The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is a free-to-play game currently in Open Beta from Ubisoft. The titular quest in question involves players pillaging and purloining the gold and life force from other players’ castles. Your own castle is also a potential target for others and you must work to expand and fortify it so that no one else can steal your precious gold. However, Cornelius Richling is at hand to help you in that regard… for a price, of course.

Also for a price: the Runaway class (which also happens to be the only class with a female avatar). The Runaway class is one of four classes available to players. When you first start playing, you’re able to pick your first character’s class from the Archer, the Knight or the Mage, for free. Any additional characters you want to play as after that must be purchased with real world money (and if you want to play as the Runaway from the beginning, you have to buy one of the Diamond Packs, which include a number of other useful things as well, using real money). Each class has unique, special abilities but, to put them simply, the Archer and the Mage deal ranged attacks whilst the Runaway and the Knight are much more melee based. Each class’s character comes with their own backstory, personality, and quips (which haven’t gotten repetitive yet!) though they’re all rather zany and keep in step with the game’s light-hearted tone.

That’s the short of it, in regards to classes. The long of it is this: The Archer specialises in ranged attacks with defensive area of effect and stun moves. He attacks quickly and repeatedly, but doesn’t have the best health. The Mage specialises in ranged attacks with offensive area of effect moves, but his cooldowns are considerably longer than any other classes’. Occasionally, attacks will also stun enemies. His health is very middle of the road and you can afford to get closer to your target than you can with the Archer. The Knight has the most health of the three and is basically the tank class. Playing as the Knight, you can afford to get up close with targets and engage in close-quarter combat. His cooldowns are quick and he has an almost entirely offensive move set though he has hardly any mana. He’s one of the better suited classes for crowd control, coming second to the Mage; the Knight can take out at least three minions in one swing with his Cleave move or he can shove enemies away (whilst also briefly stunning them) with a swift Punt.

Returning to the game’s tone, Mighty Quest certainly doesn’t take itself seriously, to the point that it gives a hand wave to its own backstory. Mighty Quest understands that you’re not here for the story; you’re here to chew bubblegum and pillage castles – and you’re all out of bubblegum.

Now, let us discuss the business of pillaging. When choosing your latest target, you’ll have a fair few castles to choose from and the available castles will usually belong to other players of a similar level to your own character (so you can’t try and storm a level 10 castle when you’re massively under levelled, for example). There are additionally a few castles with their name and level tags in green that aren’t user-created, but looting them is an objective set for you by Richling. Fulfilling this objective will grant you various goodies, including even more gold. In the user-created castles you can earn crowns if you clear any number of three mini-objectives. These usually require you to beat the time set by the castle creator, loot their gold and life force mines and then finally reach the last door without dying. The castles not created by users don’t have these mini-objectives so you’re usually free to clear them in your own time.

Pillaging a castle is usually a swift rampage, meaning you can siege multiple castles in mere minutes regardless of how many hordes of minions you encounter. The more minions within those castles that you slay, the more experience you get. You also get a chunk of experience upon successfully clearing a castle.

As one would expect, the more castles you loot, the more you level up. Levelling not only dictates the strength of your character and what armour they can wear, but it also limits what parts of the game you can access. Obviously, there are various skills and spells you can only use after reaching a certain level. But alongside this, areas of castle construction are also dependent upon your level.

Castle construction is where one will find much of Mighty Quest’s depth. You can kit out your castle with all manner of beasts and traps, creating figurative and literal minefields filled with hordes of minions if you so desire. Or you can build an oddly quiet castle, only for there to be a horde and a giant boss at the very end that ambushes would-be intruders with the element of surprise. You could hide your loot in an extremely out of the way spot, in an effort to foil other player’s attempts to get the best time. The possibilities are endless, and also a bit daunting. The tutorial for this half of gameplay is informative, though it leaves you to discover the true depth of castle construction for yourself. It’s not long before the game moves on to teaching you about something else entirely. And don’t forget, those who bring the pain also have to withstand the pain themselves; in order to validate changes you make to your humble abode you have to fight through your own castle in order to prove that it is indeed still lootable for other players. In the interests of fairness, it’s a nice feature, though it is more time that keeps you away from the foretold Epic Loot you so fervently seek.

Speaking of castle construction, this is where I encountered a minor point of frustration. I was happily pilfering another player’s castle when it informed me that not only was my inventory full, but my gold purse was full too. In Mighty Quest you can’t just amass oodles and oodles of gold to your heart’s content; after a certain point you have to get a bigger wallet. So after I was done with that particular castle I tried to upgrade my coin purse. It told me I needed to first upgrade my castle’s heart. The castle heart needs to be levelled up in order for your castle to contain more minions, traps and rooms (in quantity and variety), so I tried to do that and I was promptly told that my own character was not a high enough level for the castle heart to be upgraded. That meant I had to then siege several castles whilst totally ignoring all of the loot as I had no space for it. Considering this game is called THE Mighty Quest For Epic Loot, this was more than a little frustrating. That said, it was also just about the only moment I ever got frustrated during my time playing Mighty Quest.

The Open Beta looks very promising and, above all else, is a great deal of fun to play. With its irreverent humour and fast-paced castle siege action, you’ll rarely fail to find yourself amused whilst reeling in other player’s booty. The slower side of gameplay is definitely the castle construction, but, whilst that does entail some minor annoyances, overall, laying waste to castle after castle is consistently entertaining.