PREVIEW – Another sequel, but this time a platform change also, as the previous Magicka game was only available to PC. It seems that releasing sequels to the PS4 is a caught on idea. It doesn’t bother us, we’ll play all the good games on the PS4, and it’s not like Paradox Interactive minds all the new gamers praise, and profit.

Paradox Interactive hasn’t done much to be recognized among the console gamers. They only had two tries, one back in 2010 with Lead and Gold, the other was 2012 with Game of Dwarves. Both were not too good in terms of reception. The publisher decided to finally do a proper game for the consoles, and will release Magicka 2. The development has been given to a new dev team, as Arrowhead Game Studios is busy with Helldivers post launch fixes (Dante also wrote a review for us), so Pieces Interactive is taking the reins. Let’s see what we have here.

Tougher than the Potters

Spells and wizardry is a weird genre for me, but I feel that Paradox is approaching the topic from an interesting direction. We have one or up to four wizards (the ones with the mysterious cloacks). Our heroes look the same, and are only different in terms of their cloak’s color. A top-down view, a bunch of pretty scenery and levels, and finally a whole lot of enemies to kill. There will be giant crabs, trolls, ice and fire monsters etc etc etc.

If your friends are like this, you don’t even need enemies

Magicka 2’s biggest draw is the combat system. It’s interesting because the outcome of a battle is never 100%. There are eight elements (life, water, fire, cold, shield, lightning, earth, and the mystic) which we can create spells that either damage or heal us. A spell can be used if 5 or a maximum of 7 spells are combined, one spell can be combined multiple times. We can’t throw spells around carelessly as with one wrong move, and we can damage ourselves, or heal our enemies. So do not select fire and life combination or you’ll be back at the nearest checkpoint accepting the fate of the character.

If we’re not a danger to ourselves then comes the other part of the difficulty in this series: Our allies. Friendly fire cannot be turned off, and due to this a few wrong aims, and all of our co-op partners will be pissed off at us.

There’s so many of them

If we’re a master of spells, and if our co-op partners got a few hits to remember where to aim, then all that is left is to kill the monsters. Which won’t be easy, as different monsters are weak to different spells. Consequently damaging a fire troll with a flame spell will just result in them thanking us. Same goes for any ice based monsters. However it’s good to use a life spell against zombies, as their health bar is in the negative. All these would be okay, if only one enemy would appear but usually they are hordes of monsters attaching the players, and sometimes the camera view doesn’t help too much. So prepare for a long battle .

Hope for the best.

Magicka 2 is shaping up to be a great game, we’ll be able to prepare attacks creatively, play with friends and save the world again. The unswitchable friendly fire, the minimum of five combinations, and the amount of enemies can result in chaos. Hopefully these problems will not be in the final game which will be release on the 26^th of May.

– Dazo911 –

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Developer: Pieces Interactive

Genres: Top-down shooter, Action-Adventure

Release date: May 26. 2015