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Is this a Mobile Minecraft RPG or Elder Scrolls II? | Margonem Adventures - Full Review

880 View2023-02-10

Margonem Adventures is a first person RPG and 3D dungeon crawler with Minecraft looking graphics, packed in traditional mobile game format, for better or for worse.

🟩Pros

+Interesting deck building style of combat

+A decent time-killer to play in short bursts

🟥Cons

-Energy system to limit play

-Heavy gacha / live service elements

-Uninspired combat system

There was an original Margonem game for PC which was a 2D MMORPG, and this game was apparently supposed to be Margonem 2. But something happened during development that converted this game into a mobile game now titled Margonem Adventures.

Is this Minecraft RPG or Elder Scrolls II?

Gameplay Analysis

Margonem Adventures features a first-person ranged magic combat, built on a dungeon crawler setup, populated with classic looking 2D pixelated enemy sprites that are almost always facing you like a tidal-locked moon. The game starts off pretty interesting and it definitely had a promising gameplay.

After the tutorial section though, the game immediately shows its true colors as a mobile game, complete with a three star system to rate the “run”, an energy system to limit play, gacha elements, and daily, weekly, challenges as part of a live service setup. This allows you to spend real money to get better items and loot in order to progress faster.

Gacha gaming

There is a shop, but most of the things offered are mainly in-game purchases using real money, in fact the in-game gold coins you collect isn’t even a useful currency, only used in upgrades, like a crafting material.

The UI of the gameplay is passable at best, but the hub town is a major offender with its craggy UI and visuals. Thank goodness as we don’t have to spend a lot of time in the hub town. As most of the gameplay is centered in dungeon crawling and the occasional menu hopping to equip items and skills.

Gameplay Analysis

What’s most important though is the gameplay, as Margonem Adventures is a first-person RPG dungeon crawler that puts you in the shoes of a traveler, who's the only one that can purge the world of evil; one dungeon after another. Like the King-style Saga games (Candy Crush, Papa Pear Saga, etc), you also spend energy to get a try at these levels. Finishing dungeons grants you gold and random loot at the end, to equip on your character.

As of writing, I’ve counted the available levels for you to play and it's at 41 levels, divided into four chapters. This chapterized division felt totally pointless, as there are no bosses at the end of these chapters, no cutscenes or story elements.

There’s also a small mini-exploration and puzzle angle wherein you have to collect all the crystals hidden in the levels, and interact with basic interactables like levers to open gates and or journals from dead adventurers. How many crystals you find will constitute your 1-3 star rating at the end of the dungeon run.

The controls are pretty non-complex; left side of the screen to move, and right side to look. Oftentimes, you will encounter monsters in the dungeon to fight, usually in big open spaces.

The uninspired combat mostly consists of strafing left to right to avoid projectiles, moving backwards to avoid melee attacks, while throwing a plethora of spells — heal, freeze, poison, haste, defense, burn, etc. — chosen from a deck-like randomization element, two at a time. Some enemies will have special telegraphed attacks but they’re still too easy to predict and evade.

The highlight of the game

The deck-building system is the most compelling part of the game, you can select up to a max 10 cards, and you can unlock more cards for use by collecting shards in order to craft them, as well as upgrade them using a specific material. As mentioned earlier, during combat, two of these cards from your deck of 10 are randomly selected, and you can choose which one to use. Then after your attack timer cools down, it picks two random cards again, rinse, repeat.

Although there is an option to disable it, I prefer using the auto-targeting feature in combat, as I feel it goes perfectly with the auto-attack nature of the game (there is no attack button). A nice quality life element especially when playing this game on the go and in short bursts where you don’t want to micromanage everything and spam tapping the screen.

Item customization is a generic Action-RPG setup: You can equip different headgears, body gears, foot wears, a single weapon and two jewelries. You can find upgrades via dungeon rewards or opening chests, by spending gems or real money. I find nothing about the itemization interesting and it mostly boils down to equipping whichever item has the higher number.

Arena mode!

If you are tired of the dungeon crawling and just want to focus on the combat, you can also participate in the “Endless Arena” to play in a survival game mode where enemies perpetually attack you in waves. I personally find this game mode more fun than the actual dungeons.

Conclusion:

Margonem Adventures is an interesting amalgamation of old-school first person RPGs, minecraft visuals, and candy crush-like progression system. It has its cool moments and can be a decent time-killer to play in short bursts, and it's just fitting since you can’t play long sessions anyway unless you pay.

Ultimately, its mixed bag experience for me, as its underdeveloped UI, gacha nature, and play limiting energy system drags down the otherwise interesting on-the-go dungeon crawler. Which is a shame because I really liked the idea of a first person dungeon crawler game.

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