Awesome Mage Games?

[Trevor Gruen]

Hello people, just a bit of context: I started playing Ziggurat on steam the other day and got hooked, it's an incredibly fun game because it's magic is so satisfying and has so much variety. But it got me to thinking:

What are the best games for being a mage/sorcerer/guy-with-spells and what's your rationale?

The only 2 games I can think of personally that allow for awesome mages is Ziggurat and Lichdom Battlemage (and I haven't played the latter).

 

[EmperorZinyak]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has some pretty crazy spells, although the game is quite easy overall. One spell is a combination of all three elements: an electric vortex, followed up by a wave of fire, and then an ice crystal which smashes your enemies. Although you can also play as a Warrior/Rogue type character, the magic in the game is awesome and powerful, making you really feel like an all-powerful sorcerer instead of some wimp casting fireballs over and over again. Also, mage's aren't just limited to wands and staffs: you can also use Chakrams, which are really fucking cool, and even create a hybrid class. Who would want to hit enemies with a sword when you can summon a freakin tempest to slaughter your enemies?

 

[Zhukov]

Dragon's Dogma maybe?

The spellcasting is mechanically pretty simple. You either third-person-shooter enemies with your staff or you choose a spell, wait for a progress bar to fill up and pray that nobody slaps you out of it.

However, the spell effects are undeniably cool.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Magicka has pretty fun magic stuff. It's especially entertaining when you play in coop and can combine the effects of your magic with that of the other players.

 

[The Madman]

Ain't nuthin more satisfying than a high level mage in Baldur's Gate 2 with spells like Time Stop, Meteor Swarm, and Wish in your arsenal. So great!

 

[JayRPG]

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has some pretty crazy spells, although the game is quite easy overall. One spell is a combination of all three elements: an electric vortex, followed up by a wave of fire, and then an ice crystal which smashes your enemies. Although you can also play as a Warrior/Rogue type character, the magic in the game is awesome and powerful, making you really feel like an all-powerful sorcerer instead of some wimp casting fireballs over and over again. Also, mage's aren't just limited to wands and staffs: you can also use Chakrams, which are really fucking cool, and even create a hybrid class. Who would want to hit enemies with a sword when you can summon a freakin tempest to slaughter your enemies?

+1 to KoA

I loved this game in general, but the class system and spells are so good.

I was a hybrid rogue/mage with chakrams, the quick dodge ability turned into me teleporting and erupting fire wherever I reappeared. Spells were all good with lots of variety, and there is a crap ton to do in KoA, the world is huge.

 

[DoPo]

The only 2 games I can think of personally that allow for awesome mages is Ziggurat and Lichdom Battlemage (and I haven't played the latter).

Lichdom is quite good. I haven't played Ziggurat, so I can't compare but Lichdom is sort of Dark Messiah (it's first person and vaguely looks similar) and Diablo (lootz). The game is rather linear with an occasional optional offshoot for a small arena battle. At any rate, you go around blasting enemies with some pretty impressive powers and you get spell components (think loot. Because it is. They are separated into white, green, blue, purple, orange, etc in terms of rarity, as well, and have levels on top of that), in order to craft more and better spells.

To be honest, the crafting is a bit of a burden - you get A LOT of spell components and most of them you won't even use. But you'll have to in order to improve the other components. And that's because your inventory space is limited (well, to about 200 items but it does fill up fast) and you need to make room for more. Which is crap in its own way, since you're interested in the rarest highest level loot you can get - levels are just progressive: at some point you start getting level X+1 components instead of level X. Once that happens in a while you can stop craft your new spells with the new level components and not bother until the next time you start getting one level higher loot. Also, the crafting is a bit complex...even though it shouldn't be. It's not hard to grasp, really, as thankfully the tutorials they have serve a good purpose, however, you do have to read up on it, instead of playing. All in all, I found the crafting was stopping the game instead of letting you play.

