March Assassination #1 (SG Win / PoP Pick)

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It's quite a miserable experience to run this game on modern hardware, and even more miserable to attempt to beat it given the brutal difficulty curve, but I would be remiss if I didn't recognize it does more things well than poorly.

To be fair, I don't see myself playing it anymore. It didn't really click with me. The humor and lore/plot are a bit cringey and get old very soon. It's not terrible, just not great either. But what really didn't land with me were the controls, and consequently, the combat. Magicka's spell system is really, really intricate and deep. This means expert players are capable of bending the elements at will, casting shields, imbuing weapons, placing grenades, using projectiles, beams and AoE attacks when they want. But it requires so many button presses that are placed so close together that it felt like my fingers were playing DDR. In order to keep alive and the DPS decent, you have to type faster with your left-hand than a Twitch mod banning slur during a CoD livestream. Half the time I was using memorized spells, the other half I was dead. It is a deep system, but really hard to grasp and too much for my smol brein.

That said, it's a game that looks and sounds lovely, and while the challenge level is high, it's also somewhat fair and varied for skilled players (I can attest seeing pros playing on Youtube). Multiplayer coop must be a lot of fun. But it's hard to recommend this game given the instability issues, the arcane controls, and the overall frustration that comes with it. Buyer beware, this might become one of your favorite games, or something you simply hate or play out of spite