Yeah, I prepurchased it. It's $10 so why not.
I'm kinda disappointed though.
So yeah, it's another Duels of the Planeswalkers game and I'm a sucker for them. It's just a way to get out that Magic hankering when I have no one to play with but don't want to spend money on Magic Online. If you don't play Magic, think of it as a fun card game that's stupidly deep with mechanics.
But yeah, I won't even bother talking about how to play, go play the demo for one of the older DotP games if you want to.
Anyway, so yeah as I mentioned it's disappointing.
First things first, the big feature with this one was that it was now an open card pool. No more preconstructed decks like all the other games. A lot of people were excited that it would make it like a more limited (but ultimately cheaper and more accessible) Magic Online. However, getting there is another thing.
Your starting pool is shit. Like total shit. Like you went to a Sealed tournament and mashed the two best color pools together shit. Your pool grows as you defeat the opponents in the campaign as you open booster packs (whether these are randomized or not is unknown to me) but it's a slow process.
I'd be fine playing a lower power level of Magic if the AI did. But they don't. I chose the highest difficulty tier (since it's based on how much you play Magic and for me that's a lot) and this gives them the best cards. The actually AI behind them, I couldn't care less, I want them to be smart. But their decks are blatantly better. Built around themes and shit. So while Magic is a game of skill + luck, it now becomes just luck. Hoping they'll get mana screwed or just get shit cards. You'll end up having to restart your duels a lot for this sole reason.
Another annoying feature is that you choose one color combination in the beginning you get a pool for that color. However you can't reselect so if you realize that pool is shit (you can look up the pools online but I didn't bother) then you're fucked. I just chose the color combo I like the most (BW) and realized everything sucked for a while in. Meanwhile all my packs are pulling great cards for other colors.
On top of all this, the menus are shit. It feels like it's ported from the tablet version. In fact, the tablet version came out like a week earlier, I bet it was. Navigating them takes a long time, hell doing Alt+Tab and closing the game from there is faster than getting to the main menu to quit. It's slow, it's clunky, and it's this ugly white color everywhere. Resolution is also locked at a pitiful 1024 x 768 for some unknown reason, even though even a laptop will probably want to put it at 1366 x 768.
Of course there's little annoying quirks too like the computer not knowing how to distribute mana. Like I had two swamps and two plains open and cast a card that cost 1W. I had two cards in my hand that just cost white, everything else that required swamps was too expensive. So it tapped both my plains. For no real reason. I lost the game because of this kerfuffle. I didn't see an option for land distribution in the menus at all either.
They also cut Two Headed Giant, which people did enjoy, and I'm not sure if there's a "bonus" mode like the past games (Archenemy, Planechase, Sealed, etc).
If you didn't play a DotP game and want to, skip this one for now. Get Magic 2014.
I'm kinda disappointed though.
So yeah, it's another Duels of the Planeswalkers game and I'm a sucker for them. It's just a way to get out that Magic hankering when I have no one to play with but don't want to spend money on Magic Online. If you don't play Magic, think of it as a fun card game that's stupidly deep with mechanics.
But yeah, I won't even bother talking about how to play, go play the demo for one of the older DotP games if you want to.
Anyway, so yeah as I mentioned it's disappointing.
First things first, the big feature with this one was that it was now an open card pool. No more preconstructed decks like all the other games. A lot of people were excited that it would make it like a more limited (but ultimately cheaper and more accessible) Magic Online. However, getting there is another thing.
Your starting pool is shit. Like total shit. Like you went to a Sealed tournament and mashed the two best color pools together shit. Your pool grows as you defeat the opponents in the campaign as you open booster packs (whether these are randomized or not is unknown to me) but it's a slow process.
I'd be fine playing a lower power level of Magic if the AI did. But they don't. I chose the highest difficulty tier (since it's based on how much you play Magic and for me that's a lot) and this gives them the best cards. The actually AI behind them, I couldn't care less, I want them to be smart. But their decks are blatantly better. Built around themes and shit. So while Magic is a game of skill + luck, it now becomes just luck. Hoping they'll get mana screwed or just get shit cards. You'll end up having to restart your duels a lot for this sole reason.
Another annoying feature is that you choose one color combination in the beginning you get a pool for that color. However you can't reselect so if you realize that pool is shit (you can look up the pools online but I didn't bother) then you're fucked. I just chose the color combo I like the most (BW) and realized everything sucked for a while in. Meanwhile all my packs are pulling great cards for other colors.
On top of all this, the menus are shit. It feels like it's ported from the tablet version. In fact, the tablet version came out like a week earlier, I bet it was. Navigating them takes a long time, hell doing Alt+Tab and closing the game from there is faster than getting to the main menu to quit. It's slow, it's clunky, and it's this ugly white color everywhere. Resolution is also locked at a pitiful 1024 x 768 for some unknown reason, even though even a laptop will probably want to put it at 1366 x 768.
Of course there's little annoying quirks too like the computer not knowing how to distribute mana. Like I had two swamps and two plains open and cast a card that cost 1W. I had two cards in my hand that just cost white, everything else that required swamps was too expensive. So it tapped both my plains. For no real reason. I lost the game because of this kerfuffle. I didn't see an option for land distribution in the menus at all either.
They also cut Two Headed Giant, which people did enjoy, and I'm not sure if there's a "bonus" mode like the past games (Archenemy, Planechase, Sealed, etc).
If you didn't play a DotP game and want to, skip this one for now. Get Magic 2014.
