IGN got the first look at a demo of Magic: Legends from Cryptic Studios, showing off the deckbuilding and basics of the new online action RPG coming to open beta for PC on March 23.
Magic: Legends looks similar to most isometric RPGs like Diablo, Path of Exile, and current favorite Hades, where you move your character around the map with a heads-up display depicting your life bar, mana, available spells, enemy life bars, and more. In Magic: Legends, you play as a powerful planeswalker to take on ancient forces of destruction threating to tear the Multiverse apart. The game looks to be mostly focused on co-op RPG play, but has 1v1 PvP experiences as well.
Magic: Legends captures the feel of playing Magic: the Gathering by allowing the player to completely customize their own spell deck, combining up to two different colors in almost endless possibilities. You’ll end up with twelve unique spells in your deck and your character in game has access to four of the twelve at random with each spell cycling out at random after its use. The spells will also rotate through controls, meaning the same spells might be used on one or two or more different keys or buttons to cast it through out the game.
There are five classes to choose from when selecting a planeswalker, one for each color in Magic. White focuses on light and order to heal, blue clouds enemy minds and allows you to control the battlefield, black uses necromancy and life drain, red utilizes destructive elemental forces and direct damage, and green embraces the wild and summons massive creatures.
Players begin with a preconstructed deck tied to the color of your chosen planeswalker. You update the deck as you play, eventually finding and earning different spells pages for specific spells of varying rarities. Spells can be upgraded in levels going up to ten, and lower rarity spells can complement higher rarity spells to allow your deck to maximize synergies. Players have incredible flexibility with customizing their deck as they can add a color to the precon or completely shift to different colors that also play well with the class specific abilities and attributes.
The game has three types of spells: creatures, enchantments, and sorceries. Creature spells summon beasts to fight alongside you balanced with a point allotment so you can choose to go with a few larger and stronger creatures or opt for many, smaller swarms of creatures. Enchantments are ongoing spells and effects. Sorceries are single-use spells that have immediate impact on the game, whether through damage or healing.
Magic: Legends is a free-to-play game, but has a monetization system built around an in-game currency you earn or can buy with real money to purchase additional classes or booster packs. You will not be able to buy specific spells with money, making it similar to Arena, where you have to crack packs or earn planar mana to unlock spells you desire. The game will also have a battle pass system similar to Arena and other popular games like Fortnite, League of Legends, and Call of Duty.
Read the original article from IGN.