In the past, more or less every month, my partner and I followed the instructions in the box and “got together” with our friends to play Magic: The Gathering. We had a sealed casual draft of whatever the last set was, and at the end of the night (sometimes very long), the winner would come home with some premium packages and bragging rights. With Magic: Legends,, our meetings may soon migrate from the kitchen tables to our computers.
Magic: Legends is a free hack’n’cast game from Cryptic Studios. It will arrive on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC later this year, with an open beta starting on March 23. Subtitles question “What if we obsessively sewn together one huge ogre made of Destiny 2aspects of MMO with Diablo 3-style of play tucked inside a Magic: The Gathering thematic puzzle box? ”The answer is an ingenious action game, although sometimes difficult to manage, which I think my group of Magic gaming friends will love it. I recently participated in a guided demo of the game, with Stephen Ricossa, creative director at Cryptic Studios, acting as my Faerie Guidemother, showing the details of the game and how to play.
At the Magic: Legends you play a Planeswalker, the “main characters” of Magic who have incredible magical powers and the ability to warp (or ride a plane) between the multiple realities of Magic multiverse. But instead of piloting one of Magic’longtime heroes like Teferi, Chandra or the impersonator of Cloud Strife Jace Beleren, Magic: Legends allows you to create and customize your own Planeswalker. The prospect of creating my own Planeswalker, like Kaya or Vivien, is extremely exciting for me. My preview didn’t cover much of character creation, but since the few minutes I’ve had to tweak it, you’ve got an adequate amount of options and styles.
After character creation, you have five options to choose from for your Planeswalker class, with each class aligned to a slice of Magic’s color pie: Beast Summoner, Geomancer, Sanctifier, Mental Wizard and Necromancer. I spent my time with the Necromancer.
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The game is top to bottom, isometric and click to move. (There is WASD and motion supported by the controller as well.) There are objective-based missions that you initiate and that take place in instantiated areas. Enemies crowd around you, and you fight them in real time in combat that, if you were looking over someone’s shoulder, would remind you of Diablo. But instead of relying on a weapon or wand to fight, your Planeswalker fights by acquiring, assembling and launching a small spell deck.
There are creatures spells like Goblin offensive to summon goblins to fight by your side. There are spells like Zealous Charge that increase these creatures and make them attack harder, and spells like Lightning Strike, which allow you to directly damage your enemies. Like on paper Magic, spells require a specific amount and color of mana and, after casting a spell, it leaves its bar and is replaced by another random spell from your deck. You never know what you’re going to get, so make the most of it. You have a weapon that you can use to crush enemies to death, but only do this if you want to be slow and eaten alive by swarms of enemies.
You also have static skills specific to your class (as you would see in Overwatch) and a superpowerful final ability that you can only use after charging. (See too: Overwatch.) Your class matters only with respect to the static and final skills that you can use. What I liked most about the game was that, in addition, there were no restrictions on the spells I could use to build a deck. I could be a Necromancer – a sorcerer aligned with the black mana traditionally associated with huge constructions of flesh, zombies and skeletons – and play a deck without a single black spell. In fact, this is what I did on my first mission: I played as a Necromancer with a red / white themed deck full of angels and goblins.
What I most appreciated about Magic: Legends is that level of freedom and the great effort that the game takes to still maintain the essence of a Magic: The Gathering cards game. When would I use a spell like Zealous Charge to stimulate my creatures, the little lackeys following me really increased in size. You may “kick“Certain spells, just as you can” kick “cards on paper Magic, paying more mana to obtain a more powerful creature or spell. And just like on paper Magic, it is still good Shock a creature for lethal damage when you least expect it.
I’m not as interested in the history of the game as I thought I would be. (I am one of the rare people in my group who really likes Magicstory of.) You can complete Subtitles alone or with two other friends. There are different plans that you can explore, fight your friends in 1v1 PvP and mythical-level bosses wandering around the upper world to take down.
From what I saw, what will arrest me Magic: Legends it is testing my courage to build decks with and against my friends. It’s free-to-play, so I don’t think I’ll have a hard time convincing my Magic homies to experiment. And for what it’s worth, I think they would – at least until we’re all vaccinated and can “get together” safely again.
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