Magic Legends was an ARPG by the well known MMORPG developer Cryptic Studios (Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, City of Heroes). The game tried to utilize the famous Magic the Gathering IP into an RPG Setting. Financially however the game seemed to have failed, since Magic Legends never left the Open Beta Stage and Server Closure was announced after only around 3 Months (Release: 23.3.2021; Cancel Decision: 29.6.2021; Server Shutdown: 31.10.2021). There was also a console version in the planning, but those plans never got realized.
One of the biggest mistakes was advertising the game as a MMORPG (which the devs initially did). I was actually pretty hyped by that announcement and expected something like a new Neverwinter in the Magic the Gathering universe, which would have been pretty cool. The game was however never intended to be something like this (Third Person RPG). Magic Legends was always planned as an ARPG in the Style of games like Diablo or Baldurs Gate. I was really disappointed by that customer deception and ignored the game therefore for a long time. An ARPG could still theoretically have an MMO core, but Magic Legends was limited to 3 Players in Dungeons or World Levels, which was everything but Massive Multiplayer. A lot more players could appear in the HUB areas, but that isn't enough to classify Magic Legends as an MMORPG (the MMO tag was probably attached to the game due to the always online requirement of the servers).
The gameplay of Magic Legends was indeed for the most part pretty similar to other Action RPGs. You play your planeswalker in an isometric perspective and will mostly engage in a hack'n slay playstyle. The special elements of Magic Legends however are the strong focus on Magic Spells and its Card System. Players have to choose one of five classes at the beginning of the game, which symbolize a Mana sort (manner of magic). There are white (plains; Angels and white energy focus), black (swamp; Necromancy focus), red (mountains; Fire focus), blue (island; Aqua focus) and green (forest; Nature focus).
Abilities in Magic Legends are represented by cards and players have to collect them in decks, that they can use in combat. Players can only use one of 4 cards, that are randomly chosen for them. Once they use one of their abilities, it is being replaced by another card from the deck. I personally found this to be a pretty cool feature, but a lot of veteran players disliked it, because it was making it very difficult to use combinations and often resulted in just spamming what ever cards where next chosen (a valid point of criticism).
Players would start with only cards from their chosen Mana class, but could later on also collect cards from all other Mana sorts. The whole world of Magic Legends was divided into 5 different areas, which all represented one of these 5 Mana sorts. Throughout the story players would progress through all of the regions unlocking new potential abilities for their decks. I do like this idea of separating the world into different Mana regions, but have to agree with the critics that this could have been way better handled than Magic Legends did. The environments partly reflected their representative Mana sort (like lava or jungle elements in the background), but often also looked rather generic. This was definitely some wasted potential to utilize the Magic IP more efficiently.
The story was also another disappointment. For a game with strong online component, the story was rather short, but still felt pretty stretched. What was actually happening wasn't much in the scale of a RPG, but it got way too much extended by notorious fetch quests that didn't add anything except waste time. With a better pacing the whole game could have probably been beaten in around 20 hours. The quality of the writing was therefore also not the best. Voice Acting was unfortunately pretty underwhelming either, which is pretty surprising. Magic Veterans further told me, that they felt, that important Magic the Gathering characters made an appearance in this game, but weren't well written and didn't match their backgrounds from the card game. I did see some potential, but overall story and quests were generic and lackluster.
Apart from the Story players could theoretically also engage in PVP via Arena Duels between players, but those weren't very popular and the focus of Magic Legends was certainly on the PVE area.
Other big problems of the game were grinding and Over-Monetization. Some cards could only be unlocked and improved via the ingame shop (levelling up the card, which makes it better). Players could either grind special missions, which however where limited to a small amount per day, or pay with real money to get them faster. Dungeons were also limited to 2 or 3 runs per day, which for most players felt way too restrictive. The game actively encouraged players to grind old missions, but at the same time restricted players from doing so. Many found this to be pretty off-putting.
The Cash-Shop on the other hand was very extensive. There were many XP-Boosters and Spells sold there, plus cosmetic items and even a Battle Pass. Some of these were also hidden behind lootboxes (who doesn't love those...?). There was for example a hidden sixth class of the Dimir Assassin, which was hidden behind these lootboxes. Alternatively players could also grind for months or pay triple digits to unlock the class directly in the shop (later on the Dimir Assassin was moved to the BP, but the problems of the cash shop persisted). This was certainly an awful system, that especially in a game with an Open Beta status felt to many players like a big middle finger from the devs (I didn't even mention that you could also buy character renaming options and additional deck slots for money as well). At least you can give the devs a bit of credit for giving all players a full refund, who invested money into the game. This also shows you how bad the situation must have been, if they were ready to write off all kind of profits and the development of the game was certainly not cheap.
Unfortunately we're still not done with the many flaws of Magic Legends. Movement on Keyboard didn't feel very precise, since the game seemed to only be using 8 directions to walk. With a gamepad movement felt much better and that is probably what they had in mind while developing the game. A bit more irritating was the overusage of effects. In a lot of battles the effects were so overwhelming that it gotten difficult to identify, what was actually happening on screen. The developers should have definitely optimized the effects better, so that players could clearly point out, which attacks or movements caused which reaction. A minor inconvenience was the exclusivity to the Epic Games store, which probably kept many players from experiencing or even hearing about the game (A future Steam and Console release could have really given the game a second chance for life).
The two other massive problems of the game were Glitches and Performance. Performance has been improved with patches (it supposedly was really awful and unoptimized at the release), but was still far from good. Lags and performance problems out of nowhere (and admittedly also when there are too many effects on screen) were still common occurrences till the very end. Releasing a game in an unoptimized state seems to become more and more normal, but I still find it irritating. Magic Legends also had automatic downloads during all loading screens on, which was atrocious. This could be deactivated in the options through downloading the entire client. It is however deeply annoying, that this wasn't done per default.
Glitches are what negatively influenced my experience the most. The devs really tried to fix most of them, but I still experienced game breaking glitches in the last days of the game. I encountered glitches were enemies simply became invincible, making it impossible to progress and other glitches were quest relevant NPCs never appeared, making them impossible to complete too. I also sometimes encountered enemies, which didn't put up a fight and just stood there taking hits without any reaction. The last one may only be annoying and immersive breaking, but the former ones really ruined my experience. I was really trying to enjoy the game and I still see a lot of good Magic Legends, but something like this is ultra off-putting, especially if it occurs multiple times. Visuals Glitches, which the game also obviously had plenty off, were only minor irritations in comparison.
Pro:
+ Card System for Abilities
+ Deck building throughout the game
+ One Region for each Mana sort
+ Simple, but effective gameplay
+ Complete refund for all players
Contra:
- Story was stretched and Quests are rather dull
(- Some Bad Voice Acting)
(- Mana Sorts could have been better utilized in the different regions)
- Incentive to Grind, but daily Grind Restrictions
- Invasive and extensive Cash-Shop
- Overusage of visual Effects (Chaotic)
- Unoptimized performance (lags and framedrops)
- Too many game breaking Glitches
Result:
For me Magic Legends was a disappointment from the start, since I expected an MMORPG, like it was advertised. Nonetheless, Magic Legends still had a lot of potential as an ARPG and I really like the card system for abilities and the whole deck building aspect. A dull story, grindy experience, bad performance, annoying cash shop and game breaking glitches however are very hard to overlook. I still found enjoyment in Magic Legends, but the game was unfortunately not more than mediocre. The flaws are many, but I still believe the positive impressions of the game felt slightly more impactful than its many problems. I am still a bit sad about its demise, but Magic Legends was overall certainly a disappointment for the developers and most players alike.
5.5/10
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