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Follow the story of Finn, an orphan cum apprentice Sorcerer. After his master, Dash, heads off to town to do some shopping, Finn heads off to cause some mischief. His talkative feline friend, Erline, berates him for his action, but accompanies to watch the disaster unfold.

Securing a wand and drinking a potion of arcane mastery, Finn is off on an adventure against undead, creatures of nightmare and twisted faeries.

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The Move has great 1:1 motion, unless you move too far out of the calibrated spot, at which point your ability to aim will drop drastically. The ‘flick’ motion, which is used to fire off spells, gets a bit much, especially if playing for prolonged periods. It is not recommended without using the wrist strap. (Unless of course you want to see your Move wand fly across the room and into your television.) Sorcery can be played with or without the Navcon, using the left-hand side of a ps3 controller to move around instead, which is great, unless you are left-handed. The Move also picks up the direction of your flick for aiming and the point in the arc that the flick starts determines the height of the spell, which takes a little while to get used to.

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Sorcery is all about slinging spells around and combining their effects. Some combinations allow three spells to work together, which normally results in flashy explosions and a lot of dead monsters. Part of the fun is working out which spells combine and the spell system is rather intuitive and quick to switch between spells. Of all the gesture based commands, I found the spell system to be one of the best done. Flick down while holding Move button to activate your earthstrike, flick it side to side while holding said button to wield your lightning spell. Each spell also has two different modes. A normal flick with fire will cause a cone of flame to erupt in front of you. By turning the move wand sideways and flicking horizontally, you will instead have a line of flame just in front of you.

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Spells are fun and mostly useful, except for the earth spell, which doesn’t mix with anything and is really weak. I never found an enemy or puzzle that required use of the spell. The ‘shield’, while handy at first, becomes pointless except for a few boss fights.

To spice things up a bit, Finn is quite the alchemy prodigy too. By researching the odd reagents that you find in your travels, you will be able to brew up a bunch of handy potions, most of which have permanent effects. From more health to higher damage with your arcane bolts, the trick to staying alive is collecting gold, reagents and uh, empty potion bottles. (Still not sure what happens to the bottle when you are done with the potion…) While I enjoy the focus on alchemy and can appreciate finding out formulas myself, the potion making minigame is a complete waste of time and energy; it seems it is merely there to allow for even more gesturing with your wand.

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Shaking potions (they need to be activated before they can be consumed) sometimes takes too long, and often means that by the time you need a health potion in battle, it may be too late.

Sorcery is the kind of game teenagers and younger children will love, but after all the hype and delays, I think many gamers are going to be angry and want to throw their Move systems away. This wasn’t the game you bought the Move for, nor is it the game to warrant buying a Move for. But if you have the system, Sorcery is worth the time and wrist strain.

Scoring:

Gameplay: 6.5/10.

Making a tornado filled with lightning is a real treat. I haven’t enjoyed a spell system’s synergies like this since Breath of Fire 3. Sadly, you will find yourself strafing while running backwards a lot to prevent a horde from stunlocking you and getting swarmed near a wall will almost always result in death. The camera seems to get confused in tight spaces, like during the polymorphed sequences.

Design and Presentation: 7/10.

While I love the way spell switching works, the entire game could easily still have been mapped to a controller. In fact, there was nothing about the experience (bar the graphics) that made me feel the Move had achieved something that the Wii has not already done. Please do something else besides make my move change colours.

Value: 5/10.

The game can be whizzed through in six hours, and has very little in the way of replayable content with no unlocks or special reasons to play again. A few collectibles, challenges or spell puzzles would have really helped.

Overall: 6/10 (add a point if you are under 18; add another if you dream of being a wizard).

Always wanted to be Harry Potter, but your letter from Hogwarts never arrived? Sorcery is the place to go then if you want to feel like a wizard. Stirring music and likeable characters will suck you (or your kids) into this adventure and turn you into a proper spellslinger. Or give you really bad RSI.

[Sorcery is a PS3 Move exclusive. Completed on Gamer difficulty.]

Last Updated: May 23, 2012

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