If I do 3d6 + 9 damage plus an extra 2 poison damage and you have an armour class of 23, exactly how much damage will I cause when fully rested? Um… twenty - no, thirty - Oh who cares, just hit the bloomin' thing! That's definitely the attitude of Avencast: Rise of the Mage, a new action RPG from developers ClockStone Software, who have played the alchemists here, opting for the rather unusual technique of combining role-playing, shooting and beat 'em up elements into this mixed bag of a game. Disappointingly, even though I love to see games trying something new, Avencast does seem to get a bit muddled and unsure of what it actually is.

The story is, reassuringly, not as mixed as the gameplay, starting some time before the game begins when a mage is born and orphaned at an early age - Harry Potter should come to mind at this point. Unlike Harry, the now adopted young mage (or collected from where he was abandoned) has learned all that he can from his new father. Exhausting the knowledge at home, he leaves to study at Avencast - the academy for magic and wizardry - and after a few years have passed in this Hogwarts-like school of magic, our would-be hero is nearing his stroppy teenager phase and the game begins, with the young mage sleeping at his desk instead of paying attention to his alchemy lecturer - typical student! His closed eyes and clear lack of attention rather annoys the lecturer, who opts for the rude awakening approach, casting an odd, green coloured, but thankfully, harmless spell. Awakening with a jolt and after a brief "You are not listening!" speech, you, now in direct control of the ill-attentive mage, are sent to the headmaster's room - uh oh!

The headmaster (who, by the way, is not called Dumbledore) unexpectedly treats you rather leniently, giving you three tasks to complete under the guise of preparing yourself for the dreaded final exam. These initial quests are fairly simple and act as a tutorial to ease you into the slightly odd yet familiar game mechanics.

The gameplay is familiar because it is most definitely an action RPG, perhaps more so than other action RPGs - you have the standard RPG collect, trade and equip fantasy items and then the more unusual action elements - dodging, rolling, blasting away with hugely over-the-top spells and combo-infused melee attacks. It's closer to an action third person shooter such as Shadowgrounds than a RPG, ditching all that boring (and often confusing) maths to get down and dirty with abilities firmly placed on your skill, not your in-game avatar's. This shooter-like feel is demonstrated as soon as you begin the game, as a simple right-click "shoots" a small purple ball of magical energy in the direction your hero is facing - controlled by the mouse. Using the mouse grants quick, smooth movement but takes a bit of getting use to, even when using the so called 'novice' control mode; in fact, all the three possible control modes are a bit confusing and not really explained as well as they could be. For example, novice mode moves your character in relation to the screen - moving right moves your player towards the bottom of the screen sometimes. In my opinion it is best to stick with the third option - a standard chase-cam (a camera that hovers just above head-height and follows behind you, pointing in the direction you are facing) as used in World of Warcraft and Requital, but despite problems it's still nice that you are given a choice of three ways to control your character, and that you can simply switch between them with the V key if you do get in a muddle.

The camera orientation controls are also a bit fiddly - you have to hold the Control key and move the mouse to change the direction the camera is looking - providing smooth, unobstructed movement. Strangely however, this freedom of movement does not apply to looking up and this problem is magnified when zoomed in, giving a close-up view of your character but making it extremely difficult to see where you are going. With no easy way to look up - or just see in front of you on occasion - you are forced to rely on zooming out to the almost top-down view and then readjusting the camera - not a diabolical problem but it can become frustrating. Changing to the chase-cam almost eradicates this looking up problem, but it is still a pain, particularly when combined with the confusing movement controls.

