Hello there and welcome to my first Lets Play/Gaming Comentary blog. I play a lot of adventure maps, some are good, some are bad, some are weird, some are epic, and I play them all!

The latest one I've played is The Magicians Trial, and it's a real good one, which is why I just had to make this post, good maps need recognition. This map was made in 1.7.3 and it's still one of the better ones I've played.

For my review I'll break it down into chunks.

Story

This is not its biggest draw, the story itself is good, but its execution is failed. The notes are to few and too far in between, their length is very inconsistent throughout the map and the story, in terms of story telling completely falls a part when the "boss" is beaten.

It would ultimately have been better served with more signage story telling or twice if not triple as many notes.

The sad part is that most of the story is told through a book that the player carries with him and had it been made today in 1.3.1, the map maker could have made use of the book and quill feature to make an interesting story telling device, what a shame.

Architecture

Well, the buildings are well made but they're nothing special, this is usually the case with old maps, the amount of blocks were limited back then and so was the creativity. Minecraft architecture has changed a whole lot since those days but as I said before, the buildings are decent enough, but nothing special. The only thing I really see as standing out is the interior decorating, but my fondness for the maps interiors might just be because I suck at it.

Puzzles

This is where the map really shines, the redstone is still better than in most other maps, and it's consist, there's intricate redstone design hidden all around, and that's something I can really appreciate, the hidden part. The puzzles are normal in difficulty, the lava ones can be a bit tricky, especially the piston ones that have the blocks you're jumping on at lava level, that caused a few deaths... The logic ones are cleverly thought of, but unfortunately very easily solved by using my method of flicking random levers until I hear the door pop.

Multiplayer Support

The map was made with SMP in mind, we played a retrofitted SMP version of it and the sequel is actually a blown blown cooperative dungeon crawler, so there's enough gear to go around, there's however very little food but the map was made in 1.7.3 so that explains things.

Boiled Down

Overall a good map, it has a few flaws, most of them due to its age. It's good enough for me to wanna play the sequels

8/10