Metareview - Mage Knight Apocalypse

With the release of Mage Knight Apocalypse, Namco Bandai may have been hoping to steal a few precious hours from RPG gamers before Neverwinter Nights 2 and Gothic 3 hit the shelves. Unfortunately, a few hours is all it takes to realize Mage Knight is one for the bargain bins. You might be better off getting your hack-and-slash kicks from Titan Quest, or even Dungeon Siege II: Broken World.

• IGN (54/100) was displeased with the game's production quality: "The storyline isn't executed very well. The frequent cut scenes never deliver any kind of engaging dialogue and are further hampered by voice acting that sways from average to terrible."
  

• GameSpot (44/100) didn't appreciate the innovative combat system: "Since the save points are all over the place, you'll usually only have to take a few steps to pick up the fight right where you left off. You'll quickly fall into a very repetitive and annoying cycle of death where you resurrect, fight, and die over and over again...slowly picking away at the mob of monsters until finally they're all dead. It removes any sort of challenge or sense of attrition from the game."
  

• GamePro (40/100) thinks Mage Knight sets new lows in pathfinding: "Allies constantly become stuck behind walls and pillars, enemies lose track of you when you walk out of their line of sight, and glitches allow you to hurl spells at blissfully unaware boss mobs. On occasion, we were forced to complete an entire level solo when our two computerized comrades became stuck in a maze somewhere."