Rage of Mages is one my favorite old school ARPG/RTS games, game was released in 1998 and was developed by the Russian studio Nival Interactive. Rage of Mages was not your typical ARPG and with it's distinct art style and atmosphere, this game was one of the most played games of that era. At the first glance this game looks like a Real Time Strategy game, but once you start playing it you will notice that RTS part comes later in the fairly lenghty story campaign. Story takes us in a fantasy world where all sorts of magical creatures, monsters and warriors of great skill exists. We the players take the role of a new adventurer and start moving up in the world and with time we will have a whole group of hired mercenaries to help us kill increasingly tougher enemies later on.  

You can pick several types of classes like Fighter, Archer or Mage. Combat is happening in real time, so it is very important to be quick with the commands or your character would die very often, it is a very common occurrence to be surrounded by group of enemies very fast, you will end up as a bag of loot very fast if you are not careful. This is where mage area of effect skills help greatly and having a party with strong mage is a must. Every one of those tough enemies would drop tiers of loot, and this is where another great part of this game comes to light, there are literally dozens of metal types in the game, for example there are iron, meteoric, adamantium and even crystal armor and weapon types that look great and feel strong when you are using them. Enemies would also scale with new armor and weapon types and would be increasingly harder to kill as they also receive new abilities and stronger attack and health pools. I got to say that Rage of Mages is one of those full package games with great immersion that would keep you occupied for days until you finish it.

#gaming