I'm fine with that, personally, but I can see why people were put off, or why they felt Magicka was mocking and intentionally awkward. It was an investment, and it could be exhausting. Death lightning! Ice shotguns! You're doing all this on the hoof, too, in the heat of magical combat, with no obvious mana pools to worry about, just the flexibility of your fingers and the speed of your wits.īut the curse? Eight elements and a bunch of ways to cast them meant that hacking through Magicka was a bit like learning to play an instrument. But fire and earth to make fireballs? That's magic, and it's just the first step. Sure, that's cooking rather than magic, really.

An entire gaming arsenal unlocked from the start - every trick in the book available as long as you have the imagination to work them out. It's been a blessing because few games provide this kind of immediate thrill: magic broken down into eight elements that can be combined into complex, devastating spells at a moment's notice. Inevitably, Magicka's innate brilliance has been both a blessing and a curse. It should require a perfect balance of dexterity and imagination and an understanding of the strange, unshakable laws that underpin the whole thing.

It should shudder beneath your feet and leave you drained. Magicka grasped that real magic should be creative, rigorous, elemental, and only barely controlled. Magicka 2 is short and sweet - and it also feels like a bit of a missed opportunity.įew games have understood magic - the wizardly, fantasy, fetch-me-some-sparrow-entrails kind of magic - quite as perfectly as Magicka did.

Helldivers vs magicka 2