Magic: Legends’ Greed Overshadows its Potential

Magic Legends is a glimmer of truly inspired game design buried under a cascade of indecipherable currencies, aimlessly wandering monsters, and wildly predatory microtransactions. It would be easy to write this project off as another shallow cash grab, but that glimmer of genius under the rubble of this glorified slot machine compels me to wonder what could have been, and if it can be salvaged. Why was such a compelling concept resigned to being the bait dangled in front of a host of gamers to lure them into an endless well of paid skins, EXP boosts, and loot boxes full of other loot boxes. The answer to this question, as well as many other inquiries into the ills of our society, is capitalism.

The problem with the endless pursuit of profit is that it’s, well, endless. There is no amount you can reach and say “well that should be enough” which leads not to a race for quality and innovation, but a ruthless need to cut every possible cost standing in the way of said profit. The most common way this manifests is through the exploitation of labor, which I don’t plan to get into here, but it also forces the de-emphasization of not just the quality of products, but their very existence. Companies under capitalism don’t produce goods, they make money. The goods only serve a purpose in their ability to generate money. So when game companies are given the choice between making an innovative and interesting game, or a slot machine, more and more are choosing the latter because in their mind it better fulfils that company’s core purpose. The practical utility of a game is fun, but fun had by the player does not directly correlate to money acquired by the company so over time the profit motive will keep winning out until these games no longer have any practical utility at all. Until they are no longer fun.

That is not to say that Magic Legends is not in any way fun. We are not yet in a full blown dystopia where every game is relegated to becoming a literal slot machine. There is a reason that I’ve put almost 20 hours into the game so far and my desire to examine that reason is why i’m writing this. Despite the game being barely functional at a baseline level and all of the progression systems being hollowed out to make room for microtransactions I’m still enjoying myself due to the thing that I had thought would make this game a nonstarter, the randomized hand of spells. My original assumption was that having that much variance in the core gameplay of an arpg would prevent the player from cultivating an enjoyable gameplay loop thus exposing how tedious all of the mindless farming inherent to the genre can be. But it is with a level of surprised glee that I have to say I was mistaken and this new innovation into the genre, as well as the deckbuilding underneath it, are the only reasons I’m remaining engaged with this game.

What I thought would cause gameplay to become incoherent actually offers a level of dynamic decision making that is entirely new to the genre and will likely be a welcome innovation to anyone growing tired of the single button centric gameplay that often dominates the metas of these games. Now instead of being a deathball spamming 1 or 2 buttons that everything around you simply bows to you are actually making decisions about what abilities to use based on what you currently have access to. While there are growing pains of trying to identify what spell each icon is tied to, once you get into a rhythm the gameplay becomes something very close to Magic the Gathering at warp speed which in the context of an ARPG is an incredibly refreshing experience. This core gameplay has so much potential that I’m compelled to continue playing based on nothing but my belief in that potential and my desire to see it realized.

I say potential because there are several things holding the core gameplay I’ve experienced thus far back from being something truly special, primarily spell design. Because this game is mostly an attempt to try and top-down design the game of Magic into an ARPG there is a large emphasis placed on summoning creatures. The unfortunate side effect of this is creating large holes in the moment to moment gameplay where the player does not feel the impact of their actions. The shuffling hand system is a gem, but it only really shines when each button you are pressing has impact and most of the creature summons in the game provide none of that. Not only do creature summons as they are currently designed undermine the moment to moment decision making that makes the shuffling hand interesting, because it’s always correct to just play them as soon as you can, they are also just boring and largely nonfunctional. The game’s technological limitations really rub up against the core gameplay in a bad way when it comes to creature summons as you watch them meander around the battlefield very inconsistently participating in combat. Not to mention how restricted movement can get with a battlefield full of creatures spawned by yourself and allies because everything in the game has collision.

