Yesterday, I wanted to finally try the Magic Duels game, a successor to Duels of the Planeswalkers. This game as I noted before in Magic Origins Prelease post will be a dynamic and persistent (if I can use that for in this context?) application. This means that the players won't need to buy a stand alone game each year. The game is free to play but there is content you can buy (booster packs for example). So far the game is available only for iOS but other platforms should follow with the release of Magic Origins this Friday (I couldn't find much info about that though).
After experiencing some troubles with downloading the game (I managed to finish several matches on MODO in the meantime, it was lagging hell a lot). When I finally launched the application I was amazed. The game is fluid! The animations are smooth! The game loads way more quickly and the in game speed is way higher as well. Also it is way easier to 'spot' what part of turn it is and who's turn it is. There is a slight glitch. When there is nothing you can do in a certain phase or step it will automaticly go to the next phase/step (I managed to skip Combat Phase this way few times). All this is a huge upgrade compared to previous Duels of the Planeswalkers' games. The only thing that bothered me from time to time was that the game disconnected and had a hard time reconnecting. (even when internet connection was actually working and MODO reconnected this game did not) That was certainly due to my internet connection but I lost some data this way. So if you encounter a problem with your connection do not click on Play Offline. Just find a way to reconnect otherwise it will discard the last changes (your last game, rewards, achievements etc).
The game is one big tutorial at first (and might feel this way till the end of the campaign). The player is supposed to follow 'the spark' (the highlight on menu icon). This leads the player in the campaign mode. The story of Kytheon turning into Gideon. The game will explain some basics before the game and then it will plunge the player into a first encounter.
There is something named Skill Quests that teach the player about a certain mechanic (or anything else) and then follows a game that lets the player try it. Actually the player has to do it in order to continue in the game. So for example it will explain how First Strike works and then let's you play Kindled Fury on a blocking creature to kill an attacking one and win the next turn with that creature. Or it will tell you to play non-creature spells in order to win the game and you have to figure out what cards to target and win the game. This might be very simple for those who have experience with gaming but might be a bit tougher for those not having any experience with card games etc. I mean this is a good thing but the amount of information that one needs to digest is huge.
Mulligan did not change. There is one free mulligan.
After the player finally manages to go through the first fifth of the campaign (Gideon) he gets few packs and some cards from which he can build a deck. In the previous games one was usually editing a deck not really creating one of their own (unless the player really wanted it). This time the player needs to build a deck from scratch. If the player is not experienced in that he can choose the Deck Wizard (or how it is called. I skipped that unfortunately).
The deck builder looks more or less the same. I did not spot anything new or striking at first glance. Still one needs to click on something, then choose the options and confirm it. That is something I'd like them to fix.
Anyway the player needs to create his or her own deck before 'advancing' to standard 1-on-1 battle or two headed giant. The very first deck will be way worse than what one played with in the tutorials (and will also get normal draws - thus really horrible ones^_^).
But after unlocking more content (or rather getting more coin by completing quests and buying new packs) it gets more interesting. But here is the very first problem of the game. This 'game' contains cards from mostly one set - Magic Origins (the thing is that AI has access to cards from other sets). So even when you get more cards the decks won't get that interesting (at the prerelease it seemed to me that anything else than pure aggro won't work). This is an issue that should be solved sooner or later because more sets will be available. The question is if there will be the possibility to play with older cards not just the new ones. The limitation to 4 C, 3 U, 2 R and 1 M still applies and there is no sideboarding between games. The limitation of cards you can have in a deck is actually good as the power level differences won't be too big. But it also limits the player to build a deck around some interesting rare (or mythic).
There isn't much of a content now. So the only thing one can do is play some games against other opponents, finish the campaign or play two headed giant. Also to get some coin one can complete quests. Anyway when playing online some players will be ahead so those players will be crushing players with no card pool etc. It does not seem that there is some kind of match making system based on rating/cards but well everything can change in the future. The introduction of quests is one of the biggest changes. This is easily understandable since this game is free to play and one needs to buy packs for certain currency be it in game one or real one.
I personally was amazed by this application and if it gets some interesting content (or rather interesting cards to play with) I would rate it very high. This way I can't. One of the other things that was improved is the AI. I played all the DotP games on Planeswalker difficulty and the AI was doing really silly plays quite often. In this game though I was punished for my misplay even in the tutorial which was quite a nice surprise.
Also targeting and playing the game in general feels way better. In Hearthstone for example I have difficulties targeting a hero or a minion in Duels it is better. I also got used to moving a card from my hand to the battlefield, just to find out that this does not work in Duels (same with MODO, I had the same reflex). One needs to tap on the card in order to play it. The problem with targeting an enchanted or equipped creature still remains though. Double-tapping a card to zoom it can be tricky but the icons for abilities and such help a lot - it reminds the player that this or that card has this or that ability. If one does not understand an ability (the ability itself or a keyword ie. exile) the explanation can be found after the card is zoomed in and a 'tutorial' on how to use that ability is often available.
So I think that this is a really great start. With more and more content this can be an awesome game, if this will later allow players to play with older cards it will be great. In this game the AI won't play T1 Mox Sapphire, Island and t2, Island -> Tinker -> Colossus now. But that might come. (honesty I doubt that).
Who will play the game? After seeing DotP 15 community and being quite surprised by them holding tournaments and playing quite actively (and wotc continuing in giving content and actually making the premium content available to everyone. I got the expansion for free as well, not sure if that is the case for everyone - I bought everything so far) I believe that this game will be a success. Maybe not now but in the future. I've seen very bad ratings for this and that is why I wanted to try it out so badly. I would give it a bad rating for content (hell with Origins) but otherwise the game super-exceeded all my expectations and for that alone deserves a higher rating. Previous games were WAY better with non-core sets (expert sets) so I believe this will be the case as well (no, I'm certain about this). Looking forward to Battle for Zendikar. I also think that this client/game will actually make its players better Magic players due to the extensive information given and skill quests.
*thumbs up for WotC*
EDIT: What they should also do is...do this game cross-platform. It annoyed me with DotP. I got DotP on steam, got it for PS3 and ipad ... but each time one needs to pay for it and the data cannot be shared. So it would be cool if I can play on my phone and then switch to my computer. This way also I could play with my friends that don't have the same version of DotP etc.
