Has any game ever achieved a magic system as a power fantasy?

[Detective Cosmic McBeardyface]

Magic should feel godly powerful. Arcane bending of the fabric of the universe should be the greatest power fantasy of them all. Yet, for all the magic systems and fantasy worlds gaming has seen, I don't know of any game that has magic that makes you feel powerful.
This is usually because the game has to balance the game for non-magic characters, and so the magic guy isn't allowed to be any more destructive than a muscly guy swinging a sword. Is there any game that really makes a magic user feel powerful?


Here's my bit of conceptual game design. Ditch the rogue and the fighter and have an entirely magic based RPG. Instead of having to make individual enemies a balanced threat to the player, make them weak, but have a massive hoard. (Processor intensive, I know but it's just a concept) Make the player feel like a god among men as he slays half a dozen oncoming goblins/demons/whatever in a single shot. Instead of having a fireball feel like shooting peas at the enemy as you chip away at his health like in Skyrim, have it be a massive nuke that sends bodies flying.

I know that a sense of absolute power is hard to sustain over the course of a whole game, but my point is that I am constantly disappointed by how magic systems never feel powerful to use, and never feel as forceful as swinging a stick. Thoughts?

 

[sXeth]

God Games maybe?

In an RPG sense, not really. In the less restrained spellmaking days of Elder Scrolls, there were a lot of overpowered magic methods. I remember some of Ultima having interesting magic too, though reagents (if you weren't cheating, or using the infintie reagent ring in the last few) kind of limited its use, along with it being a bit cumbersome in the real-time combat ones.

Heroes of Might and Magic (turn based strategy) also tended to have fairly powerful spells. They were used by the titual heroes, who were meant to drastically overpower the actual combat units. The representation falls a little flat though, as mind controlling a stack of 10,000 dragons looks the same as mind controlling a single one.

 

[DeadProxy]

I believe the game Lichdom falls into what you described. First person spellcrafting in a somewhat nightmare-scape.

Also, Magicka is pretty much the same, with an overhead view and some strong looking spells.

 

[Zhukov]

There was a game called Lichdom: Battlemage that set out to do pretty much exactly what you described.

It was a bit shit.

Personally I've always found magic a bit boring. It mostly just amounts to various flavours of glowy shit coming out of someone's hands and it always goes back to the old elemental stuff, fire, ice, lightning, blah blah blah.

Nowhere near as satisfying as swinging a mace or sneaking about with a knife.

 

[CaitSeith]

Plotwise, in Final Fantasy VI magic is such a big deal that it almost destroyed the world, and its rediscovery is the main plot device. Ironically, after reaching certain point, anyone in your party can learn magic. But there was a bug in the original SNES version which allowed you to instantly kill enemies with magic.

 

[Detective Cosmic McBeardyface]

Personally I've always found magic a bit boring. It mostly just amounts to various flavours of glowy shit coming out of someone's hands and it always goes back to the old elemental stuff, fire, ice, lightning, blah blah blah.

Nowhere near as satisfying as swinging a mace or sneaking about with a knife.

That's exactly my point. This is a fantasy, magic should feel great to use, but it never does.

 

[maninahat]

You're right. In fact in most games, magic is demonstrably inferior to just hitting stuff with swords. In Skyrim, for instance, you only have to choose between two stats to increase with each level (strength and stamina). As a mage, you have to pick between three (mana being the third). In exchange, you get a quick to drain, flimsy flamethrower attack that somehow only tickles the enemy as they close the range on you in no time and start hammering you into the ground.

I think magic should be designed to work in tandem with your mundane skills, rather than a thing you have to over-specialise in (at the expense of the others) to make it worth the while. The Bioshock games did this quite well, treating magic as a form of exotic weapon. Alternatively, magic should operate like the heavy weapons in an old fashioned FPSs: they are built to be very powerful, quirky, and something you save for special situations (like you would with a BFG 9000 or a freeze gun).

 

[Cowabungaa]

I gotta say, throwing out the really high level spells in the Golden Sun games sure as fuck felt like a power fantasy. That was some wrecking-ball level shit alright. I also loved high-level spells in Dungeon Siege, they had a lot of oompf.

