In a time where computer rpg's are far and few between, there comes a twist on the classic rpg style which implements the strategy elements of another genre. Rage of Mages is this game. Rage of Mages 1 first introduced a concept that kept the traditional buying of goods, hiring partners, and going on adventures of role playing games, but used a different technique. Rage of Mages used a bird's eye view perspective when adventuring and battling creatures. You controlled your characters by a more or less point-and-click method. After a year of development, Monolith has released Rage of Mages 2, which is built upon its predecessor's storyline.

If you’re looking for a RPG with outstanding graphics, Rage of Mages 2 will immediately turn you away. While shopping in towns, the graphics are fairly nice, but when adventuring, your characters resemble that of square blobs (kind of like in Zelda 1). There is no detail to the characters, including monsters. The scenery is primarily composed of trees drawn of sprites, and primitive ground and water textures. In today's day and age it’s almost impossible to make a game successful without utilizing some sort of 3D optimizations. Rage of Mages 2 has absolutely none.

The sound in Rage of Mages 2 becomes repetitive very quickly. Cheap environmental audio effects like crickets are found on a regular basis. When leading a unit, or character to a certain place he/she always seems to repeat the same saying. For example, I wanted to make a magic user so I chose the magician. When I told him to move somewhere he said 'ok,' clicked on a monster for him to fight, and he says 'ok,' told him to pick up an object and again, he says 'ok.' I thought that it may have been just the magician who does this, and I guess I was wrong, because the fighter also repeats the same saying over and over again. Lousy environmental sounds and generic sayings make the sound one of the worst parts of this game.

Gameplay in a game like this is fairly easy to rate. There is no gameplay. It’s as simple as that. You click, and your character does it. The in-game menu's are set up nicely though, and easy to navigate. In towns, it’s also easy to buy equipment, listen to rumors, and visit the church. One thing I didn't like about this game was that all the towns were EXACTLY the same. You visit a town many miles away from the other one, and it looks identical to the original one. Fighting monsters is as easy as click on it. Depending upon whether or not your character is stronger decides who is going to win the fight. There’s just not really much strategy to it.

Rage of Mages 2 may be entertaining for the really, really die-hard medieval battle strategist. After playing though the first couple of levels in RoM2, I decided that it was time for it to visit the recycling bin. Rage of Mages 2 offers nothing new to the old, decrepit style of video games. Rage of Mages 2 is just about identical to the first one in every single aspect. Graphics are the same, sounds are the same, towns are the same, etc, etc.

Multi-player is the only semi-redeemable feature of this game. You can choose from the generic multiplayer options, either ipx, tcp/ip, serial, etc. You can create a character and then bring him on a cooperative adventure with a couple other friends to battle monsters and find treasure. You can also choose one of a bunch of maps to play on. Even with friends, it's going to be hard to try to play this game for more than an hour though.

Overall, Rage of Mages 2 is a weak attempt at trying to make a good sequel out of a not so good original. Rage of Mages 2 offers nothing new, nothing changed to make it a better game. I would only recommend this game to the gamer who has not had a chance to experience a couple of the better games like it. For example, Warhammer was much better (as far as battle strategies go). Should there be a RoM3, I hope Monolith will get on the development team to be more up-to-date on their graphics, sound, story, and gameplay situation.