Still, I do recommend the game. It is pretty good and crafting is really my only complaint. And it's a minor one, really, even though I went on for a paragraph on it.

Other than that, there is Magicka. It is, hands down, the best spell system I've played. You build your spells on the fly and this leads to some pretty impressive results. And some pretty impressive failures, too. Especially if there are other mages around (like, for example, other people you can play with).

In addition, I can recommend Divinity: Original Sin - magic is quite impactful there, as pretty much every spell interracts with the environment in some way - rain can douse fires and makes people wet which you can follow up with a cold spell to freeze them completely solid; lightning not only damages and stuns people, but it also gets conducted through water, so you can damage and stun whole groups of people if they stand in water (or blood) and rain can have them stay in water; you can also apply fire to the water (like a fireball) and it gets evaporated into a mist which obscures vision (great to have between you and enemy ranged combatants) and you can also electrify to turn into a cloud that stuns anything that crosses through. And so on and so forth. Combat with mages involved usually ends with the terrain being left burning, wet, smoking, and generally "like somebody has thrown magic around". Do be careful with friendly fire, though.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Lichdom is pretty cool as far as selection goes and putting it into combat immediately, sadly the spells all do about the same things and don't create anything interesting.

Original Magicka on the other hand just gives you 8 elements to combine any way you want, all on the fly and as fast as you can pull off combos the game will produce the spells. On top of that they got a nicely fleshed out elemental system where everything is good for something, you can even freeze bodies of water to walk on and torch the ice to drown enemies.

Divinity: Original Sin, has a more straight forward spell selection as most RPGs, but the elemental stuff goes even further where every effect will have a huge impact on the next element that interacts with it. If Lichdom had a system even close to this it would be one of the very best magic games ever made.

 

[aozgolo]

While I have yet to experience it first hand, I've been told Two Worlds II has an impressive magic system. It uses a card system that lets you combine multiple effects into a spell, I've been told you can have cyclones of furniture thrown at your enemies as an example.

Skyrim can be quite a lot of fun as a mage with a few mods, specifically I want to mention the Apocalypse Spell Package, Dwemertech, and Midas Magic mods. Older Elder Scrolls games could be a lot of fun with their more robust spell making abilities but they weren't as visually rewarding as some others, but who cares when you can fly, blend in fully with your background and teleport around the map at a whim?

I also want to second Kingdoms of Amalur and Baldur's Gate (actually all the Infinity Engine games). KoA has some fun stealth and melee combat skills but the magic is very intuitive and a lot of fun to play with, and graphically very impressive. Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale really involve a lot of strategy to managing your spellbook and when you pull off an impressive combo of powerful spells it just feels great!

A few other games worth mentioning:

Fable The Lost Chapters: The spells are fun, flashy, and effective and really a lot of fun to play with, the only downside is there isn't a whole lot of them.

Final Fantasy Tactics: With 7 Magic using Job Classes, and area specific targetting, spells in FFT are a lot of fun but it's hard to play with them exclusively.

Brütal Legend: Doesn't fully count but the guitar riff "spells" are very awesome and rewarding to pull off.

Terraria: It may not seem like the ideal candidate given it's a platformer but Terraria with it's HUGE number of upgradeable gear has lots and lots of magical items from staves, spell books, wands, and magical armor that make being an exclusive mage caster a lot of fun!

 

[ninja666]

How bad is the game itself aside, Fable 3 lets you do pretty crazy stuff being a magic user. Late-game you have two gauntlets that you can assign a spell to (one in each hand). When you do so, you can either cast them separately or at the same time which automatically combines both effects. A tornado of fire? A whirlwind of swords? An ice shard blizzard? A firestorm? The possibilities are quite diverse.

Also, Dark Souls series have a pretty vast amount of spells that are divided into 4 schools: Sorcery (magic missiles, buffs and shit), Pyromancy (fire, poison and a little of mind control), Miracles (healing and defensive spells), and Hexery (exclusive to Dark Souls 2; dark magic).