Customer Reviews

Magic the Gathering: Battle Grounds

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

MTG Players take heed, this is not MTG, but is Mortal Combat with MTG themes and words. If you are looking for an online MTG (similar to the one offered for Win95/98 a few years ago) this ain't it. Save your money.
If you want Mortal Combat and a few hours of frustration, this is the game for you.

First of all this is an arcade game. Players of the card game be warned. This is nothing like "magic the gathering" but rather a quick-paced button-clicker that relies mostly on your reflexes to succeed but has a fair amount of strategy to it as well. Oh and, the "spells" your wizard uses have names that will be familiar to you, if you played the card game...

I had to buy a game controller (only $15) to really appreciate this game, due to the extreme manual dexterity required to do well at all the fast paced action. Still it took me more than 15 hours of playing the "quest" and "arcade" modes before I really got the hang of this game. Up until that point there were some very frustrating "quests" that seemed impossible until I spent the hours to train my reflexes and learn the strategies.

Once you master the Quest mode however, it is a rewarding experience to create your own collection of spells then go online to compete live with other players. Playing against other people is a real challenge so expect to lose quite a few games until you adjust to the new strategies being used.

This game is good, but before you buy it, make sure you have the correct PC requirements or else it wont run well. I did not have enough ram to play the game so I had to upgrade my computer and now it runs just fine. MTG Battle Grounds is basically a fighting game, where you cast spells and creatures. Kind of like Final Fantasy, but theres no turn taking; you and your opponent both do things at the sametime There are five colors: White, Red, Black, Green and Blue. White is soldier/angel/gain life. Red is burn/fire/goblins. Black is death/disease/undead. Green is power/elves/beeasts. Blue is counter/water/air. You can pick one of nine avatars(only five are initially selectable) , and they represent the different colors. There are over 70 spells for each color, bringing the total to about 350+ spells, making the possibilities endless. In the game, you have to obtain "mana crystals", which add/regenerate to your mana. You need mana to cast spells. There are three types of spells: sorceries, enchantments, and creatures. Sorceries do a variety of things but last only 1 tutn. Enchantments stay in the field for the whole game. Creatures attack your opponent until killed by your opponent. To beat a level, you have to drain the opponents life from 20 to 0 before he does it to you.

I love Magic the gathering, which is why I bought this. If you play MTG, you will probably not like this. It is semi-original game play, kind of fun, but monotonous at best. I despise the whole 'mana crystal' thing, and also the creatures all respawn after they attack your opponent. No phases, everything you have ever learned about MTG, is now null and void. If I had never played MTG, I would prolly still not like this game, but since it has some original gameplay action going on, I still gave it a 3. And there are only 70 spells total, not 350+ (Below)
Pass it.

This game is a ton of fun. Shame that so many people didn't like it. I would love to see another one made. As faithful of a translation to an arcade style game as you can get.

I had played the demo version of this game when it came out. It needs a very fast system, and even then, it can take a long time to load. The rules are moderately complex, and it requires the player to focus on many different aspects at once - your mana count, the creatures coming to attack you, your spell book, power up bonuses and the enemy wizard. The graphics were decent, and cool at times. It takes a while to get used to it, and even then you might move your character in the wrong direction. Magic is a complicated game, and it was hell for the programmers who originally made the AI that plays.
The spells 'come to life' to give it more action, and less strategy, and make it less complicated. Seriously, you (the wizard) can block or deal one damage. If I was playing MTG (the card game) and I got attacked by a 1/1 I can't say, I smacked it dead. We all want to see the epic wars / duels we play come to life, but without sacrificing the game.

Pros:amazing graphics, immensely fun to play, challenging, but not impossible, and it can be used as multiplayer.
Cons: Need a very fast computer to use.
Avised highly

Good luck trying to get this game to run! I've been emailing atari,compaq,creative for over a month now,installed more ram,reflashed my bios installed new mouse drivers,cd drivers,vidio & sound card drivers. I'll probably have a very large tech support bill = to several times the cost of the game.Atari was the least helpfull of the three tech supports. 1.2gig n 80gig hd n 384k of ram n it willnot run on my machine