The surroundings you walk through are all forests and mountainous regions, but are quite pleasing to the eye thanks to some nice effects and volumetric lighting. Diablo wasnвЂ™t about an epic story or deep, involving characters with their own idiosyncrasies, it was about hitting evil things, who drop weapons that let you hit bigger evil things вЂ“ and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Maybe I am looking at this all the wrong way. ItвЂ™s the final nail in the coffin for any attachment you will have for the party of heroes and also makes the already poor plot incredibly difficult to care about. The delivery feels awkward and broken, completely unnatural.

Changing my DwarfвЂ™s beard and hair colour does not an in-depth character creation mode make!ДЄnd for those of you who didnвЂ™t take an instant disliking to the sad cast on display, the absolutely dreadful voice acting will do it. There is the much touted вЂcomplete character customizationвЂ™ spoke so highly of on the official website, but itвЂ™s almost non-existent. YouвЂ™ve got the tall, blonde, elfling guy, a ripped Amazonian woman вЂ“ all horribly clichГ©d and totally devoid of any charm whatsoever. They are a mixed bag, the Oath sworn lot. They all look like World of Warcraft dropouts, especially the Dwarf and the Night Elf, sorry, вЂVampire NightbladeвЂ™, who look like they have been ripped directly from BlizzardвЂ™s megaMMO. When beginning the game you select one of the five heroes and heroines. MKA actually does something original here and falls into a whole new category вЂ“ the вЂutterly, utterly dismalвЂ™. Done badly, however, and this sort of game can become a tiresome click fest. If done well, these games can almost be a hypnotic experience, levelling up your character from a pool of multiple classes, gaining new skills and battling bigger and badder monsters to find those elusive rare items. All the hallmarks of the genre are here, and this sort of game tends to end up in one of two categories. So, what sort of game do we have? Instead of creating a digital version of the tabletop game, which could have proved to be interesting, Namco-Bandai again kick dust in the face of originality and have made MKA a by numbers Diablo-style dungeon crawler of the most generic kind. I mean, the world it is set in is called вЂThe LandвЂ™ вЂ“ talk about a complete lack of imagination! A story so woefully unoriginal I almost bored myself to sleep typing it here. MKA is the adventures of five stereotypical Fantasy/RPG types oath sworn to save the world from the generically named вЂForces of ChaosвЂ™ by travelling across dangerous lands to collect the five Aspects and use them to defeat the evil Apocalypse Dragon. IвЂ™ll admit that my research into this went no further than a quick browse of their official website, but that was enough to inform me that it was far too complex for me to bother with, all dials, mathematics, pens and paper вЂ“ all things that kept me well away from Dungeons & Dragons in my youth, and by proxy, steered me to video games, where all those little calculations would be performed conveniently in the background for me. No longer a case of picking up a pack of Magic: The Gathering cards and dealing your friendвЂ™s вЂwarlock masterвЂ™ a severe case of husk with a well played hand, Mage Knight gives you little painted figurines to battle with вЂ“ a kind of вЂWarhammer-liteвЂ™, if you will.

Mage Knight вЂ“ Apocalypse (or MKA, for the sake of brevity and my laziness, from now on) is apparently based upon a new collectable table top game gaining popularity in the States.

Mage knight apocalypse