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[nenjin]

To note: Arrowhead isn't making this.

It's being made by Pieces Interactive, published by Paradox.

Which is why I'm a little.....hesitant. There's lot of reasons why it might not be as good as Magicka, when the entire game has been handed off to a different studio than made the first one. It might just be dry humping both the mechanics and the humor of the first game. Or it might add to it in its own way.

I'm going to take the dive though, so I'll let you know.

[nenjin]

So....after reading some Steam reviews...

I think I'm going to hold off buying it.

It's made by the guys who did Wizard Wars and their finger prints are all over this one, carrying over design choices from there into the new game. I didn't play WW, but apparently...

-The movement scheme (moba-style left click versus click and hold to move) is from WW, and results in floaty, imprecise character movement.

-Fewer elemental combinations. No more Steam/Ice, no more Lightning Beams, several other missing combos. I.e. the simplified system they brought from WW.

-Can't aim many spells via the mouse like you did in Magicka 1. (Teleport is now just random rather than being directed.) Probably because consoles don't have a mouse pointer.

-Harder enemies and more of them. They hit harder, have more life, your spells are generally shorter range, and everything but fire seems to have been neutered. People describe doing a shit load of kiting just to stay alive because they can't get the time to either a) cast magicks or b) cast the ones that actually kill things. Bosses designed for team fights are making solo very difficult. Swarms from all sides of the screen.

-Many spells seems weaker across the board. Magicka doesn't do elemental immunities anymore, only resistances, with the exception of 1 spell combo. As mentioned, ranges are shorter. AoEs aren't as large based on how many elements you throw into it. Rocks apparently have been nerfed to the point they don't feel worth it, as fully charged they do less damage overall than the first few wind up seconds of a straight fire spell. Fire seems to be both the easiest to use and the most damaging. Many people say spell balance feels off by miles. They seem to have done their utmost to prevent spamming spells in most cases.

-There's a quick cast button to just cast "memorized" spell combinations. The trade off using them vs. normal casting is it introduces a cooldown.

-Unnecessary, stupid tweaks. Like frozen guys losing the ability to be shattered by rocks, but now they reflect beams? I don't even....oh right. Wizard Wars.

-Requires a Paradox account to play multiplayer.

-No offline play.

-And the cardinal sin: No rebindable keys. That alone tells me this is a PoS port.

Plenty of red flags for me. It seems like after going through the PvP ringer of Wizard Wars, Magicka is a more balanced, streamlined and consolized game than before. Which to some might make it more boring. It seems like a classic case of someone picking up another dev's game through a publisher, and changing things with an eye toward mass market appeal. There's additions, sure. You can customize your wizard at the start of each level, find new robes and gear to use. There's artifacts or something that tweak gameplay if you choose to use them. But that all seems like window dressing for the fact that the core gameplay has been fooled with. It's less about super broken and OP spell combinations, and more about team fights and more enemies.

A phrase I'm seeing bandied about a lot is: "Think Dark Souls 1 vs. Dark Souls 2." When you screw with the formula that many people enjoyed, you're bound to lose some of them. When Wizard Wars was an offshoot I didn't really care, but, now that it's come to own its namesake, I do kinda care.

I'm still hovering between buy and not buy, but if i'm honest at this point my motivation to buy is to confirm or refute the negatives I'm reading, rather than from any real desire to play.

[umiman]

Holy shit that sounds terrible.

[nenjin]

To be fair, the artifacts do seem kinda cool. You have a set number of slots for your game which artifacts can go in to, and they do things like increase enemy life or friendly fire damage, other stuff. You earn them at the end of every map, along with spell unlocks, robes and weapons. A nice addition for people that want unlockables as a motivation to play. (Magicka 1 really offered you nothing except finding the spells you'd missed before, and achievements, I suppose.)

I can't believe I've been sitting here for the better part of 2 hours debating with myself on buying it or not.

[Frumple]

I'd generally say that if you're that conflicted about it, it's probably best to wait a while, maybe check out a few youtube gameplay vids, stuff like that. Or just pass on it entirely.

[bertix]

I am so disappointed by magicka two right now... Put a few hours in, and it's lost it's touch, well considering it's not the same devs, it doesn't have the touch, at all, in fact, I would urge people to not buy the game if they were expecting more of the same goodness, the gameplay feels bland, less reactive, less experimental and just boring as a whole (I put two hours into the game).

[nenjin]

Well the internet's ire is certainly up. The game is still managing mixed reviews on Steam, although how much of that is just release day internet hate from Magicka 1 fans, and how much of it is more legitimate is hard to say. In truth I've seen more knock off positive comments than negative ones so far. I imagine it'll lean more positive in the coming days after Day 1 purchasers vent their displeasure on Steam.

I don't think I'm alone in really liking Magicka 1, and totally ignoring Magicka: Wizard Wars. I expect that, had I played it, I'd have seen this bus coming.

[Aklyon]

I probably would've paid more attention to wizard wars if it's players had actually exsisted when I was given access to it.

[Shadowlord]

Wizard wars' gameplay didn't seem awful to me, but I was comparing it to LoL, which had way too much stuff to memorize. Wizard wars has basically one hero (wizard!), but it wasn't really very compelling (and nobody else I knew wanted to play, and it was plagued by error messages when trying to log in or play. I tried it again a few month later and they were still happening  ).

The reviews make it sound like they just built Magicka 2 on the Wizard Wars engine. They got rid of everything OP in WW, and it seems like that's what a lot of complaints are about (muh steam lightning! Muh rock spam!), but they also complain about being swarmed by enemies they can't beat so it's kind of understandable. Mines and walls etc still work in WW, though, so I expect they work in M2 as well.

[Ozyton]

This is the trouble with not researching beforehand. I was under the impression the game was made by the same people who made magicka 1...

Too bad I already bought it.

I've played the first two(?) levels solo and it seems much harder. I kept dying to the crab boss thing.