To get to each Aspect, you'll need to kill a whole lot of baddies. Each dungeon map in the game has an very linear layout. Moving from start to finish will require the slaying of all the enemies standing around, which are all apparently waiting for you. Occasionally there are extremely light puzzle elements...

Regardless of which character you picked to start the game, they'll all end up in the party by the end. Though you'll be the only one directly controllable, there are some limited party control commands like attack, follow, and stop. You'll quickly come to realize how useless these commands are.

Party members in this game get lost constantly. Over the course of a stage, your squad will get split up or stuck behind a wall, a pillar, or their own clumsy feet, leaving you to fight alone. We tried on numerous occasions to go back and retrieve our allies to little effect. Many times, even as we were standing directly with no obstacles between us and slamming the follow button, they wouldn't budge.

When you die you'll also automatically respawn at the save point. This initially proves to be convenient but later reveals itself as a device that removes nearly all the challenge from the game. Let's say you're at a boss encounter or a fight with a particularly nasty group of monsters. They kill you. You respawn at a nearby save point with any squadmates that happened to go down and all your armor, weapons, and statistics intact, then run back to the conflict. As it turns out, absolutely nothing has been reset, so you just continue the fight. Rinse and repeat until you win.

Another feature that drains challenge from the game is incredibly overpowered character abilities. ...​

On the positive side, Mage Knight gives players some cool customization options, even if we've seen them before. Weapons and armor can be fitted with magestones, which serve as damage or resistance bonuses based on what color elemental combinations are entered.​