There’s something adorable about a simple action adventure title. Go into a new world, explore, find treasures, solve puzzles, kick butt, save the world. All in a matter of a couple of hours. Mask of Mists is charming in its simple almost primitive pleasures. And on one hand it makes you wish for more, but on the other satisfies a very simple need for fun.
This game is a very simple action adventure title with extremely light RPG elements. It’s like Might & Magic, but without a party and extremely short and simple. Or, I suppose, Legend of Grimrock, but not tile-based. The basics are similar – you explore, find progression items, kill some enemies, until the main goal is achieved and all is good in the world. You get a simple attack, an ability to shoot (eventually for both), a quick dodge move (similar to the modern Shadow Warrior games), a jump, some occasional blocks to throw, potions to heal or solve puzzles and key items and such. Go adventure, adventurer!
It’s simple, but fun. And it lasted me around 3 hours with every secret found. Which was perfectly satisfactory. I’ve had my fill, almost never got annoyed at anything, enjoyed the adventure. I mean, yes the jumping timing is weird, which can be a problem in a few spots. And one puzzle seems to imply that the developers had a badly calibrated monitor to work on (hint: that light blue statue is meant to be teal). And the interaction points are seen across half the map, unless they’re supposed to be hidden in which case you could easily not see them while staring directly at them. But it’s a couple of negligible frustrations, nothing more.
Mask of Mists is simple, but fun. I wish the story wasn’t so lazily simple and at least tried to go beyond an adventuring template. But the game is fun to play and it’s a couple of hours well spent.