If Romania looks as hyper coloured and frantic as this game wants you to believe, I may need something to protect my retinas whenever I decide to visit. I just hope I don’t accidentally stumble into a portal to another world… although that could be a fun adventure on its own.

The presentation is vibrant and charming, with heavy use of colour that fits the whimsical tone but occasionally feels like visual overload. It definitely gives the game personality - A sense of wonder.

Near-mage often resembles a walking simulator with a linear story more than a point-and-click adventure game. It’s frustrating because the game is well presented, but fails to engage in any way that doesn’t align with its own script; making puzzle solving rather frustrating because you figured out the solution about three steps in, but the game doesn’t actually allow you until it flat out gives you the answer.

Puzzles are also fairly basic. Go to X place, talk to character Y. I’d hoped that the “rubbing items on everything until something happens” spiel replaced by “cast magic and see what explodes” would’ve made for a nice creative gateway into more environmental puzzles. The majority of spell prompts boil down to “cast magic on character”.

As an added note, I played through the game not using any spells, and found all it changed was how much of a hassle it was solving the puzzles in the “traditional” sense. That’s probably by design, the game wants you to cast that lovely magic spell to solve everything, but it did grate after a while.

The ability to cast spells and create your own build is interesting in theory, but hampered by the inability to use them whenever you want. Trying to use the spell wheel without being prompted by the game simply doesn’t let you cast anything.

It’s probably to keep you, the player, from getting too trigger happy, but some slack on when and where to cast spells would’ve been nicer than predetermined conditions. If only to experiment at least.

The story is fine, but not especially strong. You play as a teenager visiting her aunt in Romania, discover you can use magic, and end up at a magic academy in another dimension. There's a subplot about one of the teachers maybe wanting to enslave non-magical people, but it’s vague and not really developed. Later there’s a reveal that the protagonist was adopted and isn’t from a magical bloodline, which raises some questions that the game never really answers.

It’s not that the story is bad—it’s coherent and self-contained—but it brings up plot points that feel like they should matter more than they do. Nothing is followed through in a meaningful way, which makes you wonder why those twists were included at all, especially since the main quest only touches on them indirectly. Considering I played through the story twice without getting bored is perhaps a testament that it is made with love and care. I just wish it wasn’t so… strict and linear.