There are some creatures that ostensibly care about when they are played and synergize with other spells you might use, but even those synergies are largely invisible to the player and offer no kind of resonant impact for pulling off your combo. This is because those synergies largely manifest as +1/+1 buffs to your creatures with no visual representation either on the battlefield or within your UI, a fact that is compounded by the wonky AI behavior mentioned earlier. There are some exceptions to this with some green spells causing creatures to greatly grow in size, but they are the only example I’ve seen. If creatures functioned more like spells and had an impactful effect when cast and then persisted on the battlefield for a short time after instead of being permanent “pets” it would both make casting them more resonant and take some of the burden off the game’s technological limitations regarding the AI. Too often I find myself trying to cycle through my creature spells to get to the cards that feel good to cast so I’m excited at the prospect of what this gameplay could be if every card in my deck was fun to cast.

Speaking of the deck, it’s the backbone of this system as you get to choose the cards you’re randomly cycling through, but a massive problem with the game right now is that you’re not going to be faced with any meaningful deckbuilding choice for many hours into the game. Once you fill out your starting deck through the normal progression you’re largely reliant on chance to find cards you might want to vary your strategy. There are several spells that can be targeted through zone quests, but at least for the Necromancer, those largely furthered the same type of gameplay as your starting cards and function more as upgrades to what you had rather than giving you new choices. Ideally the game would start you off with a wide array of reasonably weak cards that you could focus on upgrading after finding which synergies you enjoyed. Instead you’re left to mindlessly grind through the game hoping that you’ll get a series of spells that let you try out a new type of gameplay. Though a lot of this problem circles back to the emphasis on creature spells because most builds appear to be predicated on having a fair amount of them thus homogenizing gameplay patterns. It’s ok to have summoner archetypes in an ARPG, but they can’t be the only archetype if your aim is to offer varied gameplay.

The other infinitely more contemptible part of this is how the monetization model has had a clear negative effect on the game’s progression systems in a way that greatly inhibits your ability to work towards the character you want to build through normal gameplay. If you were able to acquire and upgrade spells in a more deterministic fashion through defeating bosses and overcoming challenges then you wouldn’t have much incentive to buy 4$ spell infusions, 12$ booster packs, or 20$ item drop boosts. I’ve honestly never seen a monetization model so contemptful of it’s player base and I used to stream MTG: Arena. This is where Magic legends starts to get away from being a game and transforms into a serotonin machine that exists only to bait players into spending money. Fortunately I don’t imagine this model will be particularly successful given how bad the current game is at actually generating serotonin due in no small part to how hamstrung the core progression systems are by said model.

Earlier today I killed a Mythic world boss that only spawns after all the players in your zone do enough work to do so and upon its death I received… nothing. While I later found out I got a token that can be redeemed for a pile of extraneous currencies I was flabbergasted by having just accomplished one of the greatest challenges the game currently has to offer and was not rewarded for it in any visible way. That is a direct result of how the game is monetized. If killing bosses is too rewarding, or too fun, actually playing the game would become a preferable option to the credit card speedrun, and the people that financed this game don’t need you to play it, they just need you to spend money on it. My hope is that this beta is such a resounding financial failure that Crypic is forced to go back to the drawing board and the people at that studio who actually care about how much fun you’re having are given the pen. Though unfortunately the reality would likely involve the game just being scrapped, which is profoundly sad.

The main thing these brain poisoned capitalists don’t understand is that the best way to get people invested in your game financially is to get them invested in it emotionally. You don’t need to assume your players are dumbasses, you don’t need to set up a series of incomprehensible currencies to incentivize gacha purchases, you just need to make a good game. There are so many opportunities to offer cosmetics in this game that would make a killing if people actually wanted to spend time in the world. If i was truly invested in this game do you know how much I would pay for a different colored necromancer flail or, gods forbid, a scythe!? I want so badly for this game to be given room to iterate and fix its problems because I can see its potential and it excites me. It’s possible that one day Magic Legends can grow to emphasize its best parts and reinvigorate an inflexible genre, but right now it’s a Frankenstein monster that’s much more interested in your wallet than your happiness.