Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers PC Review

Gameplay is a strange way of covering this review, since it works generally more as a simulation of the card based game, this isn’t your typical sort of game where you run around hacking and slashing at mythical beasts, instead you play a role of a summoner who must battle other summoners to complete a mission / level of the game.

Each level is a different opponent, each with their own unique set of abilities and cards, the objective being you must deplete your opponents health bar to zero to win before your opponent does the same to you, this is acchived by the use of the games cards.  At the start of each game, you get to choose a deck, each deck is split into type, such as forest, mountain, sea and many more, each with their own unique creatures, items and lands and choosing the right deck for each opponent is vital to success.

At the start of each game, each player draws 7 cards, with the objective being to take it in turns and summon your cards to defeat your opponent.  You can place cards called Lands, which are quite litterally land, such as forrest and mountain, with each creature card requiring so many of a certain type of land before it can be called into battle.

I’m not going to get into the exact details of the games mechanics though, as its extortionately complex and does require quite some practice and knowledge of the game, something which I lack the knowledge to detail properly, but I have grasp enough of it to be able to actually do it in the game.

Each played can then use their summoned cards to attack the opponent and deal damage, using various power ups and creatures to block attacks, cast attacks and boost your summoned creatures.

While the game does come with a tutorial, its not the most intuitive experience ever, it lacks a lot of explanation that really made me struggle for the first few hours of play time, unfortunately if the training in this game was complete you would likely need to sit there all day through some very extensive lessons on how it all works, fortunately it does give you a rough idea of how it all works and you tend to pick up the rest of the game through trial and error in the games campaign.

There are plenty of game modes on offer, from a single player story and campaign mode, multiplayer, custom matches and even advanced features that allow you to customise your deck with the cards you unlocked in the games story mode.