The game is freewheeling without being an easy bore, but hard enough that we really had to become adept at all of our abilities, and always hungry for the next unlockable skill. For example, our gloriously unarmored vampire Kithana was hardly the type of girl to waltz up to a crowd of baddies head on, but our little hottie could (ironically) turn invisible, sneak up and take out stragglers until our enemy's numbers were manageable.
Even though Mage Knight: Apocalypse stands under the shadow of action-RPG giants, our hands-on look makes us believeit will be welcomed by action junkies as well as heavy-duty role-playing veterans looking for light-hearted distraction. If planned improvements are implemented to the thin tutorial, even novices to the genre should find a lot to like. Look for the Apocalypse to arrive at the end of September.