Seeing where you are going is of course vital in order to eradicate the monsters - overgrown insects and other things - lurking in the realm of Avencast. I'm usually quite good at describing monsters, from two-headed flying-watsit-thingies to fiery hovering skulls, but Avencast has me beaten - which is a good thing! I struggle because the enemy design is utterly brilliant and original - as an example, how many games have you played where fallen branches (yes, branches from trees) creep along the ground like giant ants to destroy you? If that wasn't original enough then take the 'Massive "Belly Sucking" Wolgath' (the best named monster ever to infest our PCs) with the face of a 'Gremlin of Hatred' protruding from its large belly, ready to suck you in close to be sliced and diced by the Wolgath's cleavers. In addition to the great design, the enemies are also depicted and animated well - the blue Wolgaths have visible heads sticking out of their stomachs that while not being truly grotesque give them a slightly comic look, which works well, fitting with the visual style of the rest of the game. These fascinating, well-modelled creatures are only a fraction of the ones on offer too - it's enough to make a grown monster lover weep with joy, but you'll just have to play the game to see them all.

In tune with the bizarre inhabitants, the world of Avencast is also strange, with environments ranging from crystal-coated caverns to twinkling star-scapes, all beautifully crafted in pleasing but not wonderful graphics. Of particular note are the forests and Avencast garden - rickety bridges extend over ponds, butterflies flutter around and leaves drop from trees, falling to the ground like snow. My sole complaint is that the Avencast academy, the characters and even your hero all reek of Harry Potter movies. The unfortunate lack of character customisation means that your hero, the young mage, is given a name of your choosing but is still stuck looking like Mr. Potter. In an attempt to get around this, your appearance does change with new equipment - armour, staffs, bracers and so forth - offering some relief. In addition to the items that alter your looks there are the usual range of health and mana potions, with the more humorous innovation of health-restoring sandwiches. An item I particularly liked gives you the ability to summon a double (a sort of ghostly clone) of a trader wherever you are - costing a small sum of money but meaning that you are free to buy extra health potions and armour without having to trudge back through already cleared halls - a wonderful idea that should be used in other action RPGs.

As well as wielding your average blunt instrument bought from traders or scavenged from dead bodies, you can also learn some pretty nifty spells. These new spells are gained in the same old way of earning experience points through bashing enemies or completing quests ergo every single RPG ever made, from Diablo to Loki and beyond. A certain amount of experience raises you a level, allowing you to choose a new spell from either Blood Magic (more powerful, magically augmented strikes) or Soul Magic (ranged and explosion-type area-of-effect spells). No matter what spells you pick however you are guaranteed superbly over-the-top visual effects - the Fire Thrust spell from Blood Magic creates a trail of fire and makes a satisfying ripping sound as you thrust your staff upward, knocking hapless enemies backwards and leaving them open for ranged attacks. Spells are, naturally, quite hard for an apprentice mage to perform and the game reflects this in a way more familiar to beat 'em ups than action RPGs. In most RPGs your mage would simply utter some mystic jibberish from a scroll, but in Avencast you actually have to follow a simplified beat 'em up style combo such as up, left and left-mouse button. Tapping buttons at the appropriate time in sequence to perform a special move can be difficult, so it's good that the developers included a feature where you can assign a spell to a function key, although in the heat of battle function keys can be quite hard to reach, so it's a shame the keys or mouse-buttons that spells are assigned to can only be changed via the game options.

As well as a brand spanking new spell with each new level you also get to adjust your character's attributes such as Mana - used for casting spells - and Health. Despite having the option to change difficulty levels mid-game, an excellent feature, the game is difficult even on the easy difficulty level. The large scraps you always get yourself into between multiple enemies mean that you find yourself being hit - a lot! Thankfully, being hit is handled particularly well - surrounding the screen with a red blurry circle and playing a realistic "urgh" sound. This immediately shows what's happened to you and gives the impression of pain - not lethal amounts, but something you would prefer not to happen again. The only improvement would be the addition of some claret - you and hardly anything else in the game bleeds.

