Magic Realms review – The ultimate collectible card game for Windows Phone 8

Magic Realms is the Windows Phone and Blackberry version of Elemental Kingdoms, a popular collectible card game/RPG. It also happens to exist a re-skinning of an existing game called Lies of Astaroth, with the same game mechanics but totally different cards, art and story.

Origins aside, Magic Realms is a vast and endlessly enjoyable card game. You become a lengthy story mode, online thespian-versus-role player battles, association support, semi-weekly live events, cloud saves, and even cross-platform compatibility with the Blackberry version of the game. That'southward quite a lot of value from a free to play game. Learn more than in our in-depth review.

Save the land

To starting time with, you'll select a male or female Hero. Then your entrada begins in the kingdom of Tundra, part of the Northern Alliance. A former marry, the Cerise Nation suddenly joins up with the Black Swamp Tribe to invade Tundra. Your Hero will demand to seek assistance from another kingdom and investigate the cause of the Reddish Nation's assailment.

The story unfolds through cursory conversations betwixt the player's party every time a new stage is visited. Although the dialog is well-written, information technology merely actually concerns the team's trip from place to place. Nobody receives whatsoever actual characterization, making it tough to care why they're going where.

The globe of Magic Realms is divided into 12 maps, each with multiple stages (battles) to conquer. By simply winning a boxing, you lot'll proceeds i star for that stage. Every level has Medium and Difficult goals as well, such equally using certain cards in your deck or winning without losing as well much life. Revisit stages to complete these actress goals and win up to three stars for the stage. Three-starring all of the levels in a stage ofttimes unlocks subconscious levels.

Working through Magic Realms' campaign and earning stars is quite a lot of fun, but eventually the opponents will outpace the histrion's growth by a wide margin. Around the eighth map or so, yous'll come up up against enemies with significantly better cards and runes than you could possibly have at that point. I've ofttimes had to grind for days merely to overcome the next battle or two, killing the pace of the game.

Card combat

All the window dressing in the earth wouldn't matter without a good card gainsay organization. Thankfully, the ane-on-1 gainsay in Magic Realms is both piece of cake to learn and addictive.

Every round, both players draw a random card from the deck, moving it to the preparation zone. Each card has a unique Expect Fourth dimension representing the number of turns it must stay within the prep zone before moving into the battlefield where information technology tin be played. This timer is easy to read during battle. Just inside the actual deck building interface outside of battle, the Wait Time is all but hidden – y'all have to zoom in on a carte to run into it.

Cards placed on the boxing field will automatically attack the enemy card placed directing across from them. Each carte du jour has its own individual HP rating that decreases equally information technology gets attacked. Having knocked out the card across from your ain, your menu will and then be able to set on the enemy histrion directly. Whichever player runs out of life (or cards) loses the battle.

In addition to HP and Attack attributes, cards as well accept special abilities. These usually actuate automatically during the card's set on stage, and include such functions as stunning an enemy card, refilling the HP of a dwelling house team card, and immunity to other abilities. Cards can also exist leveled upward, raising their HP and assail. They first with one or no abilities, but at levels 5 and ten new abilities will unlock. Those extra abilities can make a huge difference in battle.

All told, the gainsay is much simpler than in Magic: the Gathering. Most of the strategy takes place outside of battle, revolving effectually how you construct your deck and which cards you cull to level up. The game even allows players to set up battles to automatic if they want. Watching your tightly-constructed deck trade blows with the opponent's proves surprisingly enjoyable. It's also very convenient, being able to first a fight and and then accept your hands off the phone for a few minutes.

Gathering cards and runes

Players can acquire cards in a variety of ways in this game. The Store sells random cards or bundles of cards for gold (the soft currency earned from battles), gems (premium currency), and burn tokens (earned past completing in-game achievements). You'll also earn cards from completing stages, special in-game events, exploring stages, and completing mazes.

About of the campaign maps have a maze that players can explore in one case per day. You lot'll earn tons of cards from the battles within, which can and so exist kept or used to level up other cards (every bit shown to a higher place). After starting a maze battle, you can even choose to skip it completely, unlike normal entrada battles.

Mazes are super simplistic and visually underwhelming, but they're essential to success. I wish one map's maze looked unlike from some other'southward, though. Swapping palettes would be piece of cake and add together variety.

On top of customizing and leveling the cards inside your deck, you tin can also outfit information technology with Runes. Each Rune has a status that triggers its spell. Trigger information technology during boxing and it begins casting its spell. Runes drop much less oftentimes than cards, but you lot can get random runes by paying golden in the Temple. Balancing your gold spending between carte packs and visits to the Temple is part of the game'due south strategy.

Join the WPCentral clan and conquer in PvP!

Every 24-hour interval, players can participate in up to 15 player-versus-histrion (PvP) battles. The game provides a list of 5 opponents for you to cull from. Crush one and you have that role player'south rank. The actual PvP battles are asynchronous and automatic, so they come down entirely to deck strategy, menu level, and luck of the draw.

Winning ranked battles gets your golden and experience. After reaching level 18 and joining a clan, y'all'll besides earn clan points from ranked matches. These points contribute to the clan'south level, increasing the number of members who can bring together. Individual members also unlock exclusive cards based on their point contributions. Clan members can also conversation with each other, simply only if other players are online. You tin can't see who's online or not, making the feature far less useful than information technology should be.

Windows Telephone Primal happens to have a thriving Magic Realms clan of its own. Once you unlock the clan feature, search for WPCentral and ask to join! We desire players who actively participate in ranked matches, which every actor should practise anyway. Member slots are limited, then please be patient and we'll accept your invite when space becomes available. You tin can likewise participate in our Magic Realms forum thread to discuss gameplay and clan-related topics.

Energy and In-app Purchases

Similar many free to play games, Magic Realms limits player progression with an energy system. All campaign battles, exploration, and maze battles consume free energy. Ranked battles, thief battles, and demon invasions (group battles against super-powered enemies) don't use energy as they take their own separate counters/timers.

The energy mechanic is a necessary evil in games similar this. The developers don't want players racing through the game; they want united states of america to play daily forever and always. That said, energy takes awfully long to refill: one unit of measurement every ten minutes. Buying more energy with gems actually proves to be the all-time use of premium currency in the game, merely fifty-fifty that ability is express. You tin can simply purchase ten or and so free energy refills per day earlier the game cuts you lot off, oddly enough.

Gems tin also be used to buy card packs. The quality of the cards you'll get volition exceed that of packs that toll coins, simply not always by a huge margin. My communication is to buy a few packs with gems but otherwise stick to using them for energy refills. The coins you need to spend in guild to level up cards and runes can't be bought, only earned from playing.

Truly magical

Nobody wants to invest much time(or money) in a gratuitous to play game merely to lose it all when switching between devices or reinstalling the game. Luckily, Magic Realms uses cloud saves as I mentioned before.

There'due south a good chance that saves will transfer betwixt this and the upcoming Windows 8 and RT versions too, although that depends on whether those versions are published every bit Magic Realms or Elemental Kingdoms. If the proper name changes to the later for Windows 8, it would share progress with the iOS and Android versions instead. Let'south hope developer Time 2 Play Studio opts for Windows Phone-Windows viii synchronicity over those competing platforms.

If y'all like carte games similar Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokémon, don't hesitate to download Magic Realms.

• Magic Realms – Windows Phone 8 – 48 MB – Free – Shop Link

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/magic-realms-review

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