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If you're a fan of the card game, I'd stay away from this to avoid disappointment.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 30, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Let me start off by saying that this game has almost nothing to do with the card game except for the basics you would assume it would need as it is a licensed game and all. The graphics aren't bad, tolerable I guess. The sound effects and music are pretty mediocre. There are no cards at all in this game, and the spells are extremely limited compared to the vast array of spells the card game offers. The thing that ticks me off most is that there is no strategy to this game. The whole point of the Magic series is strategy, but all you do in this game is spam spells as much as you can and eventually your opponent will be dead. Sometimes it feels like a really weird, less fun, version of dodge ball. I guess the best part of this game would be that I only spent $4.99 on it. I wouldn't recommend this even tot he most die hard of MTG fans.

FUN TO PLAY WITH MY KIDS ENJOY IT TOO. Fast Shipping. Good Shape!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Cool game! I play the card game and my 10yr old son also. I bought the video game just to see how it is. FUN! We all love it. Perfect condition and fast shipping. Thanks!

KID PLEASER

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

My two sons love this game!
They have went through two of them.
Video games with strategies help
promote critical thinking skills.

Excellent game (if you have antoher one to play with)

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Yeah, that's the reason why I rated 3 stars this game. As the card game, Magic is fun, but only if you have some pals to play with you. The quest mode its interesting, but there are 3 or 4 levels that are frustrating because of the difficulty of them. When you end all the quest's levels the fun is over. I have not played it in X-Box live, but I think that it could be the only reason for not putting it in the bottom of a box when you have defeated and unlocked the 70 spells.

I look forward for on-line download and more spells, but if the developers don't add more spells, I think that I difficultly play it again alone.

Beware!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I don't know much about Magic the Gathering, but I like strategy games so I gave this one a try.
For a video game based on a card game, Magic is pretty action packed. In fact, the game plays a lot like one on one extreme dodgeball. The action is fast and frantic. There are two opponents on seperate sides divided by a line. If you cross the line, you lose life every 3 seconds or something like that. You pick up power ups that can be used to conjure up monsters or to cast spells. The more powerups you have the more stuff you can throw at the other guy. So basically you pick up white balls off the ground and then you use their power to send monsters to hit the other guy. Unlike dodgeball, though, you could even run over to the other side to steal your opponents power ups, or better yet, join your little monsters in the beatings. I guess it's more like streetfighter/dodgeball. The game is action packed, and it's somewhat entertaining, especially when playing with friends. I wouldn't consider this a strategy or RPG, but it's easily worth its bargain bin price. With this game, you definately get what you pay for. If you're looking for a real strategy/rpg, I recommend Gladius.

Fun for the strategy player!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is interesting, mainly because it is based on a card game, however, it also contains hours of fun. Now... You must understand that it will get a little bit boring when you cannot figure out how to conquer a duelist. Also, be warned... If you are going to purchase this game for the online play, don't. It's not worth it mainly because nobody really plays online, and that takes away a lot of fun. I personally still play this because I play the Magic the Gathering Card Game, and it can be fun. It just looses it's glow once you beat it, mainly becuase there is nothing left to do. Once you beat the game, it's over, and you can't really show off your decks because nobody plays online. Just be warned, it's not going to bring unlimited fun, and sometimes it may not bring any fun at all. ALSO, this game does NOT follow the rules of the Official Card Game.

Quicky magic fix

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is a rather misleading remake of " Magic The gathering, Battlemage" originally put out for Play station 1.

The entire game takes place in a small arena thats about two screens wide. Most of the time you look at about 2/3rds of your screen and 1/3 of your opponents screen so you know whats coming. Movement is basically forced by having mana power spheres appear on the arena floor. You start needing to play the single player missions mode, its forced as you have to unlock the cards there. You unlock each color one at a time, with diffuculty that starts expecting you to have no clue as how to play to having expected you to learned a special trick to best them. Its a little repetitive as as soon as you finish the color your considered a beginner again and it has to explain things all over for the next color.

The graphics are rather good, especially compared to its predecessors. Unfortunately you wont really be paying attention to the graphics much as gameplay gets on, mostly you will be watching your mana dots. But it does make watching someone else play interesting. The backgrounds for the arenas are just that, none of the arenas actually affect gameplay, there are no obstacles and while one of them looks rather well drawn, some of them are so similar you would swear there are only 6.

The sound gets repeditive quickly and actualy forced me to take "game breaks" because I was sick of listening to their voices. Haveing different voices call out the cards is better then the static male announcer in Battlemage, but the repeditive nature really can get on my nerves.

Somehow after reading reviews and the box I was given the impression there would be "artifacts" that could be unlocked in this game. Alas myself and most MTG players are forced to learn that this is not true. There are no special items or artifacts included in game play, just a few role play elements added in to break up the repeditive fights.

All in all ends up being an ok game to play now and again if you ever have a spare 15 minutes before school or work, but nothing to write home about.

Now for the bad news for MTG the card game players.

