For as long as humankind has been alive, there have been tales of great wizards who led kings to mighty empires. Myths of fickle gods plaguing mankind and transforming zealous mortals into magical beasts have been told for millenniums. Even legends of ancient artifacts and sciences have some roots in mystic origins. Truly, the concept of magic has been around for as long as mankind has recorded its history. Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness, gives the player the potential to wield magics that no game, or gods, before allowed you to, with all the flourish and style you can fantasize about.

            Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness was an Xbox exclusive developed by a largely unknown company named VR1 Entertainment. It was a 3^rd person action/adventure title published by a small company you probably never heard of called Microsoft and hit store shelves on December 26^th, 2001.  Being that the original Xbox hit store shelves a mere month before this game was released, it could be considered a showcase of the new console’s potential. It fell into a weird in-between spot where it was released too late to be considered a release title but also too late to be a Christmas title. Unfortunately, this fact mixed with the tsunami of excellent games that were being pumped out for the Xbox at the time meant this little niche title was doomed to be lost in the wake.

            This adventure follows the story of Arran, a young lad who through a mixture of terrible hide-and-seek etiquette and fate, finds himself in a cave. As he wanders deeper into the earthen cavity, he meets a magical orb with an Irish accent. The orb who is lovingly named “Orb” tells Arran of impending doom that will befall the world. The evil Nightcaster has come to take over the realms and envelop them in darkness and that Arran has been chosen to reunite the four elemental MacGuffins to destroy the Nightcaster. To do this, he must dedicate years of his life to studying the way of magic. Once little Arran is grown and finally leaves the cave, he comes out to a world . . . well . . . enveloped in darkness. Seeing his home in shambles, his parents long dead, and his two childhood friends gone to fight, our hero steels himself for his journey.  Arran sets out on his quest to re-meet his childhood friends, master the elements, kill the Nightcaster, save the world, head to the Winchester, and wait for all this to blow over.

            Before any gameplay can be explained there are some things that need to stated. The way combat is designed to play is directly linked to elemental magics. There is fire (red), water (blue), dark (purple), and light (yellow). Earth and air be damned, right? Anyways, fire and water are opposed to one another and so are dark and light. Enemies are color coated to their element. Don’t worry too much about this. The colors on the enemies are there only to dictate what element is strong or weak against them. Their element plays no role in the type of damage or the amount of damage they do as far as I could tell. You can switch out your magic expertise to different elements to make you massively powerful in one school but pathetically weak in another. You use Orb as an impromptu reticle to aim your spells while moving about to dodge enemy attacks. The gameplay is therefore designed with the intention of fast-paced spell slinging action, forcing you to incorporate strategic on-the-fly decision making to overcome your adversaries.

            Fortunately, the game succeeds in that endeavor . . . kind of. Because it is impossible to kill an enemy of the same element, you literally have to switch to opposing colors. At the start of the game, the combat works wonderfully. Your mana is limited and it’s much easier to be overwhelmed, so being able to maximize your damage output is imperative. The late game becomes much easier because of how replete Arran’s mana pools become. At that point, you can just as easily choose two elements you like and spam attack enemies with them. The de-evolution of the combat compliments the evolution of your strength nicely because as you gain stronger spells the less a great wizard should have to worry about efficacy, and boy howdy do your spells get strong!

            The reason I claim that Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness is the quintessential magical wizard power fantasy is because of its spells. You get a whopping total of 48 unique spells throughout the game to cast to your heart’s content. The only difference between a low-powered spell and a high-powered spell is how long you feel like holding down the trigger. The differences between the first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier spells are immense. Whereas other games’ spells involve slightly bigger versions of previously known spells or just flat damage increases, Nightcaster goes wild. First-tier casts are snappy shots that will launch a single target spell or provide a basic version of a wall or AoE(area of effect). By the third-tier Arran will be summoning massive skulls puking poison in a circle, dropping guillotines that are summoned from the ground, and even summoning meteor showers from the sky! What’s the best thing about this? You can do it as much as you want! It’s resoundingly clear that the primary focus during game development was the spell design and the developers absolutely nailed it. If you aren’t grinning ear to ear while blowing up swathes of enemies then maybe magic just isn’t your thing.

            On top of spells being fantastical and devastating damage dealers, there are a few spells that are better suited to utility. There is a fire spell that summons a wall you can cast spells behind. The higher tier versions of this spell created bigger and bigger fences. The water element has a similar spell that will surround you in an orb of ice, making you invulnerable for a few seconds. Of course, light and dark magic have their own utility spells. They both have a spell centered on Orb that electrocutes enemies near them. The nice thing with this is that at the second and third tiers the electricity bounces between enemies. It does less damage but acts as a safe way of taking out the beasties. Each element has its basic spells, too. Such as a projectile and a glyph that acts as your AoE spells. The higher level version of each of these starts to diversify their utility, and it’s a blast to experiment with what you like and what works.

