Magicite. Enjoyably Tough Roguelike, or Maddeningly Unfair?
Magicite – Reviewed
By Nathaniel Liles
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THIS was the first enemy I encountered.
Of all the games I’ve been tasked with playing here at Cliqist, not a single one has brought me as much anger and frustration as Magicite. Now, as you guys may know, I am not a fan of games that rely entirely on difficulty as their one selling point, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s all that Magicite has going for it. Mediocre visuals, a convoluted, nonsensical, and incredibly limited crafting system, no direction or guidance of any kind, little to no overarching progress, and staggering, soul-crushing difficulty make this one of my least favorite games of all time. While it may not be a bad game for everyone, I’m going to fill you in on exactly how frustrating this game is so you can make an informed decision whether or not to add this to your collection. Let’s begin.
20% chance of unlocking something. What game does this?!
My first impressions of Magicite were actually extremely positive. I was charmed by the graphics, and the idea of a “go as far as you can then try again” roguelike wasn’t something I was opposed to. I love games like Rogue Legacy, but in Rogue Legacy, every time you fail and start back at the beginning, you have something to show for it. You have a new weapon to craft, a new skill to use, or some gold to up your stats. Magicite has a system similar to this, but most of what you unlock is either randomly generated or preposterously hard to unlock. There’s no currency, your stats don’t increase between playthroughs, and the unlocks have requirements like “20% chance of unlock when you kill X amount of enemies in a single life”. 20%?! No. Not going to do some tedious, difficult task over and over in the hopes that I’m doing it right and will eventually be rewarded.
Graphics are fine, nothing to write home about, but pleasing.
The graphics and sound are almost impossible to comment on because they’re the definition of standard. This is one of those “love letters to the genre” that any trained game dev could pump out in a week, and the graphics are uninspired. Pig looks like a pig. Bear looks like a non-descript lump of brown. Giant bee looks like a giant bee, but even the quality of the artwork is low. The music is simple, mystical-sounding chiptune throughout. Not much to see here, but nothing to complain about.
Hey, I found a sword and was able to enemy-avoid my way through level 1!
The crafting system is probably the most half-assed part of this game. What do you think you’d get when you mix two sticks together? Sword? Bow? Pickaxe? Clumsy pair of scissors? Nope. Axe handle. Adding another stick to that makes it a pick handle. Adding another stick makes it a bow. Combine that with the fact that items have limited durability and losing your axe means you can’t chop down any trees until you make another one (out of wood, which comes from trees), and you’ve got a convoluted excuse for a crafting system that never goes any deeper than “shift+click these two items and hope you didn’t just ruin your playthrough”.
Aaaand level 2 looks exactly the same, but blue. And I’m dead.
I started one match in a medium sized cave between a wall and a boss. On level one. I started another where things were going just fine, but the enemies moved so quickly and did so much damage that I only lasted 45 seconds. You’re supposed to kill enemies, level up, craft things, and avoid a 7-minute time limit all at the same time with pitiful attacks and nightmarishly strong enemies that move faster than you and can literally kill you in three hits or less even if you luck into a high HP stat. Magicite will only appeal to the deepest, most occult parts of the “hardcore gamer” culture, but even if you enjoy the difficulty, there’s nothing for you here. Every single element of Magicite is a watered down lift of another game’s claim to fame, and the only thing that makes Magicite notable or unique is its staggering unfairness and lack of content.
[divider] [box type=”info” align=”aligncenter” ]Recently, I reviewed the new roguelike/craft-a-thon Magicite, and after playing for half an hour, looking up item lists, memorizing recipes, and watching higher-level gameplay, I decided on my opinions of the game. I didn’t like it, in short, but my journalistic integrity was attacked after someone snooped into my Steam account and looked at how long I played the game. I had no interest in hiding it, because I was able to experience just about all the content within that half hour, but since people seem to think I half-ass my job, I put in the legwork and played Magicite for a total of 16 hours over the last week or so since the review was written. So, did my opinions change? Did I take a look inside myself and discover that I had some sort of established bias that caused me to hate Magicite before I even started playing it?Of course I didn’t. Prior to playing Magicite, I had absolutely no knowledge of it. I didn’t get on the hype train, I didn’t read or watch reviews of it, and I didn’t do any research prior to starting the game so I could avoid bias, and I definitely didn’t have some vendetta against the game. I played it for half an hour at first, thought to myself “Surely this isn’t it!” and then researched the game’s later levels to find out that it was exactly the shallow, unrewarding experience that it was when I set out to play it I the first place. I didn’t enjoy Magicite for the first 30 minutes, and I didn’t enjoy it for the last 16 hours.