- Each color has about 14 cards. Decks consist of 10 cards. As alot of the cards are similar its just a choice on a couple things and a color will always have the same strategy.
- You can use up to 2 colors, but using a second color drasticaly slows your game play and cripples you. A card of any color requires all mana be payed by that color mana. there is no colorless cost. and most spells have increased costs. the end result is a 2 color deck against a player tends to have lost before they can even start.
- 2 color strategy is almost pathetic, its all lil creature swarm and 1 point direct damage because they wont get the resorces needed to cast anything more.
- Alot of the cards costs or effects are not what your used to. its based off it. Its just altered because of limited card options and the odd rule sets they use her.
- Your character can "swat" things. or in other words attack for 1 point of damage. monster damage isnt healed over time so you can kill large things with a few wacks. this works for your opponent too. Sending a 1/1 goblin at your opponent just gives them mana shards as they will swat it before takeing damage. 2/2 flyer? they can just not block it and swat it twice, and end up takeing two damage before sending something nastyer back at you. This makes for some really lame options such as blocking a 5/5 ground creature with a couple of lil cheep summons and then swatting it.
- The only type of evasion is flying, however its a double edged sword. Flyers cant block ground creatures. Worse as flyers are traditonaly weaker they are more swattable.

Bugs
There are two known bugs, and designers have noticed them and there are a few comments on their forums board. First is that sometimes your saved game will be corrupted. there are three fixes for this. Deleteing the save game; Not playing your X-box for 72 hours so the memory resets; And playing 3+ other games for at least five minutes each so that the error in the save buffer is cleared.

The second bug is that sometimes when you exit X-box live after playing a game it thinks your still playing magic. because of that you cant log back on to play again and are stuck with single player mode. As of this time theres no fix for it, and as far as I understand its permanent.

As its hard, if not almost imposible to find an online game for the x-box this bug has been seen much less.

A lil spoiler, at the end of solo missions you get to fight Mishra master of all colors. Yea I got a laugh out of that one too. Shandlahar seemed to fit the storyline more.

With all the problems this game is at least ok eyecandy and a Quicky magic fix for the normal magic player. I couldnt recommend it to a new player as I'd be afraid it would turn them off of the card game. For the semi-serious magic player all I can say is " Hey, its better then duleing yourself". For the serious magic player, its a good laugh for about the cost of a starter, and you can sell it back for a booster.

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is for role playing enthustists. Real time warfare is great in this game. You really have to think ahead of your next move. One draw back is when playing arcade mode, all opponents use the same exact stratagy which after a while you can figure out. This does not mean it easy to beat but makes you think of what spells you will need to get through a certain difficulty level. I overall enjoyed the game and still play it to create the perfect character.

In defense of MTG

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: September 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First off I will say I spent about 5 years of my life and probably hundreds of dollars into the card game version so I do know what I am talking about. For the reviewer who said this is just rock/paper/scissors you are right for the most part, but MTG has always been that way, every deck had a counter and you would just build counter decks to whatever your friend might have made so you shouldn't be too surprised. A lot of people also complain about the fact that theres only about 70 spells and considering the degree of animation to each one I think maybe thats all they could fit into the game, besides I think the 15 or so spells that were assigned for each color represent it very well. If you've ever played MTG you should know how each color has its own flavor to it and even know theres not a lot of spells I think the spells they did put into this game fit in appropriately. Also another complaint I don't agree with is difficulty, I never did a level more than 3 times and the few I did do 3 times were the bosses, yes a lot of levels were easy but thats only because in conquest mode the purpose was to give you an idea of how each card was to be used, you start off with one at the start and each level an extra one is added on which I think is great to help you learn the cards. Last but not least is I saw people complaining it doesn't go along with the card game because you can use spells as often as you like which I liked because in the card game a lot of times it got down to luck of the draw while with this you know what your dealing with from the get go and have these spells the whole battle. For the price the game has dropped to if you are a true fan you would pick it up and enjoy it for what it is because this is a great game using a different style of gaming with the world of MTG. Also if you've never played MTG and your looking for something different with a lot of great action this is a good choice especially for the price, and I would have paid $50 for this being such a great game but $15 is just fine with me! If you want some more professional reviewing try some proper game sites, gamespot.com is a personal favorite of mine.

Review from non-player

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: September 11, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I've never played any of the Magic series games before. I've heard this game doesn't bear much resemblance to the card game.
It took me over a year to buy this game because I thought it ONLY had online play. But now that it's in the discount bins it looked like it was worth a try.

It was more fun than I thought it would. I'm not a hardcore RPG fan and so the shallow gameplay elements was just right for me- all I was looking for is a simple-to-play DragonBall Z experience or a remake of the old PSX game Destrega. This game comes pretty close. The quests are short finite games that you can pick up and play and then put down- so it's great for people who don't have a lot of time to spend on a long RPG.

What I think worked in this game is that even though the gameplay rules are simple, there are sufficient strategic elements that make it interesting. I only wish there was a way to slow things down so I can watch the animation unfold. Sometimes combat becomes so frantic all you are trying to do is to spawn creatures as fast as they die.

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