Greetings all. Lately I've been doing some musing about magic and how it's portrayed/utilised in popular media and .. so on. In this case I'm going to stick to video games.

I remember when I was younger playing games on Sega Genesis you had limited options based on either which character you picked (if multiple character options was available) or hard defined items/circumstances that you encountered. Sometimes it was passable, other times it could be a bit of a hassle. An example- in Golden Axe the female character (can't remember her name ) was supposed to specialise in magic and you had to collect *things* to charge up her magic, but since she needed so much to fill up her cache, it seemed to make sense to use it sparingly, which seems to contradict 'specialising' in magic.

In newer games, well.... in TES it seemed at one time that it required a lot of forethought and planning but now it's oversimplified; less 'magic' more 'hand based super weapon'. Other games, I tried playing NWN once, but couldn't get into the lack of direct control over my character enough to try a mage char. *thinks for a second* Wow, even though I'm a fantasy geek I can't think of any other modern game that I've played with a magic system. Wait, I do have the first Witcher game, but for some reason I never got around to trying it.... I also almost tried the first Dragon Age game, but after seeing some of the promotional fluff saying stuff like 'if you've never played a real RPG' it sounded a little pretentious to me.. also personally I prefer real time over turn based.

So, what games do you think has the best magic system, and which has the worst. Also, how do you think magic systems could be improved in future games? Tell me your thoughts, maybe one day someone will make a superior game.

Uh, the Dragon Age games are not turn-based. They're real-time with pause. And the promotion for the first game in particular was notoriously bad, misrepresenting it with crappy Marilyn Manson music that made it seem like it was some sort of heavy metal kind of fantasy, so basing your entire opinion on the game off of them was a bad move on your part.

what games do I think had the best and worst magic systems?


hmm...




well may be Nostalgia, or my fanboyism kicking in, but I liked the Magic system in Might & Magic 7 & 8 quite a bit.. they improved upon most of the issues i had with 6s, and had many utility spells as opposed to just combat stuff.. not only did they each spell get marginally better as you put points into its related school (there were 9 schools of magic), but as you reached a new level in that skills mastery (the levels of Mastery being Basic, Expert, Master, and Grandmaster.. each skill had different requirements to promote, such as character levels, skill level, character class, or quests completed) many of your older spells would gain additional properties..




worst? well as much as I hate to say it, Skies of Arcadia.. it may be one of my favorite JRPGs, but its magic system was not very good (you were better off just ignoring it and focusing on signature moves).. the low level spells were useless, even in the early game they didn't do much damage.. took forever to learn new ones to the point you would probably only have mastered 1 or 2 of the moons magic by the end of the game (and by the end game when you may have a few high level ones most bosses had such strong magical resistance by that point you'd do more damage with a basic attack), and due to the brokenness that was Delta Shield enemies using spells against you was not an issue in the slightest.. sure, I may still think SoA was an amazing game (that i hope one day makes it onto a digital platform), but its magic system left so much to be desired. besides quika (25% speed and dodge buff to the party), and incremus (25% buff to attack and defense for the party) most of its spells weren't useful at all..

I would say the old Ultima games for worst, mostly because you had to fight an inventory system of placing regeants in a certain bag and having to remember which bag you placed them in when you restocked on regs.



Maybe realistic storage methods but for gameplay it was a hassle.


Ironically, I vote the Ultima games the best because I love how your spell book started blank and you had to either shop or find the spells to put in your spell book before you could cast said spell.

I think I liked magic in Oblivion the best. I thought it was a very flexible system, with spellcrafting, Attributes that affected magic usage and the ability to swing a sword and cast spells at the same time. It was not a perfect system by any means, but it is my favorite of all the games I've played.

My least favorite is Dungeons-and-Dragons-style magic. I simply cannot stand that kind of rigid, restrictive, unintuitive, nonsensical class-based system where only certain classes are allowed to cast certain spells, only certain classes are allowed to wear certain kinds of apparel and only certain classes are allowed to wield certain kinds of physical weapons (if they are allowed to wield them at all). To my mind, that is the opposite of roleplaying.

Pretty much the same, playing Oblivion again I forgot just how much I missed having my weapon and shield equipped but still being able to cast spells. Agreed again on the class system, why can't my Warrior grab a staff or put on a robe? It treats the character as a class instead of a person.

Agreed about Oblivion. There was no interruption in the flow of gameplay when casting spells.

I liked "The Force" in KotOR and KotOR2. That was cool. Ummm, Skyrim's would've been great if they hadn't neutered the spell list and included some sort of spellcrafting (I don't really care about it, but there are plenty of folks who do and I can simply not use it). Let's see, best I can remember I thought the magic was ok in Dragon Age: Origins, didn't really get into Dragon Age2, never played Inquisition, biotics in the ME series were ok, didn't really like Fable's magic all that much (really just played Skill and Strength characters). Obilvion's magic was good, as was Morrowind's. Ooh, and some of the supernatural powers in Vampire: The Masquerade-Bloodlines were really fun to use.

I thought the best magic system was in bauldurs gate 2 (a series I never played until like 2012 so it's not nostalgia in my case).


It was the first game that I played that gave me mage battles on the level of Demi gods and gods. Battles against other mages and liches were just insane long drawn out battles.


Summoning demons, stopping time, turning summons on the master, pulling up protections, taking down protections, casting spells, debuffing each other, all in the same battle.


