Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates, Video Games | Tagged: entertainment, rpg, ubisoft, video games

First Impressions of Ubisoft's Mighty Quest For Epic Loot : Building Fun, Raiding Quality

By Etienne Dubuc

Free-to-play is clearly the economic model the video game industry has going on these days. While the biggest successes have come from those who were at the time lesser known company like Zynga and Riot, the major studios are now catching up. Ubisoft has tested the market with Ghost Recon Online and is now in the last stages of preparation for The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot with the release of the open beta.

Developed at Ubisoft Montreal, The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is a blend of an action role playing game, of dungeon crawler type, and of tower defense. A pretty unusual mix, but don't fear, the one doesn't interfere with the other because it's mostly two games in one.

The approach of the game is based on humor and colorful, vibrant graphics that establish the right mood. A lot of RPGs are dark and serious, like having you save a kingdom from an ancient evil that after thousands of years has been awakened by some not so clever mages. Here it's all the opposite: every knight has prospered and has a castle with its own gold, but nobody wants to sit on their gold so castles get raid a lot, including your own, so you better be prepare to defend it. Oh, and those castles: well, they're floating. This is the premise of The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot.

Four social classes are offered to the player : the knight, the mage, the archer and the runaway (which is only available if you bought a certain pack), with each character type having their own special set of skills fitting to your style of gameplay. Contrary to most games nowadays, you cannot customize your character. Some will find this a let down, as it is now a common, almost obligatory, feature to be able to customize your avatar. But when you think about it, it doesn't change anything since you will not encounter other players directly in the game, making the customization less important since you won't have to distinguish your knight in a crowd of twelve others.

The beta takes you through a tutoria,l which shows you how to raid a castle. Because of its easy combat system, you're on board for killings chickens, cyclops, undeads and other bad creatures populating the castles. The combat system takes only a matter of seconds to comprehend if you have ever played other action RPGs like Diablo. Left-click makes your character move or attack depending on where the click was made. Right-click will be used for an action of your choice just like the one, two and three on the keyboard and that's it. The core of the gameplay lies in just those five possibilities.

Having gameplay that is as simple and as it is effective as the one in this game is always a challenge. Choices must be made to assure the players do not feel restricted in their actions because the gameplay is too simplistic. The player must be able the execute everything he wants to do with as few commands as possible. Here, the system presents a perfect example of that.

Once the tutorial is done, then comes the tower defense part. Your castle full of gold and treasure has to be defended at all cost, you wouldn't want that hard-earned cash to disappear would you? You are given a pretty basic castle where you have to place a gold and a life force mine.  The treasure room is the objective your enemies will try to reach when they raid your castle. With a choice of monsters and traps to use, you have to try to make that goal impossible.

For customization fans, this is your part of the game. You have a huge liberty of selecting monsters and traps and also design for your rooms to make your castle unique, fun and challenging. As you level up your castle, more options will be offered making the creation process even bigger. Some creatures have specialties that changes their way of behaving, meaning your sorcerer might not act exactly like the one he finds in your friend's castle. When you're raiding that creates a beneficial unpredictability. Sadly, you have to choose a specialty based on the type of monster and not uniquely.  I could see truly good combinations possible if the final product lets us personalized every creature…

Ubisoft thought about the fact that some people might just create impossible castles, and they countered that by making you test your castle first, before it becomes accessible to everybody else. If you can't make it through the defenses, you have to go back to the drawing board.

Most of the castles available to raid are those of other players, along with a few that have been created by Ubisoft. As with most user-created maps, a lot aren't that interesting with  basically one room  with the strongest monster available to them. But every now and then you find a true architect who as created  a dungeon offering diversity and challenge.

The biggest let down of the game right away is it's too easy. After 25 raids, I still haven't lost a life. My castle still hasn't claimed one.

As for the free-to-play aspect, well, you won't have to spend a lot of real money in this game if it stays the way we are seeing it in the beta. With the omission of the Runaway class that must be bought, the only things that you can buy right now are potions that make you gain gold, life force, or experience faster, which are really not necessary.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot from Ubisoft Montreal is a creative, fun and clever game. In fact, it's even two games in one for the price of, well, nothing. It's certainly not perfect, as most user-created games content are, it still has respectable appeal to action RPG fans with an excellent combat system. As for more cerebral players, they will find the tower defense part quite challenging and fun.

Etienne Dubuc is the host of a French radioshow called « Les geeks ont raison » and program director for CISM 89,3FM in Montreal. You can follow him @geeksontraison

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!