Magic: Legends is an upcoming MMORPG based on the popular card game Magic: The Gathering. It is being developed by Cryptic Studios and published by Perfect World Games. The game's public beta will be launching on March 23, and sign-ups are currently open. Recently, CBR was able to preview Legends and speak to the developers about how they translated the card-based gameplay of Magic to the MMORPG format. This was clearly the priority, as Cryptic aims to make Legends the action-RPG sibling to Magic The Gathering: Arena and Magic The Gathering: Online.
The preview mainly highlighted how Magic: The Gathering fans should encounter plenty of familiar notes when it comes to Legends. One area of interest is the game's class system, where players are able to pick not only a class for their Planeswalker, but also a deck for their character's abilities. As players clear missions, they will unlock cards, which can be used to customize their own deck as they play.
Lead designer Adam Hetenyi emphasized how important it was to perfect the deckbuilding aspects of Legends. He explained that the team started its translation process by figuring out what building a deck in an action-RPG should be like. Hentenyi believes that half of Magic: The Gathering's gameplay is deckbuilding itself, so recreating that experience without losing the feel of an action-RPG was important.
Due to Legends action-RPG gameplay, the maximum deck size is greatly limited compared to the card game, with players only able to build a 12 card deck. Additionally, at least at the start, players will only be able to build decks with two colors of mana, or dual-type decks. Instead of mana-generating land cards, each deck has a mana bar with colored sections that correspond to the kind of mana they're running in their deck.
These limitations may concern longtime Magic: The Gathering players. However, the absence of land cards and each Planeswalker class having their own unique abilities may help bring the joys of deckbuilding back into the game. At launch, there will be five selectable Planeswalkers that players can switch between at any point. Players can also equip their characters with a wide range of artifacts that impact their stats, with these outfits being transferable between classes.
The class abilities, artifacts and changes to how mana works seem to give players back the level of creativity that may be lost with the 12 card limit. With the pre-made decks that were available during the preview, it certainly felt like the main Magic: The Gathering deck archetypes were present. For example, there was a Red/White Boros deck that felt like a mix between a tribal and aggro, which utilized fast goblin summons to overwhelm enemies.
Legends' gameplay allows players to use randomly drawn cards from their deck with controls that feel somewhat reminiscent of the Diablo series. In addition to class abilities, each playable class also has a melee attack. At times, it felt as though there was a lot to manage in real-time, between knowing what cards were available to use and when a class's abilities would best be utilized, but that could simply be part of Legends' learning curve.
The emphasis on deckbuilding may go a long way in convincing Magic: The Gathering fans to check out Legends. It should also be noted that players will unlock more cards as they complete missions, which is meant help new players gradually learn the game's mechanics. Hentenyi explained that the deckbuilding experience should go from modifying a pre-made deck to being able to create a completely new one, and that's a journey that fans should look forward to taking.