Mistmare (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 0.5 stars Abysmal
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 1.7 (0.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Staff
• Reviewed on: 08/12/2003
• Released on: 06/30/2003
• Originally published on GameSpot: Mistmare (PC) Review

Mistmare is more punishment than game. No matter what the box says, this isn't so much a fantasy role-playing game as it is a medieval torture device right up there with the rack and the iron maiden. Slovenian developer Sinister Systems has gotten almost nothing right here, shipping an unfinished product that contains hundreds of bugs, abysmal play mechanics, and Byzantine dialogue littered with typographical errors.

Both out of the box and with the version 1.6 patch, the third-person wannabe role-playing epic is all but unplayable due to graphics and control problems. The mouse cursor floats around the screen, always a split-second behind your hand. Graphical slowdown turns even simple movements into a frustrating slideshow. Even on a machine that far surpasses the recommended system requirements, many areas drop the frame rate down to 10 frames per second or so. One of these locations includes about a third of the monastery where the game begins, so you can forget about starting off on a good note.

You can add to these problems a twitchy camera system that pans back by itself and begins to rotate when the cursor gets anywhere near the edge of the screen. The resulting combination makes accomplishing basic tasks such as opening chests and casting spells excruciating. Clicking on dialogue responses and maneuvering the cursor into the right spot so you can navigate a standard hallway are challenges in themselves. Getting to a doorway without stutter-stepping into every nook and cranny in a room is cause for celebration.

The game's point-and-click melee combat is even more frustrating. The unreliable mouse and camera controls make it hard to get your cursor onto stationary objects, let alone moving monsters that are trying to kill you. Thankfully, you only have to double-click an enemy once to activate the automatic combat mode that keeps you swinging your sword no matter where the cursor is situated.

These crippling problems overshadow everything about Mistmare, even its few good points. Sinister Systems has at least come up with an original gameworld set in an alternate reality where history went off the rails in the 13th century. After the Christian church discovered a way to end the Black Death by using magic, an evil fog descended on much of the continent. Southern Europe was cut off from the rest of the world, keeping Columbus at home in 1492 and dragging the medieval era into the late 20th century. When you take the role of Isador, a warrior monk tasked by the Vatican with finding a man condemned by the church, the calendar may say 1996, but the cobblestone streets and torchlit rooms indicate a much earlier era.

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