All other sounds show the same quality as when you are hit - staves whip through the air as you swing them about, spiders hiss as they descend from their webs, bones from vanquished skeletons clatter to the floor and birds tweet in outdoor areas, helping to immerse you in the environment. Extending this feeling of immersion is the great voice acting - all spoken dialogue (there's an awful lot of it) is acted realistically, with characters sounding as you would expect them to (including the cheeky little gnomes) - emotion is put in and embarrassed mages actually sound embarrassed. Mages, particularly in the first few hours of play, have problems for you to fix that they'd rather not tell the other mages in the esteemed Avencast academy about.

A great example is the mage who went into the basement to practise summoning imps (every mage, including you after rising to level ten, can summon small beasts to help them) guided by the book "Summoning for Dummies" - a classic. Unfortunately, things went a bit awry and the imps he summoned could not be banished, causing the cowardly and panicked wizard to seek help [Wow, sounds just like Gilderoy Lockheart! Ed]. In true Ghostbusters style the troublesome imps (miniature winged blue creatures) start tearing up library books - a deed that cannot go unpunished - so you are sent to dispatch them. Most quests are designed this way - with a nice touch of humour - so it is disappointing that most of them involve simple button bashing to complete. Not all quests boil down this, however; some require you to solve simple puzzles like stealing a book from a librarian without getting caught or luring a female wizard's pet imp into a cage - adding a pleasant break to the often repetitive hack 'n' slash action. My complaint about these puzzles is that the solutions never change - there is always only one way to do things and required items are always in exactly the same place - when stealing the book from the library the requested book is always on exactly the same shelf, making it very easy when you know which shelf to look on.

It was this book stealing quest where I encountered the first problem with the game's AI; the librarian, who patrols the library and tries to catch thieves, actually got stuck on the corner of a bookshelf and would not move! Obviously this made stealing the book easy and boring. Another problem that removed challenge was when a skeleton thrower - a skeleton who moves slowly and hurls flaming skulls at you - moved to a place where it could not attack me but I could attack it. Under constant bombardment from my spells you would expect the skeleton to retreat - but no, it just stood there taking hits. This example of a shortsighted enemy is uncommon though, as most can see and attack you long before you see them, making many combat situations deadly and increasing the difficulty. Despite these types of problems the AI is reasonable; ranged attackers flee from hand-to-hand combat, hanging back to let the brawlers in first or if you are doing more damage to them than when they're up close.

Unfortunately, the background music is like the AI - decent but not wonderful. When listening to it (you'll be doing a lot of this as you wait for your health to creep back up to survivable levels) words like 'magical' and 'mysterious' spring to mind, proving that it is suited the game's theme, if a bit dull. Luckily the music changes when near enemies, to faster, more upbeat tunes, adding a sense of danger and anticipation, although this is not enough to save the dull background music from becoming repetitive and tedious.

Just like reaching the end of this (hopefully not tedious) review, the end of the game will leave you only one question - is it worth playing or replaying it through on one of the harder difficulty levels? I don't really think it is, as nothing changes - all the quests, environments and enemies stay the same and even your character starts off looking the same. There is the possibility of making different spell choices as you level up and the fact that the huge number of items on offer all alter your appearance, but is that really enough to venture back to the realm of Avencast for a second or possibly third time? If the answer is no then at this point you might move onto the multiplayer, but in this case there isn't one. The only way to compare your skill to that of others is through the "Hall of Fame", a list of all players who have completed the game - at the time of the review as empty as a lecture on invisibility.

After some time playing Avencast: Rise of the Mage, I discovered that sadly it's not the wizard experience I was hoping for, with all its talk of ditching maths for more shooter-style gameplay - both of which it achieves to varying degrees. The tricky controls, often repetitive hack 'n' slash action and lack of multiplayer rank among its most damaging problems. However, some things save it from oblivion - the fantastic monster design, the often humorous quests, nice graphics and varied landscapes. A new developer attempting an original take on an overused concept is awe-inspiring and ClockStone must be complimented on their efforts, but unfortunately the game fails to reach the bar - not really offering any serious competition to rival action RPGs, or even shooters for that matter.

Reviewed by Tom Clark for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).