I understand. And I remember you love mages, but let me ask you this. What would you be looking for in any game review minimum? A brief description of the magic system? A critique of it? What sets the magic system apart from, say, ranged combat or fighting with a spear instead of a mace? Afterall, in the Gothics, and most games, the magic system is just a different way of causing damage and relates almost exclusivley to combat.
And in games where it provides utility, it provides it as an alternative to another way to accomplish something. Pick the lock or cast open lock? Same result.
A create example would be the Quest for Glory series. In part one (Heroe's Quest at the time) you could climb up and get the object, throw a rock and knock it down, or cast a spell that would retrieve it. Basically three ways for the three classes.
And what if a reviewer is like me, who never plays a mage in a single character game. I could hardly give a well formulated opinion since any experience playing a mage is not fun, so I couldn't say, "playing a mage is fun and the magic system is great compared to {another game}. But if there has to be an obligatory stement on the magic system, does tehre also have to be one on ranged combat?
While we are on the subject, lets say it was a review of Fallout or another game where diplomacy is a viable alternative to combat. Would the review have to go into great detail on this, or just mention that the game provides diplomacy as an option to avoid combat or solve quests without bloodshed. Doesn't sneaking and thievery skills also accomplish this in most situations?
Another question I have would be isn't magic use in almsot any game with magic use standard fair for the most part, only needing a mention when it deviates from the norm, such as bloodlines or arx fatalis (and both of the magic systems in those games really are standard fair, just in one every character uses "magic" in a limited way, and in the other you make pictures to use magic.
To be fair, I guess the same could be said for melee combat. I guess G1 and G2 had notably different melee combat than the norm, but almost every game's combat could be summerized just by naming the type of combat it is. Its TB, its RT, its RT w/ P, its Twitch. But that isn't true for Tb or twitch since G1/2 made a different kind of twitch, and TB can use action points (FO), or set amount of actions (D & D), have a lot of options (ToEE) or very few (most other TB games).
Well, I'm kind of getting off course, but the first 3/4ths of this post made sense.