I really felt like my character had the power to stand against gods and win, raistlin majere style.



As for the worst, that's hard to say. Most games with bad magic systems are forgettable for me for that aspect (I usually enjoy them for something else). Probably one of the final fantasy games, like ff7 or something (some ff games had okay magic system, some weren't that great though).

Pretty much the same here. Now, I didn′t play many games with magic in it before Oblivion, but it felt right from the get-go and it still holds up for me. No hassle, easy to use, while also leaving lots of room for creativity and I think that is extremely important. At least for me

That sounds like more of an issue with class-based RPGs in general, rather than with the magic system.

(But that said, a good number of people aren't fond of http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VancianMagic systems, in D&D or other games. I know it was always a pain playing low-level magic users in D&D games back in the day. Having used your two spells for the day, and being stuck with just a staff or dagger - which you svcked with - for the rest of the dungeon crawl. Whee! Even D&D has realized this svcked, since 5th edition makes it quite a bit more user-friendly. While still maintaining some of the traditional aspects. )

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edit: I can't think of a particularly "favorite" magic system in videogames. I don't tend to play magic users in class-based single-character games, just in party-based ones where you're running the whole group. And in non-class-based games like TES, every character uses at least a little magic, but I've never played a "pure" caster.

(Hmm, well, except in action-y games, like MMOs or Diablo-likes. But in those games, magic/special attacks/abilities/whatever all tend to act similarly regardless of class, it's just a matter of what they call the resource you're spending to do them - if it's "mana" you're a spellcaster, if it's "stamina" you're a physical attacker.)

well, in the case of DnD, it was above all else a game about cooperation with your fellow players.. you were on a journey with them, you were responsible for using your characters abilities to make up for what the rest of your team lacked.. certain equipment being limited to certain classes facilitated this in multiple ways.. as an example it made it so when you find a new axe or robe its far easier to see who would make the best use of it as opposed to an argument of "its enchanted, why does he get it? hes already got enchanted boots!"..

Another vote for Oblivion's magic system here. The ability to use magic with weapons equipped was a real improvement over MW - a shame they dropped it with Skyrim. Apart from Shouts, of course.

And most other "party" games work similarly - even in freeform/skill-based games (like Wasteland 2), you want to specialize your characters to fulfill a set of needed roles in the group. Leader, Medic, Fighter, etc. Similarly to how the military forms squads/platoons/etc. Sure, everyone has basic skills & there's some overlap & backup, but you need all the specialist skill categories represented.

(Makes sense, when you think that many of the original roleplaying games were made by guys who designed wargames. TSR - Tactical Studies Rules. )

agree full-heartedly. Despite the weird esoteric nature of the Vancian System, I quite like Dungeons and Dragons style magic. Baldur's Gate 2 in particular did a fantastic job of making mage battles epic struggles that required a high degree of strategy and forethought.

Darn it, I'll have to get the lasso and see if I can make some friends.

The shouts were fun, but overall I just got on with Oblivion's magic system much better than with most other games. It was straightforward and accessible if that's all you wanted, but could scale and be more imaginative if that was what you wanted and fancied putting in the effort, and nicely integrated into regular combat too. What I liked about it is that it didn't feel special or deliberately obfuscated or obtuse, it just was, and worked rather nicely.

Yeah, Oblivion's system just worked and if they'd simply added the Shout system alongside that then it would have been fine. Sometimes there's just too much changing things just for the sake of it, when all that is needed at most is a little refinement.

wow, different strokes for different folks and all, but I am surprised people are saying Oblivions.. Don't get me wrong, I think Oblivions a good game, but to me its magic system felt very "tacked on" with it just hitting the C (was it C?) button to cast.. it didn't make me "feel" like a Mage.. sure Oblivion had more spell effects, but Skyrims system of magic being used the same way one would use their weapons made me "feel" like I was a powerful wizard, something Oblivion's just never did..

The favorite system and having to equip a spell on a hand made it more a chore than fun for me in Skyrim! I ended up pausing the game more than actually playing it when playing certain types of characters. While in Oblivion I can have a sword and shield equipped and just tab a button or two without having to unequip or pause the game. I had actually given up in my usual templar build in Skyrim until I got on the PC and found a mod that made spell casting like Oblivion's.

Also "Yeah we removed spell crafting but we gave you so many unique spells! Yeah half of them are the same spell that do a little different damage, but it's unique we swear!"

That sounds great - what mod is it? Does it make it work exactly like Oblivion's?

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/43123/?tab=1&navtag=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nexusmods.com%2Fskyrim%2Fajax%2Fmoddescription%2F%3Fid%3D43123%26preview%3D&pUp=1, it's somewhat in early stages. While it doesn't work exactly like Oblivion you can tweak things around to make it similar. You can make "spell rings" assign a spell to the ring and put it in your hotkey, Say you make a spell ring with the spell Fireball in it and put it in number 5 of your hotkeys. As soon as you press 5 the spell is cast without having to unequip anything!

You can also have it so it cast spells automatically under certain conditions! I have it to cast Oakflesh when I enter combat and fast healing when my health gets down a certain percentage. Less going through menus and the mana is spend as normal.

It has an issue with sustained spells but a work around is to set it so it stops casting after you reach a certain amount of magicka left.

Thanks, Berret - I'm going to give that a go.