Gadgetory

what's up Internet Kevin here today bringing guys a review of a game whose genre I've never really covered before on this channel but it is a series that have kept up with over the years and that's the latest iteration of the Magic the Gathering video game magic 2015 Duels of the Planeswalkers now this is the fifth game in the dual series and for those of you that are unfamiliar with it it's basically taking the Magic the Gathering card game and trying to make a slightly more simplified version of it for a video game forum now all the prior games in this series took out the issue of deck building for the most part players just got to choose between varies pre-built decks and as they used them they could get additional cards to lightly customize them but the idea was was that each deck maintained its own unique flavor and play style this really helps it feel to be like something a little different from just regularly playing magic there was this fun meta game going on with which deck you pick whether or not it counters what your opponent chose and if you're playing in a 2v2 match trying to pick pre-built decks that complement each other really well well magic 2015 has chosen to do things a little differently this time and has done away with this mechanic but it's instead treating this like playing just regular Magic the Gathering but with a very isolated set of cards to choose from you start the game off by choosing one of ten decks which are really just five different half decks put together in each way possible with just a couple little variations and then you have to grind your way through the game's campaign to unlock more cards to further customize your deck or build entirely new ones this approach comes with both its ups and downs it's more different than it is straight up good or bad on the one hand you have more freedom to customize and build your own deck which adds another layer of complexity to the gameplay but at the same time it feels like a lot of the cards don't have the same degree of flavor or consistent themes that we would see in previous versions basically there's a little less style and flavor in exchange for more freedom now the one weird thing they choose to do with this though is that they've made sort of a half step where they've opened up deck building but have also restricted it in a really odd way by limiting the number of cards you can have based on rarity you'll only ever get three copies of an uncommon card to of a rare and one mythic rare which just seems like an odd incredibly arbitrary design decision I could maybe see restricting them more of mythix but even that's a stretch now another big issue with this deck building approach is how it restricts your early on options for what you can use to handle certain opponents basically once you pick your starter deck that's all you have to work with for a good while until you take time defeating a lot of opponents to grind out more cards to choose from and actually maybe even build a new deck down the line until then though you're stuck with what you chose and the problem with that is that you might find yourself in a situation where the deck you picked is just awful at handling a particular early on opponent and there's nothing you can really do about it adjustment wise because you don't have any other cards or decks to work with really now of course you could just take the difficulty down to its lowest setting to deal with those situations but that doesn't excuse the fact that something like this shouldn't happen in the first place and is definitely one of the drawbacks of this new approach so once again the move to deck building from pre-built decks is something that's both good and bad in different ways and really you can chalk it up mostly to personal preference but there are some other problems in this version of magic duels the Planeswalkers that we also need to cover starting with its multiplayer multiplayer this time around has been extremely simplified down to just two three or four player free-for-all and that's it previous versions usually offered some kind of special game mode some of which were good and some were bad and consistently also offered other options for full four players such as the 2v2 format known as two-headed giant none of these are present in the game leaving simple traditional free-for-all being the only multiplayer option which to be fair by itself is still really fun but for being the fifth entry in a series it's somewhat mind boggling to me that this game features the fewest game modes and I don't really see an obvious reason as to why other than maybe a concern the shift to deck building would affect the special game modes balance but it works with real cards too so why not in this game it's just a frustrating step back in content now the other big issue with this one the other ones didn't have as much is its approach to DLC now earlier Duels of the Planeswalkers games did have DLC in the forms of expansions or specific decks you could purchase but they all came out sometime down the line and usually didn't screw with the game balance that much but this time around they now have a unique set of premium cards that are available right away for purchase basically there's a collection of cards you can use to further customize your deck that are only available via paid DLC to make matters even more annoying you can only gain these cards in the form of ten random booster packs that cost $2 a pop so even if you just want one specific card you have to keep buying packs hoping you get the right one and if you end up wanting to unlock all the cards in order to have the game's actual complete collection you'd have to buy a total of 14 premium packs effectively boosting the game's total price from its initial $10 to 38 this also ends up creating a paywall content-wise giving players that chose to pay more an advantage in multiplayer so all in all this is by no means my favorite entry in the magic duels of Planeswalkers series now the change detect building like I said earlier you could just chalk that up to personal preference you might like it you might dislike it but the restrictions on deck building the paywall content and the lack of multiplayer modes just ends up souring the whole experience at 10 bucks it can still be worth picking up if you just want the latest iteration and need to kill time on an MTG based game but value wise you're definitely not getting what you used to in past titles even when compared to those earlier ones that launched at 20 bucks well that was my review of magic 2015 Duels of the Planeswalkers if you guys enjoyed the video please make sure to let me know as always by hitting that thumbs up button I always appreciate it and if you're not a subscriber yet then hit that button too because I've got more great content planned and on the way don't forget you can also follow me on twitter at Kevin Kenton where you can hear my up-to-date thoughts on what games I'm currently playing and what I might be reviewing soon in the future happy see you guys soon with more great content but until then I'm Kevin Kenson see you later