Magic 2015: Duels of the Planeswalkers Review

When I was originally told to review Magic 2015, I was very disheartened. Not because I hate Magic the Gathering (I actually play it in real life and enjoy it quite a lot), but rather because I had already picked up the iOS version. If I was to review that, then no joke I would have given the game a 2 at very best. I won’t go into detail about the iOS version, except a simple warning: for the love of god don’t spend time downloading it. I went into the PC version in hopes that it was better than my experiences with the iOS version.

I’d just like to start this review off by saying I loved Magic 2014 and played it to death. Now, before I go into the game itself, I’ll just quickly run over what Magic The Gathering is. It can be played by a minimum of two players and there is no real limit to the maximum amount of people, so it’s really how many you can fit around a table, although most people limit their games to four players. After placing Lands, you can ‘tap’ these Lands for mana in order to cast spells and bring out creatures. All players start with 20 health and you win by reducing all opponents health to zero by attacking with these spells and creatures (although, with certain cards, there are special ways you can win). That’s the basic run-down of Magic The Gathering.

I could sit here all day listing all the mechanics and so on behind Magic The Gathering, but instead, I’ll just go on what’s new in this game. The story behind Magic 2015 is fairly simple, as it is with most Duels of the Planeswalkers games. Garruk has been cursed by the ‘Chain-Veil’, which is making him hunt down and kill every other planeswalker. Why? Erm… Because there wouldn’t be a game without some mysterious object making Garruk want to mysteriously kill everyone.

The music within Magic 2015 is quite plain, causing me to put my own music on not too far into the game. However, after playing Magic 2014, I was kind of expecting this to happen, so it didn’t bother me too much. But I was still hoping that it would be good music though.

One point which I really want to hit on is the new deck Building. In Magic 2014, you had Sealed Play, in which you opened boosters and made a (normally pretty bad) deck out of that. Well in Magic 2015, that’s how you play the main game. At the start of the game, you select a deck that consist of a combination of any two colours. You can’t see the cards within these decks, and the descriptions are very misleading. After selecting a deck and beating the tutorial, you open Boosters, allowing you to add to the deck and also make a new one of different colours. This is where my first niggle with the game comes in.

If you want a specific card, you’re going to have to do one of two things: Grind on the game until you get it from a booster, or… Buy it. With real money. Yes, Magic 2015 has micro-transactions which allow you to buy sets of cards for more than it costs to buy a booster in real life. Instead of progressing through the game normally, they’ve let people buy their way to the best deck that they could possibly have before they even start the game properly. A better name for this game would have been Money The Gathering.

However, the AI is fairly well balanced with its difficulty. On Planeswalker (Hard), it used all its creatures to the best of their abilities and often gets a good combo of damage on you by combining different cards abilities. Whereas on Mage (Easy), they don’t use abilities often, if at all, and they attack with creatures, even if you can defend against it and kill it without any casualties on your side.

I say that, until I got to the fight against Jace, just over half way through the game. I was playing on Archmage (Medium) with a red and black deck that was kinda slow. Because of this, he swarmed me and countered any creatures I brought out, and because of my slow deck speed, I could only really get one creature out a turn, meaning I was open all the time. This meant I had to re-make my ENTIRE deck. For one fight. I’m all for difficulty, but when I have to spend half an hour re-making a deck for one duel, it really ruins the fun.

Also, there are no other game modes. Before, there has always been a special mode (2012 and Archenemy, 2013 had Planechase and 2014 had Two Headed Giant). Well, none of those make a return here. All you have is a 2-4 player FFA. Which gets very boring very quickly, especially when the AI takes ages with their turn.

There are five chapters to travel through, each with 4-6 duels to fight within them. These duels are fun at first, but after a while, it becomes the same thing. The only duel which had some form of originality and fun was a duel in which you fought against your own deck. The campaign itself took me around 8-9 hours to complete, but around three of those were spent fighting and changing my deck against Jace.

It seems Wizards of the Coast have taken a step back with DotP, and it’s a big disappointment. Bad Deck Building, micro-transactions and lack of other modes makes for a boring and unimaginative installment of Duels of The Planeswalkers. If you must get one, get Magic 2014, but keep the hell away from this.