Duels of the Planeswalkers 2015

I spend 10USD each year on this game and this time I wonder if it was even worth it.

I missed the very first Duels of the Planeswalkers. I played the game at some GPs or game fairs and it was more or less ok except the fact you could not change your deck or at least cut cards you did not want to play with.
The following year DotP2012 came out and I have to say that I really enjoyed this game. Awesome challenges, nice duels against really much more powerful decks, interesting card choices, cool decks etc. In this game I actually felt like playing Magic. I could choose to play funny Esper deck that could counter some stuff, Kiora's ramp to drop some Eldrazi or mill. There were challenges that were pretty neat and opponent's decks that were really cool as well. Well thought out and sometimes powerful. I still remember turn 1 Colossus that caught me offguard. I looked at my hand, seeing no Swords to Plowshares and hit concede.
The next DotP was much easier but looked good and was more 'compact' let's say or limited. The game was simplier, but still had a lot to offer and I found it as the perfect way to learn the game. It also had the same features as DotP2012 except the new multiplayer mode (Planechase this time). The game still had wide range of different decks but they weren't as much fun as in the previous games. The cards weren't doing so many insane things - the decks were simplier and more straightforward and less powerful (less synergy). Anyway it felt good to beat Nicol Bolas with the mill deck.
The next DotP brought Sealed Deck and even simplier game play and simplier decks. But everything was balanced and sometimes it was even fun (pre-scripted 'challenges' and such). The interface was far worse for me but it looked better. The color scheme for m14 is horrible though. Sealed deck was fine, but it had many flaws and it also required microtransactions if you wanted to play more than 2. That was quite sad.

Now with Magic 2015 DotP 2015 was released as well. I pre-ordered the game and once again had to wait till 6pm so I could play the game (that really annoys me). While opening m15 booster packs and sorting cards I ran the game.
The intro was ok...even though tbe sound was too loud. The menu gave me a nice headache. I couldn't watch the floating elements nor the animation of it. Not to mention that it did not even flow at constant speed...Nevermind...In order to be able to play the campaign that I wanted to choose and play I needed a deck so I had to go through the tutorial (as I was kindly reminded) to unlock it. I listened to most of the tutorial as I was too busy sorting cards. The tutorial itself is not bad. After I went through the tutorial I was told to win one full game on my own. That was quite a frustrating experience. Oh well I horrible died about 5 times trying to play with UB 'control'. The preconstructed decks given to you are really bad and beating the tutorial is not easy (not sure about lowe difficulty settings). I got mana screwed seriously and just couldn't win the game. So I switched to a different deck the one next to it (UG) and tried that once again. I played mono green but I managed to win somehow...and then I was stuck with UG for the rest of the game. And as it seems the 'color screwed' problem continued on...I also learned soon enough that keeping a two lander is a no way to go. Not sure if I should blame the shuffling algorithm or the game is just making fun of me (I always got mana screwed while keeping two lander).

After finishing the tutorial I finally could find out where Avacyn is. Because my prepaid Premium stuff would be unlocked after beating the angel. At this point I still did not know that the premium stuff is actually something you can only buy. And that I think is not fair at all. That means that those who pay for it can have better decks and don't need to unlock the cards one by one. The fact that I did not get my premium cards right away as I always did with the previous games was a disappointment as well (the premium stuff in previous games was actually unlockable in the game).
So I started the campaign with the horrible pile of blue and green cards that. I could not even make a deck out of it because I did not open anything good enough in those colors. I managed to beat my opponents though with that load of crap. When I reached Avacyn ... she played Entreat the Angels on turn 5. I was like WTF?? What my deck is capable of doing with 4/4 angels?

In the second attempt I beat Avacyn's angel and got new cards from the premium content. I wanted to change my deck somehow finally but the deck editor did not even allow me to do that for some reason. Later in the game though the deck editor was 'unlocked' and I finally could do anything I wanted with it and finally changed the ratio and number of lands in the deck (because for some unknown reason I had 26 lands in my deck and 9 of those were islands - the deck was more blue before than green). While on Theros plane I opened some green bombs like Nessian Asp, Arbor Colossus and Nemesis of Mortals so I later switched to mono green (not that I would want to play that). White seems pretty sweet. I just miss Batterskull so I could fetch that with Stoneforge Mystic^^.

After few more planes I realized that there won't be anything special or cool as in the previous games and I started to wonder why I payed those 10USD for it. The reason why I bought the game is this post actually. I wanted to know for myself if the game is bad or not. Well the game certainly has something new and that is deckbuilding. That is something I really appreciate but getting some cards from which one can actually build a deck takes forever unless you buy them. The cards I got and the 'power' of my deck is far worse than my horrible M15 pool I got few days earlier. The deck was utter crap and I wanted to drop by round 1^_~. In DotP I got the same feeling but at least I wasn't encountering opponents playing Souls of whatever by turn 4. While playing with the UG deck I also reminded myself of my first pool I got on ipad version of the previous DotP. That pool was really bad and quite a pain to play with but still it was doing what I wanted and it was me who chose the cards to play with (and maybe it was better because I had to play 40 cards deck not 60 cards deck). Here I get some UG deck that is really horrible and can add one or two cards when lucky after one match. That's something I did not really appreciate but it is the way WotC wanted beginners to start playing Magic. But compared to Magic Celebration events in which a player starts with either a half deck or one booster pack this felt much worse. Because one card changed in 60 cards is way worse than one card changed in 30 cards.

Ok so back to actual review of the game. What does it offer? A deck-building experience. You no longer are give a PCD that you can tweak but instead you start with a pile of crap that you can turn into an actually 'deck'. After winning a match a player is awarded a booster pack containing some cards that grow the player's collection. From that one can build completely new deck and try it out in both single player or multiplayer. So with time your deck actually starts to do something you want it to do (if you are a magic player already). For those not familiar that much with the game creating a deck that works might be a challenge. But a good one, that is something a player should learn. Not net deck but to build your own deck.
The feature to be able to play with your sealed pool in the previous game was often overlooked but I found it cool. Now with over 900 cards that can be used, players can come up with different decks and play against each other. Unfortunately there is the fact about the premium content. Players with Premium content cards have bigger card pool and have more powerful cards available to them. This only can make it sometimes frustrating to those who don't own those cards. Apart from this deckbuilding feature or there new way how DotP works there is nothing new nor nothing old in terms of features (except the core game that is). The game has some technical issues and it does not work that well on ipad. The previous DotP was working better. At least it wasn't crashing. So in the end how I would rate the game? Undecided so that most probably means that I would give it 2.5 out of 5. But that's just because I expected something else completely. The game is worth 10USD for sure.