I hope I'll have time to continue my serie of reviews, even when work will start again. Please forgive and notice me of any grammar/synthax error, it's a long read and I've been sick recently, thus a few errors might slip in.
This day, I review Magic Duels: Origins.
First and foremost, I'll analyze the game under two points of view: the player that never knew Magic before, or knew little of it and wants to try this game and/or start his Magic experience, and the veteran player (read: veteran as long-time-playing player, not necessarily the Pro Tour or GP leveled player).
Magic Duels: Origins is the new chapter in the long-running serie of Magic games on console. Previously called Magic: Duels of the Planeswalkers, the serie kept its original name until DotP 2015, which performed badly. This year marks the ending of Core Sets as we knew them, and thus Wizards of the Coast decided it was about time to give a twist to the console games as well. Magic Duels: Origins is different in various aspects, one of which is it's a Free To Play...or so they want you to believe. More on that later.
Another one, which seems the fundamental change to the serie, is that this game will evolve and update with every release of the paper version. This means that you'll never have to buy anything anymore on console, every update will be free and yearly releases are no longer. This is why the game is officially called Magic Duels: [name], as for now it's Origins, but in October will be updated with Battle for Zendikar. (WOOHOO BATTLE FOR ZENDIKAR!!!!! Oh, no reason to be excited at all)
Now, onto the game. You have 5 campaigns, one for every Planeswalker. Lore-explanation. Completing every mission will give you a certain amount of coins, that you'll be able to spend in the store to buy boosters with which build your decks.
Before going on that topic, let me review these campaign missions.
From the point of view of the new player, these missions will be an incredible starting point from which learning the basics and some advanced combos. Especially the first Campagin, the Gideon story, will be a tutorial, making you play a tutorial mission inbetween every campaign mission. These missions will also give you a lot of coins for the store.
As a veteran player, these missions are an abomination. You know how to play magic, you don't need to spend hours on endless tutorials. These should be facoltative, but alas you'll have to go through each and every one of them. And even the most difficult Campaign missions aren't nearly as difficult as some matches in the past installments (I'm looking at you, Tezzeret the Seeker!).
But the real fun of Magic is playing with your decks, right? And once you've finished the campaigns, with their preconstructed decks, you'll really be happy to be able to build your deck and try some battles, and this games offers a PvAI mode, a PvP mode, and a Two-Headed-Giant PvP mode (a long-waited comeback from its absence in DotP 2015).
So, presto! Run to the shop and buy those boosters! Yeah right, those boosters with...6 cards in them? Wait, why are they so low? (A paper-version booster contains 15 cards at a price of about $4) "Well, probably because it's free to play, and you'll get so many of them that you would run out of cards quickly had they put 15 cards in each booster!" You'll think. So let me check out how many coins does a booster cost. 150. Well then, let's see how many coins do I get from a normal match against the AI, which is what 90% of the players have to do because they can't build a decent deck without some good cards.
10. You get 10 coins for every match you win. And read: WIN. So, if you manage to win every match you play, at normal difficulty, against the AI, you'll have to do a bare minimum of 15 matches to get a single booster, which contains 6 cards, 3 commons, 2 uncommons and 1 rare or rare mythic.
Easy difficulty, you get 5 coins (and trust me, if you're a beginner, you'll have to rely sometimes on easy), for a whopping 30 matches to win to get those coveted 6 cards. Hard Difficulty, 15 coins, for a total of 10 matches.
But fear not! For there are daily Challenges that will give you a whopping 40 coins if you complete them, yeah you read that right, FORTY coins just to win a couple or four matches with a determined deck (usually, an archetype-based deck, which means two colours).
Unfortunately, there's a little, little problem with these challenges: they're fucked up. Badly. Basically, you'll see these challenges, ok? And you can press a button to refresh them, if they're too old. So you try and complete these challenges, but they won't work 90% of the time (e.g., you win with a deck as it's described in the challenge, and it won't update the counter from 0/2 to 1/2). So as soon as you find out they won't work (which you don't know for certain, you have to win a game for each one before you can be sure they don't work, and it can be a painfully-long experience), you hit the refresh button. And they change...sometimes. Sometimes they'll stay the same. And, surprise surprise, even the new ones won't work.
So be prepared to be heavily disappointed by them.
Ok, then if we cannot get coins fast from AI matches and Challenges, maybe we should try with PvP! Surely there you can get many more coins; after all, a Human player is infinitely better to fight against than an AI.
20. 20 coins for every match you win. And oh boy, good luck with that! The awesome ranking system put me, a level 2 player which barely won 3 matches, with a level 22 (TWENTY!! TWO!!) player. Eh.
Oh, as a side note: don't quit before the game ends. Two reasons: 1. you'll be seen as a dick/coward. 2. you'll never learn anything, and this is more important than point 1: I've seen too many people fucking up when they could've ended the game, and I've seen amazing comebacks at the last turn. (Whoever knows the paper set Avacyn Restored and its "Miracle" cards knows what I'm talking about)
So, you're left with either the unpleasant choice of playing until the world ends to get 6 cards (from a single set, a Core Set, Origins, which is...the least interesting type of set, and thankfully will be the last of its kind), or either do as they basically force you to do if you want to enjoy the game: microtransactions. $2 to get a booster, $4 to get 2, etc. etc.
And please, please for the love of God don't do it. Those greedy bastards at Wizards of the Coast could've handed us a much more well-constructed game, with all the money they have, instead of this pile of shit that is Magic Duels: Origins.
Rather than spend your money online, spend your money at your local game store. You'll get infinitely more for infinitely less.
And there are many little aspects that I didn't cover, little things that make your overall experience feel buggy. Zooming in on already-zoomed-in cards, making them blur the hell out of the game? Bleah.
TL: DR; As a new player, if you really, really want to try the game, then do so, as it is free. My suggestion: get DotP 2014 for 360: the best Magic experience on console so far.
As a veteran player...don't. Just...don't.
Oh and by the way, the cinematics at the end of every campaign? Those made by Blizzard in 1993 for Diablo were much, much better. No, I'm not kidding. Watch them if you don't believe me.
Final Score: 5/10. We'll see how it evolves with BfZ, but for now, a total failure.