High-level spells were apparently also pretty broken in old CRPGs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape: Torment. Insane spell effects and crazy damage. Mages were often really broken in those games. But I never quite got that far with mages in those games myself, so I never actually experienced that.

 

[DaCosta]

I'm replaying Dragon's Dogma right now. I think the highest level Sorceror spells are all pretty great at accomplishing this.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Plotwise, in Final Fantasy VI magic is such a big deal that it almost destroyed the world, and its rediscovery is the main plot device.

This. I've wanted to see a Final Fantasy game set in the 'golden age of Magic' (or a similar setting) forever, even writing my own story about it.

The other setting to come to mind is Harry Potter. There is a spell or potion for just about anything you could name, though some complain that Wizards would be no match for muggle soldiers with guns if it ever came to war.

 

[Draken Steel]

A Dynasty Warriors style game with mages instead of warriors sounds pretty good for an actual strong magic fantasy. Play as a high-level battlemage hero, wreck the shit of the regular soldiers, apprentice/low-level mages act as the lieutenants that still aren't really a threat on their own but can slow you down or support the enemy high-end mages.

Destructible(and creatable) terrain and a passable physics system would def be needed to really show off the potential.

So, go for Fire for traditional army slayer, cover huge areas in firestorms. Lightning or Arcane to hunt down enemy mages/special enemies. Earth or Wind could instead help support your allies, with Earth creating/destroying walls and summoning Golems, and Wind making enemy archers useless and dropping tornados on them. Illusionist could drive sections of the enemy army nuts, have them all end up attacking each other or walking into traps.

Could have Runes to be able to prepare spells before battle, then be able to cast them for free, or create defensive traps.

 

[happyninja42]

If you are referring to video games, I felt the Bioware games did a good job of it. Dragon Age mages felt really fucking powerful to me. Inquisition in particular had a fucking broken build for one of the mage specializations, that basically made you unkillable, and you could just plow through everything in front of you.

I kind of include Mass Effect, because the biotic stuff is basically "Our version of the Force". And I'm sorry but playing an Adept in those games made me feel like a badass.

If you are looking for examples outside of video games, the Mage line of games from White Wolf is an example of some insane use of magic. Mage:the Awakening in particular had a very good system, and with even just a little skill in the schools of magic, and a good imagination, you could pull off some spectacular shit.

 

[meiam]

I'm replaying Dragon's Dogma right now. I think the highest level Sorceror spells are all pretty great at accomplishing this.

Came in to say this, magic in DD did feel pretty awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1pCQrz3b0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kouyGeuN090
https://youtu.be/4Zc9FLWV81Y?t=12s

 

[9tailedflame]

It kinda sounds like you're describing warframe. Certain characters are veey mage-like, and you veey much feel like a god

 

[sanquin]

I'm replaying Dragon's Dogma right now. I think the highest level Sorceror spells are all pretty great at accomplishing this.

Came in to say this, magic in DD did feel pretty awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1pCQrz3b0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kouyGeuN090
https://youtu.be/4Zc9FLWV81Y?t=12s

Was about to mention Dragon's Dogma. Tornadoes, meteor storms and giant pillars of ice ftw. Heck, even the non-top tier spells can feel pretty awesome.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Okami.


In that game, you use the magic brush of the gods to paint your vision into reality. Draw a line on a tree and it is now cut in half, draw a swirly and suddenly a gust of wind blows, draw a circle in the sky and the sun appears. All these are used not only to defeat foes but also to help the people of the land with their trouble which earns you devotion points that act as your experience points, further making the use of the magic feel majestic. There's a few more combaty spells such as drawing a lightning bolt in order to make lightning strike or drawing a circle with a line intersecting it causing a bomb to appear, the line being the fuse, or drawing circles on a water surface to make lilipads flourish, allowing you to step on poisonous terrain that normally instakills you. The creative use of the flexible magic systems in this game make it an eternal classic.

 

[Broderick]

Maybe Orcs must die? It had a nice mix of magic, melee, traps, and ranged(not magic). Had you summoning traps and shooting fireballs at incoming orcs. Or playing a mage in WoW. Blow things up fast.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Sounds like what you're describing is a Dynasty Warriors game, but with mages.