Magic: The Gathering: Battlegrounds
- November 19, 2003 11:25 AM PST
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The game that shows what everyone imagines during a Magic tournament but no one talks about.
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The game won?t win any awards for its presentation, which consists mostly of smallish creatures running right and left over simple game boards and all the explosive sounds that entails, but Battlegrounds reaches for the gold in its concept and design. Essentially, you put together a spellbook of 10 spells from the card game?s five opposing schools and use those spells in real-time combat to defeat your enemy. Each color-coded school has a specialty; Green magic depends on big creatures, while White magic specializes in gaining life and augmenting your minions. Even within each school, different strategies suggest themselves; do you want to concentrate on building a goblin horde with your Red magic, or would you rather have just enough goblins to distract the enemy while you pelt him with Scorching Missiles from the back row?
Playing the game is simple; you run around with the analog stick and choose and cast spells with the face buttons. Battleground?s excellent and challenging tutorial (essentially, the entirety of the single-player Quest mode) really sets you up to become a master of the game, so you can make a good showing in the real battle?multiplayer spellfests with your friends. Lonely hearts can even play online via Xbox Live if there are no worthy challengers within physical reach.
It may not be pretty, but it?s deep, challenging, and filled with replayability. Battlegrounds is like a piece of candy wrapped in burlap: hard to appreciate at first, but really sweet once you get into it.
