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Rock/Scissors/Paper on Speed

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: August 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

If you're looking for something MTG flavored, you should quite frankly look somewhere else. This is a poorly-executed attempt at changing a deep strategy game into a fast-paced game of counters and tactics. It fails. Miserably so.

Tactics in this game roughly amount to whether you send your MTG-equivalent of rock, scissors or paper against your opponent's selection. There's no more depth to it than that. To make things even more frustrating, the game requires you mash buttons as quickly and almost indiscriminately as possible in order to match up with the computer's spellcaster. Thus your choice of rock or scissors is largely decided by luck rather than any true strategy. And once you figure out what an opposing spellcaster's bag of tricks contains, there's nothing more to beating him than always countering his attack and attacking his weakness- for every opponent you face is a one trick pony.

Nothing to see here folks, move along.

This game blows me away from buying it

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 19
Date: December 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is certainly gonna be $20 pretty soon. If you want this game very badly, it's nothing much to be hyped over because the demo already sucks. This should just be like a happy meal toy from Mcdonalds or something, because I wouldn't give anymore than $5 for this. Probably be collecting dust if I ever bought it.

Only for online play

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: March 09, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Only buy this game if you love the card game, and want to play online. There are two single player modes -- Quest and Arcade. Both are terrible. Each battle is either extremely easy or extremely difficult -- there's no happy medium. You'll waste hours fighting the same battle over and over again, trying to beat it with the badly designed deck they force you to play, only to finally win and then clear the next 10 battles in fifteen minutes. It's far too frustrating to play, and I can only imagine the limited number of cards won't give it much replay value even online.

JUST AN OK GAME

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: March 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Having never played the card game, I bought this primarily because it was X-box live capable and at $30 was a pretty good deal.

In single mode you begin with a cahracter (you have no choice who you start with) and then begin a series of battles. Each time you win you are rewarded with a new spell. Each of these quests consists of about 15 - 20 battles until you get to the "boss" battle. Defeating this boss gets you one of 5 colored gem on the way to completing the entire quest.

As has been noted by other reviewers, the battles tend to be either so easy that you beat them on the first try, or so frustrating that you give up after hours of trying. When games are this tough it's always a signal to me that the game play is so thin that they make it very hard in an attempt to make things seem deeper.

But the more you play the quest and arcade modes, the more spells and characters you can get in order to fight on-line. You can pick your skill lever and your cards and battle it out against friends or foe from around the country.

Frankly I'm a bit disappointed in that it seems there are not many online players for this game. I find it surprising given the popularity of the game, but as I said, the game is not very in depth with only some 70 or so odd spells and I think experienced Magic players may be turned off by this.

Also, thus far there has been ZERO new content to download while a game like Rainbow Six 3 has provided 5 new maps already.

It's not a horrible game but I have to guess it's just not deep enough for experience Magic fans and just not fun enough for new players.

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.

An excellent concept poorly executed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: July 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game provides entertainment, but is hardly worthwhile. Although the visualizations are enjoyable and the content is entertaining, the quest mode is absolutely inane and the gameplay directly contradicts the concepts of magic the gathering in several places.

Certainly there is give for making a game more action packed, Magic is by no means a fast paced game and giving it some life is welcome, but this game forgoes intelligent thought and strategy in favor of button mashing rivaled by fighting games. There is no time to properly form a plan of attack. When reading the rule book you begin to see numerous parallels between the game, such as respawn being equivalent to the end of a turn, however this is not the case, creatures lose toughness permanently until they die. This horrendously favors aggressive styles of play, and on top of that, being able to constantly cast one spell, over and over, completely eliminates the concept of "gas" where once you're out of cards you have to slow down. This is one of the primary concepts that prevents sligh(red) decks from being totally unstoppable, and indeed you learn in this game that raging goblin and goblin hero en masse means the game becomes stupid fast. By the end of the quests you will be harder pressed to exactly execute the only winning combination of buttons possible that you might be better off with a DDR pad, give yourself no illusion of intelligent thought.

Without going into too many more magic specific vocabulary, let it be known that this game is going to turn alot of magic players off, way off. it might even pull out your plug and cut the cord. I bought this game for 10 dollars, so my losses were minimal, but think hard before you purchase this title.

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.

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.

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.

Great strategy and fighting too

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 40 / 40
Date: November 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Magic The Gathering Battlegrounds is NOT a card game translated to the XBox. It is a fighting game that is based on the environments and creatures found in the Magic world.

You can choose from various characters, each representing a different style of world. The demo only has 2 worlds represented, but the actual game has 6. Each has his own look and selection of spells and creatures.

The training mode walks you through the basics. You are in essence on a battleground split in half. You can only cast spells on your half of the battleground, and if you stay in your enemy's half for too long you take damage. You gather up mana to cast spells, and the more mana you get, the more powerful spells you can cast.

Some spells create creatures which either attack your enemy or sit still and defend you. Some spells attack your enemy and his creatures. Other spells give enhancements to your own creatures.

Unlike other fighting games, this isn't just about 'attacking blindly until he's dead'. You have to balance your spell usage between defending your own body, creating creatures, enhancing your creatures and taking out your enemy and his creatures. Since the mana supply is not copious, exactly how you balance your mana can make the difference between survival and death.

The quest mode lets you learn new spells and abilities, and practice your skills. The actual combat mode is where you move forward in the rankings.

The game is XBox live enabled (tho the demo is not) which should be the real key to this game. Sure, it's fun to play against computer generated characters - but the real joy will be taking your well-trained character and setting him against the world of other gamers, and seeing how well you rank in that world.

The graphics are rather good, and I really felt like my characters and I were a "team" working together to defeat an enemy. The game isn't complex in the "advanced RPG" way nor do the battles involve multiple button-mashing sequences like, say, Mortal Combat. Instead, it is a fast paced strategy game that exercises your mind as much as it does your fingers, and the winner will truly be the person who is the best rounded in ALL areas.

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