Spirit Mancer Review

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Fast Facts

Gotta Catch-Em All!

There have been a lot of first-time games created this year, especially in the pixel-art, indie scene where Spirit Mancer resides. I had never heard of Spirit Mancer until I was offered a review code, I like retro-styled games and love a good card-based game, let’s dig in, shall we?

In Spirit Mancer you take control of either Sebastian (great name by the way) or Mary, depending on your choice of male or female. Your story is a weird one, I picked Sebastian and his story is as predictable as it is well-trodden. Family killed by monsters, check, became a monster hunter in response, check, you and your crew summoned to another world where monsters are trying to break free? Check! While everything seemed a bit ‘in your face’, including the humour, which was very on-the-nose, I never found the narrative distracting or overwhelming. It was very ‘Saturday Morning Cartoon’ though, so bear that in mind.

Spirit Mancer’s premise is a simple one, run through each level while fighting and collecting monsters as you see fit. Some monsters have weaknesses to either your blaster or energy sword so mixing those tools up will serve you well. As well as this each monster can be collected as a ‘card’ to be summoned at your leisure. You have some permanent cards to equip between levels but most of your work will be choosing which monsters to defeat and which to capture. Gotta catch-em-all!

A Mish Mash of Systems

Around this main mechanic of fighting and collecting monsters, you have a plethora of other mechanics and gameplay systems that never felt quite at home with the rest of the game’s style or identity. You have fishing, farming and a level reward system which I found most of the time, quite baffling. The rewards at the end of each level were tied to your performance, which don’t get me wrong, I am all for normally. In this game, however, the whole system seemed to funnel you into various playstyles and punish you for straying away from them. It all felt a bit odd and most of the time, restricting.

Graphically, while I love pixel art, I found the pixel art here quite generic. In a world full of pixel art, you have to make yourself stand out, which, unfortunately, Spirit Mancer did not. It’s bright, colourful and by no means is it bad but at no time did the presentation stand out or make me stop to take it all in. It’s decent enough but I would have loved something a bit more edgy or even something a bit more unique. The story is the same with the sound work too, while not being poor at all, I found the whole thing quite average and by no means memorable.

Some Decent Ideas, I Feel will be Overlooked

Spirit Mancer has some good ideas, I enjoyed the combat system and the card/monster collecting. I just wished a few of the extra mechanics and gameplay systems were dropped and more focus was put on the original and fun parts of the game. I do think if the reward system was tweaked and a bit more effort was made to make the sights and sounds of Spirit Mancer stand out, I would have enjoyed the game a lot more. There is something here buried within the game’s many systems and mechanics, unfortunately, though, I just feel most people will look straight past it.

Rapid Reviews Rating

2.5 out of 5

2.5