Fate

Old but I highly enjoyed this game. Takes a bit of a learning curve if you're not used to this style of rpg.

Coming into this game I knew that it was a dungeon crawler similar to Orcs and Elves and that it was played from a first-person perspective. Having enjoyed Orcs and Elves immensely, I was hoping to have a great experience with this game as well. I was not too disappointed. The first hour or so of gameplay had me forming a party of three, equipping them with the best weapons and armor I could find and making my way through an ok story by traversing through dungeons that unfolded on my map as I progressed. This would alternate with being outside of dungeons on a world map where I would interact with different villagers, getting quests and unlocking areas with which to proceed in the game. I loved leveling up my characters by killing different creatures in the dungeons to find loot that I could keep or sell to merchants in the villages. Assigning my party members skill points in the areas I wanted them to excel in was also a good deal of fun. The graphics, while dated, were adequate in displaying the different types of creatures and characters I discovered. After several hours of gameplay, I had discovered my only two real complaints. First, it would have been great to have a better mini-map of the dungeons. I constantly had to alternate between pressing the select button to bring up my map

This game really gives you a bang for your buck. I'm 25 hours in and I think I'm about half way through. The animations are quite a bit choppy, but when you think of modern games like Etrian Odyssey that have no animations at all, it looks pretty good. I have to say that the character designs and monsters are great. You really have to level up your weapon skills to improve your accuracy, but that is one of the only frustrations. The dungeons are fun with a few puzzles mixed in and they are quite lengthy. Highly recommended!

Who would have guessed that the GBA would have an RPG reminiscent of classics such as Might and Magic, Dungeon Master, or the first Lands of Lore? And it's in real time! Nice graphics, easy controls, and cool music make this worth a try if you are a fan of old style Western RPGs! The only downside is the slowdown if you issue too many commands too quickly. Whether this is a programming issue or a hardware one I don't know, but it didn't stop me from enjoying this great game!

Mazes of Fate may very well be one of the last of it's kind to appear on the GBA as Nintendo's never say die handheld finds it's life cycle dwindling down more and more. Like taking a time machine back to the 90's, Mazes of Fate is what it's title implies: a first person dungeon crawler that offers some interesting story and puzzles, but quickly dwindles into a repetitive and glitchy mess. The first thing you'll notice is that the game boasts some wonderfully drawn animation and graphics for a GBA game, which in itself is a great surprise. As the game continues, the corridor elements work for the most part, and if you played any kind of dungeon crawler games for your old PC back in the day, you'll feel right at home with Mazes of Fate. Not to mention that the game's music is, well, awesome. Sadly though, from that point forward, the game takes a bit of a swan dive. Bits of dialogue seem to be missing throughout the game at various points, not to mention a number of other glitches that don't really detract from the gameplay, but are noticable. Not to mention that exploring is a chore because of constant back tracking that has to be done, along with repetitive battle elements and overall slow gameplay. That being said, the good does outweigh the bad (mostly) for Mazes of Fate, which makes it worthwhile enough to check out for RPG fans holding on to their GBA's, and it offers enough length to give you something to do once you beat Final Fantasy VI Advance.

If any of you remember the old D&D game Eye of the Beholder, you will know what this game is like. It features real-time combat in a 3D maze with an automap function and quest log to help you though the game. The overworld is navigated with an on-screen character. You choose the cave or castle you wish to explore. In dungeons, you plunder weapons and gold in order to buy better equipment in town. You can choose to be one of three characters or choose to make your own. There are three basic fighting skills: magic, swords, or bows. There are dozens of secondary skills to choose from including lockpicking, bartering, searching, etc. Each time you gain a level you may choose to add points to any three skills you wish. It has very open-ended character development and can be played differently each time. There are a few glitches that pop up now and then like completed quests not dissappering from your quest log, and in battle sometimes the buttons have a noticable delay but these things do not distract from the overall enjoyment of the game.

this game is somewhat addicting, and although I usually like the regular rpg type, I'm finding this game hard to put down. I thought at first being that it's based on numerous mazes to get through and monsters to fight that it would be somewhat boring after awhile. But I'm enjoying it anyway. Even though its for an 'older" handheld system, I still think its an enjoyable game.