I’m not condemning the game, although its abysmal lack of content may do that for me. This game is needlessly hard, and although I eventually got quite good at it, the time required to do that was not worth the time that I took out of my life to explore all of the game’s content. You don’t sit down to watch a shitty movie and after 30 minutes think, “Ya know, it probably gets better after this.” It doesn’t. You don’t dig into a meal that makes you nauseous after the first bite. I don’t feel any need to re-review Magicite because every point I made in my original review stands. [/box] [divider]
[facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/nathaniel.jpg”] Nathaniel Liles is a freelance writer, writing major, and indie musician based in Southern Indiana. While procrastinating or avoiding real-world responsibility, Nathaniel enjoys playing rhythm games, action RPGs, and very colorful games with many bright, flashing lights. You can listen to Nathaniel sing songs or download his music for free at http://nathanielliles.bandcamp.com/. [/author]
Don’t you think it’s a little unfair to publish an article that slates a game that put less than an hour into? If you actually tried a little, you might actually find good aspects to this game. Half-assed journalism, imo.
I gave the game as much time as it was worth. Aside from the amount of gameplay put in, I also did upwards of an hour of research, and for a small pick up and play game with little depth in the pool of craftable items, samey environments, little storyline, and repetitive gameplay, I gave it plenty of time – both in and out of game.
Wow… upwards of an hour… You pretty much dedicated your entire life to it then… I spend more time on the toilet in a day than you apparently do preparing for articles that are going to be spread around the internet. I’d say my work in the bathroom and your work produce pretty much the same thing.
I’m now nearly 5 hours into the game, and I still hold to all of my opinions. I’m going to play to the 10th hour so you no longer feel the need to question my journalistic integrity. I’ll be posting a short follow-up article soon.
Funny that someone could be so bad at this game. I guess if you don’t know that you can jump or dash you could complain that these enemies are too powerful but I have a feeling you don’t know what the term rogue-like means. It doesn’t mean that you get rewarded for being bad at the game, it generally gets referred to as a game that is going to kill you a lot and you have to deal with perma death. Guess it is a good thing you didn’t play much of the early era’s of action RPGs or you would hate that genre too, because it is just too hard for you.
Roguelike is a sub-genre of role-playing video games, characterized by procedural level generation, tile-based graphics and permanent death, and typically based on a high fantasy narrative setting.
This says nothing about a game being so hard that most people can’t enjoy it. I’m not saying it’s so hard I could never beat it, I’m just saying that nothing I saw in my research would be worth it to most gamers. Also feel free to notice that I said several times in this review that people interested in hardcore/high difficulty games would enjoy it, there’s just very little payoff to dedicated players who put in the time to get far and do well.
Griffin or Daladev. Either of you are welcome to put together a review to give your opinions of the game. Nothing wrong with differing opinions. You’ll even get paid! Feel free to shoot me an email at greg@cliqist.com if you’re interested.
Seeing all those butt-hurted comments made me want to try this game. 🙂
It is for sale on Steam!
While this review is old i still feel the need to comment on this
(I get that this is your opinion and i will TRY as hard as i can to respect that) I enjoy the difficulty in this game(my opinion, not necessarily the opinion of everyone who plays this game) i do agree with your complaints about the crafting system (it does kinda suck) but i usually just ignore how annoying it is that you could potentially screw yourself over with it. but i don’t agree with you on the percent chances of getting certain unlocks being a bad thing. but i do like that some of the really useful unlocks had high/100% chances of obtaining them for doing the task while the unlocks that dont affect the your character as much or are easier to get have lower chances(since the task to get them is easier or they don’t affect gameplay that much) when you mentioned you found yourself ” between a wall and a boss” I see why you brought this up but this game is randomly generated like most other games including Rogue Legacy(which you mentioned you liked) and i’ve seen FAR worse things happen in randomly generated games. I’ve brought up all of the points in your review that i would like to mention but you have your opinion and i have mine, and if you dont like this game then it’s fine with me, and if you like this game so much that you support the developers next game on kickstarter, then that’s also fine with me.