When I heard that Quantic Dream was trying to make a competitive multiplayer game in Spellcasters Chronicles, I quickly wrote it off. I’ve seen this story play out too many times where a developer with a history of single-player games tries to jump into the live service multiplayer market and fails miserably. You’re telling me the same studio that made Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human is going to make a worthwhile multiplayer game? Get out of here.
After playing the game a little bit during its first closed beta, I’ll admit, I definitely jumped to conclusions too quickly. I found Spellcasters Chronicles to be quite endearing, with its frenetic gameplay and endearing art style.
It Cast a Spell on Me
Spellcaster Chronicles plays like a MOBA with RTS elements. Granted, I am by no means an expert whatsoever in either field, but that’s what it felt like to me. There are two teams of three sorcerers who can fly around the area, summoning minions who run down three paths to try and capture ground and eventually take out three lifestones on the opponent’s side. As you gain experience, you level up and focus on upgrading either your personal stats, the stats of your army, or your spells.
Overall, I found this to be quite exhilarating. The freedom to fly everywhere is so nice, but I often found myself getting caught up in altercations for what felt like forever. As a spellcaster, you are quite powerful when it comes to most of the army units summoned onto the field, but that changes quickly when the higher-tiered creatures get brought in.
As you play, you gain charge towards summoning a titan, who is (as you may have guessed) a gigantic creature who essentially takes control of the field the moment they are in play. These guys can demolish an entire lane if they are not met with another titan to oppose them. Even you, as a powerful spellcaster, can’t really leave much of a significant dent on these monstrosities on your own. That said, I loved calling in a titan and watching them get to work. They completely obliterate everything around them, and it’s really exciting to see your titan push through a lane.
I do wish I felt more like that with the rest of the summons, though. The tier 1 and 2 monsters are understandably very weak, but even when you have a ton of them together, they don’t feel like they make much of an impact because of how often bigger creatures get called in. In this game, your army isn’t automatically spawned in; you have to manage your numbers, and with cooldowns, that makes things quite aggravating as you go to call in a dozen troops only for them to be instantly wiped out.
Deck Building is a House of Cards
Outside of you being the one who calls in your army, the biggest way that Spellcasters Chronicles differentiates itself from other MOBAs is that its abilities are managed through a deck builder. In the closed beta, everything was unlocked, so I’m not sure if you will have to work to unlock things in the future. In all honesty, it felt more like a loadout system than a deck builder, but maybe I’m splitting hairs here. Everything you put into your deck, you have access to right away, aside from the tier three and up criteria, which can be unlocked by gaining the proper experience.
As things are now, the deckbuilding in this game takes away from the spellcasters themselves. I am a big fan of hero shooters, so I may be too used to everyone having their own set of abilities and working within those kits. In Spellcasters Chronicles, the only things that I found to be unique to the character you chose are their ultimate, a dodge or block ability, and passive abilities. Everything else is free game for anyone to use, which takes away a feeling of uniqueness from these characters that I otherwise genuinely liked. The passives definitely push you down towards putting specific cards in your deck, like the Fire Elementalist is better with fire spells, which feels like the game telling me what to equip, so I feel this whole system just doesn’t gel the way Quantic Dream wants it to.
Final Thoughts
I came away quite surprised with how much I enjoyed Spellcasters Chronicles in its first closed beta. Flying around and calling in a titan to destroy everything in its path feels so cool, and I want to do more of that. What I don’t want to do more of is create a deck or feel like the fight I am in is completely unwinnable. Optimization was pretty rough, but I don’t worry about that too much in the first closed beta. It was a little janky at times, but it was playable. That is stuff I expect to be ironed out over time.
If Spellcasters Chronicles can continue to build on what it has, I think it can be a very fun game to get into for small groups of friends. I’m not necessarily sure if it will pull people away from League of Legends, for example, but as someone who has no alliance in any MOBA, I had a good time playing this.