            Enemy design and diversity are the weakest part of this entire game. The back of the box makes the exceptionally bold claim that there are more than 35 different kinds of enemies in this game. Sure, if you’re referring to each color of the enemy as a separate entity. In reality, the enemies are about as diverse as a gated community. Enemies can be summed up into a few categories: the ones that chase you, the ones that shoot at you, and the ones that hide from you. Any quirks the monster types may have are completely irrelevant. EVERY enemy falls into one of those three categories or is a combination of two. On top of that, the AI is so basic and exploitable that it’s impossible to not play the game without taking advantage of the monsters’ pathing. Every enemy that doesn’t teleport runs directly at you. Obviously, this would be difficult to deal with if everything that sees you just B-lines it straight for you. How does Nightcaster fix this? They add obscure lines in every combat section that will automatically draw enemies toward you. Once you find one you can hop between aggression and non-aggression as much as you want.  It’s probably some of the most basic enemy pathing I have ever experienced in my life.

          There aren’t many collectibles in Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness. I’m not entirely sure if it was an oversight, but the NPCs have a habit of calling spells “scrolls” even though Arran never picks up a single scroll the entire game. There are these colorless orbs you can collect that are scattered across the game. These are much less exciting than the spells since all they do is increase your mana for different elements. Finally, there are runes, and these things are SO all right. I don’t know, reader. For an item where there are only four of them in the game, they are underwhelming. Don’t get me wrong, the runes are helpful, but they only add minor abilities, like running faster and regenerating health over time. They also use mana the entire time they’re equipped so make sure to remember to press that B button to unequip them once they’re used. All in all, there are a lot of items to collect with very little importance in their acquirement.

            Scrolls are a fun diversion from the main story. They don’t do anything to help you on your quest, but they add a little flavor to the world. All they really do is act like notes left by faceless adventurers as their last will and testament. Some of them are excerpts from books and bibles where they explain the lore of the world. Even fewer of them are military orders from regimes that had marched by far before Arran wandered there. It isn’t much, but little additions like this help to make the world that much more interesting.

Now, let us get to what most people are interested in— the vague numerical values given to something to help make an opinion more digestible!

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Gameplay: 4 out of 5

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Graphics/Art Direction: 3 out of 5

The enemies look stupid. Enough said. I know that that hardly constitutes a “professional” opinion, but the monsters you face are either basic animals, stupid-looking, bug-eyed monkeys, blobs, or cartoonish fantasy creatures that have been seen millions of times in other entertainment mediums. The map design is equally weak, with a lot of maps looking the same or being previously seen maps just gone through in reverse. Whatever the enemies lack in style Arran makes up for with huge, beautifully detailed spells. Some of these magical incantations look awesome even compared to modern standards. It easily makes up for the lame enemy design and boring map levels.

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Sound: 2 out of 5

I’ll be brief: There isn’t a single memorable song in this entire game. In fact, I can’t remember any song aside from the starting menu song, which is boring. The only thing I can remember is how annoying Arran sounded yelling every single incantation that he casts. The sound from the spells drowns out half of the words, but the weirdly exasperated way that a young Arran says “Hima” when casting venom strike will be stuck in my brain until I’m dead. The music and sound effects are inoffensive, forgettable, and at times, annoying. The only thing that could make it worse is if it was damaging to your eardrums.

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Content: 4 out of 5

If ever there was something that Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness was replete with, it’s things to kill enemies with. There are 16 basic spells in the game with 3 tiers per spell. That makes 48 different and unique spells to tear your way through the Nightcaster’s forces. Even though a lot of enemies’ combat prowess is basic, there is still a nice variety of monsters to kill. There isn’t any new game + in this game but collecting all the spells earns you a very nice reward. If you miss an item in the game, it can be incredibly annoying because of how big the maps are. If you don’t miss anything, though, the game does a great job of rewarding the player steadily over time. For an 8-hour game, VR1 Entertainment did a great job packing it with fun, usable content. If only there were some unlockables outside of gameplay, then it would have been perfect.

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TOTAL SCORE:

13/20

IT’S A’IGHT

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            Nightcaster: Defeat the Darkness isn’t a standout game, nor is it a hidden gem. It’s a competent action/adventure game that was pushed out by a company that was throwing money at everything it thought could be marketable. Microsoft was selling at a loss for quite a while when they first released the Xbox, but they had the money to throw around. This game just happened to be one of the games Microsoft essentially said “Sure, whatever” to and added to their long, rapidly growing list of titles. If you ask me, Nightcaster feels like a “Sure, whatever” game.

            Even if this piece of forgotten software isn’t quite a hidden gem, I highly suggest trying it. The game is ultimately pretty fun, and it feels like the developers put a lot of effort into it. Along with the fact that, like many other Xbox games, it is only five to ten dollars, it would be hard not to justify the price. It’s a fairly easy romp and would be a nice little addition to any Xbox collection.

            Even if the game is about magic, it doesn’t exactly capture it. Even if Nightcaster doesn’t exactly capture that magic of childhood, if you give it a chance then you’ll get one hell of a simulation.